The Edinburgh Makar, Michael Pedersen, has written a poem about Edinburgh.
The work was commissioned by Edinburgh City of Literature Trust to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Edinburgh becoming the very first City of Literature, and was unveiled at a party on Saturday night. It is an ode to the capital, a kind of love letter, while setting out a search for the city’s true heart.
The poem begins: “Be More Edinburgh. It’s high time you came in for a heart check up, and not shy of 1,000 years old it’s scandalously overdue.”
The Makar himself was on hand to perform the poem (complete with sparkly clip board as ever) while the film played to an assembled audience at Fruitmarket.
He opines later in the piece that Portobello Library and the Mosque Kitchen are “hot contenders for the heart’s atria”. The National Library and Sheep Heid are up there as well and “strike claim to the ventricles”.
But he also says that the city is “beaming like a mother whose bairn has grown up to be kind”.
The full length film – which is short due to the fact it is animated, will be released later this week. The work of art involved 20 students in the creation under their lecturer, Jared Taylor at Edinburgh College of Art. The film complements the landscape of Pedersen’s words, taking the viewer on a whistlestop tour of Auld Reekie.
Here is a trailer:
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