Feb 03 2025 36 mins 1
Just a reminder that there are a few live events coming up, and I’d love to see you there - actor Dawn Steele - who’s starred in Monarch of the Glen and Shetland among others - joins me at Granite Noir in Aberdeen on Febrary 23rd, award-winning poet and writer Michael Pedersen’s with me at Glasgow’s Glad Cafe on March 1st - Siobhan Wilson and Raveloe will play some live music at that one too…
And then, on March 27th, David Keenan will introduce us to his superb new collection of music writing, Vocanic Tongue, at Edinburgh’s Portobello Bookshop. There are tickets online - and we’d love you to join us…
In the meantime, onto this episode, which celebrates the work, and living legacy, of Scottish-Ghanaian artist, photographer, film-maker and writer Maud Sulter, thanks to a brilliant - and free - exhibition that’s running at the Tramway in Glasgow until the end of March…
Titled Maud Sulter: You Are My Kindred Spirit, it’s an immersive experience of moving image and spoken word archives, alongside photographs, montage and written works like her Alba Sonnets - and her voice rings out across the building…
Maud was born in the Gorbals - not far from the Tramway - in 1960, and died after a long illness in 2008. She began her career as a writer, and award-winning poet, before expanding her practice to include photography and visual art, often addressing the erasure and representation of Black Women in the histories of these disciplines - and giving a voice to the marginalised.
Along with the brilliant exhibition itself, there’s a live events programme, curated by Pelumi Odubanjo, which includes poetry evenings, collective readings, presentations, conversations and a rare screening of Maud’s play Service to Empire in the coming weeks.
The live programme launched with a screening of Natasha Ruwona and Tomiwa Folorunso’s excellent short film, Maud, which invited Black women making art in Scotland to reflect on her life, and work, and influence.
Many of them also feature in the superb PASSIONS publication, which revisits and responds to Maud’s seminal 1990 book PASSION: DISCOURSES ON BLACKWOMEN’S CREATIVITY.
I caught up with Natasha, and Tomiwa, and Pelumi, after the screening, to chat a bit more about Maud, and her work…
