Air Tour Residency at Inverness Airport

I’ve recently finished a writing residency which was very different from anything I’ve done previously. I’ve had a few residencies and commissions in my writing life but this one was quite unique and took place against stunningly beautiful backdrops. It involved flying on all 9 routes run by Highland and Island Airports Ltd and writing poetry from my travels.

The routes included: Glasgow to Barra then on to Benbecula; Glasgow to Campbelltown; Inverness to Stornoway; Glasgow to Islay and Tiree; and Wick to Orkney then on to Shetland.

The Gateway Arts Project is underway in several Highland Airports and has facilitated different art forms in different locations. However, Inverness Airport is the only one to appoint a writer-in-residence or to include the flight routes.

During the residency I met loads of staff from the airports and so many varied occupations there are! I discovered what life looks like in the Air Traffic Control towers, spoke to Duty Managers and discovered the amazing objects which find their way to Lost Property. I also found myself in the front seat of both an airport fire engine and the cockpit of a small mail plane delivering newspapers in the early hours of the morning. What a sky! To be in the air when the sun is rising in a bright autumn sky is breathtaking. And the Barra flight? Did you know the runway there is the beach? Take-offs and landings are tidally governed and a tractor collects your bags when you land. You feel like a duck must feel when it takes off from the shore, the sea spraying up onto the plane’s windows.

I ran some workshops also, at Tiree High School, Stornoway’s Adult Learning Group, Wick Grammar School and St. Andrew’s Primary School in Orkney. The reception at the workshops was great. Lots of participants hadn’t worked with a writer before and many had never been in a writing workshop either. Also, because of the distant geography of some of the workshops, there was a sense of excitement about being involved in a project spanning such a wide spread of islands and populations.

On three occasions the group came to the airport for their workshops and that was fantastic. I’d expected them to have been used to the airport, maybe flown quite a lot, but most folk didn’t actually fly very much and tended to take ferries. The pupils in Orkney spent a bit of time with their noses jammed to the big landscape window watching take-offs and landings before they were ready to write. But once they got started they used their imaginations to great effect and wrote about the strangest/best/oddest thing/person/object coming off an Orkney flight. It was great fun.

The Adult Group on Stornoway were equally enthusiastic about travelling out to the Business Room at the airport for their workshop and proceeded to create poems about journeys and monologues about annoying situations they’d found themselves in during their lives. They even printed a wee booklet of their writing after the workshops were finished.

In fact, after I’d completed the poems and workshops, Hopscotch Television company decided that the Residency would make a good documentary and pitched a successful bid to the ‘This Scotland’ series. So, I’m currently back in Inverness filming at the airport with the crew and, after thinking those Island flights were once in a lifetime opportunities, I’m back in the air! Lucky poet indeed! I know how privileged I was to have had such an opportunity to work in some of the most attractive locations in Scotland, and to see them from a bird’s eye view. Congratulations to all the sponsors – Scottish Arts Council Lottery Funded, Arts & Business New Partners, Scottish Book Trust, Inverness & Nairn Enterprise and The Highland Council. Sponsorship in kind, such as for flights and administrative support was provided by Highlands and Islands Airports Ltd (HIAL), Loganair Ltd and Highland Airways.

I chose a narrative style for most of the poems as they tell the journey in quite a descriptive fashion. Here’s an example of a short poem about the journey from Inverness to Stornoway.

Inverness to Stornoway

Frost
over Ardesier
October morning
fine icing sugar
dusting
the bens
a world still
wakening
white voids ahead
visible through
the open cockpit door

I’m being delivered
with the papers
on the Stornoway flight
Highland Airways
four seats for folk
sixteen for newspapers
wrapped in their
grey sleeping bags

we are in the minority here
all this print
might weigh me down
so many words to choose from