THE Sunday National spoke with Edinburgh Makar and poet Michael Pedersen on the 10 things that changed his life.
He will appear in conversation with Alan Cumming at this year's Winter Words Festival at Pitlochry Festival Theatre on February 21 - tickets are available HERE.
1. Poetry
I DON'T think I could start any other way. I’ve sort of learnt to investigate, understand and articulate the world through poetry.
I feel like it’s been my longest-serving lover, taking me from Scots language publications in the high school magazine to wee fancy books with my name on the spine and into this position as Edinburgh’s poet laureate as well.
And I mean, if ever I was an addict or a disciple of something, it would be poetry. I love it, I cherish it, I wrestle with it, it holds me captive and hostage at times.
And I just think it’s gorgeous stuff that punctuates and permeates every element of my life.
2. Cats
ARGUABLY much more popular than poetry, I think growing up with cats as pets taught me to be an emotionally sentient human being.
You’re nurturing them, there’s care given there, forgiveness if they scratch or bite and if they’re your first pets then you’ll probably have your first grief with them as well.
I think being close to cats has been a key part of my emotional evolution. Some might say I took it took far pretending to be a cat for the vast majority of my childhood.
I declared myself the cat prince on playdates which as you can imagine didn’t make for too many sequel playdates but I got some good literature out of it years later.
3. Working as a skittle boy at The Sheep Heid Inn
ESSENTIALLY, this is about having a first job which is a supreme moment of learning. I got mine at 12 in arguably Scotland’s oldest pub as a skittle boy and then chief skittle boy.
I guess it’s an outdated job but before there was robots setting up the skittles, essentially a young lad or lass hid down the bottom of a skittle alley, jumped up from behind a hatch and put them back up after they were knocked down.
Because The Sheep Heid Inn is hundreds of years old, they wouldn’t get the planning permission to install the machines to put the skittles back up so they needed someone to physically come and pop them back up.
I sprang out from behind the wee hatch, popped the skittles back up and alongside a gaggle of pals I brought along to help with it, we earned some weekend and evening cash and saw ourselves through the trickiest years of puberty.
Also because it was out of school, it was an opportunity for trade tricks, stories and sentiments and occasionally the odd half-pint of shandy.
4. The school French exchange
IT was the first time I’d sort of properly been out of the country as an independent teenager and went to school near Colmar on the French-German border.
It blew my little, young mind. I came back from that French exchange insisting on croissants for breakfast every day, without knowing how to spell them or pronounce them in French.
I had this burgeoning love for bohemian French girls and I guess a fairy-tale view of countryside living having been brought up in inner city Edinburgh.
I think I still carry that with me, that ambition to escape the city sometimes and travel and learn languages. A lot of it goes back to that exceptional experience on the French exchange when I was about 13 or 14.
It lit a fuse for me for France. Every year, a group of us – me, Hollie McNish, Gemma Cairney, a little gaggle of us we go to Paris and do a show every year. France is where I perform and tour most outside of the UK.
5. Counting Crows
AT 13, my best pal at school at the time Daniel told me he’d found the band for me so I didn’t even find them myself.
It was that emotional, lyrically wet American rock band Counting Crows and to be honest, at that point in time, he was bang on the bell.
I remember weeping along with those lyrics feeling like I was totally understood. Listening to the Counting Crows made me feel like my life was morphing into a Dawson’s Creek-style drama series, which I was very keen on.
I guess it was the start of that relishing fandom of bands and music that started with this super soppy sentient band. As you can imagine, I didn’t take quite so easily to Oasis.
For a favourite song, I’m going to go for Mr Jones which is the biggest hit in some respects.
6. Cambodia
I MOVED to Cambodia for a year after pulling the plug on a really short-term legal career. I’d went to law school, became a solicitor very briefly in London and decided it absolutely wasn’t for me.
I needed to pull myself out of that in the most drastic fashion possible. At that point in time, Cambodia was one of the least connected countries in the world in terms of online presence, phone reception, mail, everything and I thought that’s the place for me.
I spent a year teaching, writing, roaming, cooking dishes and learning languages and it put me back on track after a pretty tumultuous and hedonistic run as a corporate lawyer in London.
So Cambodia for Christmas I’d totally recommend.
7. Neu! Reekie!
THIS is a literary event company that I set up with writer Kevin Williamson and then later photographer Kat Gollock and then musician Davie Miller.
It started as a poetry and film club, a DIY event and it grew into this beautiful artsy behemoth.
By the end of nearly 12 years of it, we’ve published books, hosted exhibitions, programmed festivals, founded a record label, curated and produced hundreds of shows all over the world.
It took us from Orkney to Tokyo, Shetland to Bali, Skye to New York and beyond and I guess I got to meet some of Scotland and the world’s foremost artists, minds, mavericks and innovators.
8. Meeting Scott Hutchison
SCOTT (below) was an artist, writer and singer-songwriter known for Frightened Rabbit. He came into my life through Neu! Reekie! and came into one of our shows, unplugged his guitar from the microphone and went round the room signing into everybody’s hearts.
Listening to him that night felt a little bit like levitating for me and I don’t think I ever fully came back down.
We collaborated on a book together called Oyster, he did the illustrations and I did the poems and we toured it as a live show all over the UK and South Africa as well.
Through that creative partnership, he became one of my dearly beloved, dearest friends and we feasted together all over this world.
I don’t think I’ll ever stop pushing myself in trying to live up to his expectations.
9. Meeting Hollie McNish
HOLLIE also arrived through Neu! Reekie! and we went off touring where I was a support act. She’s my eternal first reader in everything, she’s my favourite person to tour with. She’s probably my favourite living person full stop.
But I think her writing does so much good out there in the world and I’ll never stop being in awe of her.
She’s a Sunday Times bestseller, a poet who sells out venues like Hackney Empire which very few people can do.
I think she offers people so much hope and inspiration and I’ll never stop hoping that my writing impresses her. She’s sort of overwhelmingly lush.
10. Writing Boy Friends
IT was my first prose book. I wrote in grief and by accident. It kept me steady when the emotional ship of living could have gone down.
It taught me that I relish writing other forms of literature as well. The book came out bearing the banner: “Friendships might just be the greatest love affairs of our lives”, so it also gave me permission to pay soppy thanks to all my glorious friends, particularly male friends and encourage other guys to do the same.
We’re at risk of this epidemic of loneliness, a stoicism within a lot of working-class male friendships and exploring that narrative was so important to me.
It was also the dreamy signing to Faber and Faber who’ve been my favourite publisher for a long time and who the novel will come out with next, so I guess it was the start of what will hopefully be a lifelong literary relationship.
