With the building of Farr and Kinlochbervie High Schools in the 1980’s and 1990’s the need for hostelling was reduced. Some provision was still supplied at Golspie but that was for students on Technical College courses. So the memory of the “inward migration” is fading, although it is still vivid in many people, yet the social structure, both educational and economic, of Sutherland is ever-developing, constantly changing. In working with the musician Iain Copeland, recording poems and writing poems for him to put music and film to, I attempted to chart, albeit impressionistically, the “now” of Dùthaich Mhic Aoidh in as much as it is not a theme park, a “wilderness” or a museum, but a beautiful and ancient place filled with people living useful and fulfilled lives –or at least attempting to, which is normal. To live in Sutherland is to be blessed. On the other hand to live and work in Sutherland is to constantly meet and overcome challenges, some of which are topographical, environmental and others which are social, economical and political. This is what contributes to cultural activity. It is what defines the arts which signify that culture. It is what gives the people their character.

Working with pupils in schools is where you see The Angel of History close up with her doppelganger, The Angel of the Future, which only they can paint and describe. My passion is always to get the children to look at the “now” of their lives and their place and to describe it in order to give it both reverence and respect; and meaning and beauty if they transcribe those observations into a poem. All art is a process of transference, so what a child sees at a specific time on a certain day in a particular place is the record of that moment and the resultant poem – or whatever it is - is the captured artistic spark of that observation rendered into words and transformed into art. That they look out over the Highland fjord of Kinlochbervie or the Atlantic croft parks of Bettyhill adds lived lustre to the work. To engage with their place is to extract meaning and value from their experience. Whatever the result the practise is the reward. Children soon move on to other things which is their necessary genius. A residency such as this can only activate certain ways of doing a creative writing workshop with a class of energetic pupils. It would take years of attention to bring things to fruition through various methods and exercises. Some kind of continuity in this regard with both Kinlochbervie and Farr High Schools would be something a writer-in-residence, for example, could develop.