Accomodation and Allocution

A bed, mirror, bathroom, television, closet, drawers, a desk, phone, plenty of outlets- As Virginia Woolf  read to the Arts Society at Newnham and Odtaa at Girton, Oct. 1928 - "A Room of One's Own".  I'm in Masson Hall, part of Pollack Halls.  The grounds are well tended with perennials filling in the spaces between the buildings and the walkways.  The greeny feel continues up beyond the buildings to Holyrood Park where Arthur's Seat looms imposing, mossy, ancient and worn down like a oak chair with a smooth worn seat.  It is a mountain, though, one on which you can see hikers traverse its length on top. 
Besides our room, two important places at Pollack are John McIntyre Dining center and Baird House. At JM, the food is plentiful and good. At Baird House, there is a common room where we have convened for our orientation and lectures. Our first such lecture is given by the first such lady of Scottish letters - Liz Lochhead.  A funny grand dame of a poet who surely doesn't seem to view herself in such a way.  While in Jan., 2011, she was named Scots Maker, Scotland's national poet (succeeding Edwin Morgan, the first Scots Maker, 2004, who passed), she is self effacing and carries a youthful earnestness to answer her audience with truthful intent, shown as she pauses a bit before she rambles an explanation that usually produces a laugh, even if she was aiming at something else. She reads her poem about a child getting bundled up in the voice of thick Scottish accent, and then reads it again, in standard English.  She reads accessible poetry, about enemies and sisters.  She generously shares her creative process as we ask her questions about the getting poetry down on paper.  For her the process isn't over, even when editing her "Selected Poems" surely the ones to be read in classrooms- she edits them again.  Afterward, we mosy to her books, which are plays about Mary Queen of Scots, Medea, Mary Shelley! such weighty stuff! - while her poetry is accessible, she keeps company with the classics of Scottish history and English Literature, and why shouldn't we - surrender to the process and the human frailty of getting it wrong as much as getting it right-maybe even more wrong(we think!) - while aiming at the crystalline classics of which structure embodies the human chord? She is truly a great voice to hear at the beginning of our time here in Edinburgh.  And, as I in my "Room of One's Own" I can hear her read her poem, Scottish accent and all.