Notes from the North 7

I spent five days in Moniack Mhor in the last week of May, most of them in sunshine which one evening gave us a sunset such as one would more usually expect to see over on the western coast. The curlews were calling, the gorse a dazzling yellow and I don’t think I have ever seen quite so many hares, young and old, bounding about on the fields. 



Moniack Mhor is Scotland’s best-known writing centre. Started thirty years ago by Kit and Sophia Fraser of Hootananny fame (pubs in Inverness and Brixton), the centre was partnered with Arvon (www.arvon.org) until 2014 when Creative Scotland, still one of Moniack Mhor’s core funders, stepped in with a grant and enabled them to go independent.  

 

Besides being a haven for all sorts of writers and would-be writers – the list of those who have taught there includes some of the greatest Scottish poets and writers of the past half-century - Moniack Mhor works to live lightly on the land. To that end it grows quite a bit of its own food, recycles everything it can and offers simple accommodation (but the wi-fi is excellent and every bedroom has a good table for writing at and a room journal for thoughts and impressions). It also encourages visitors to share transport to get to the centre which lies between the communities of Abriachan and Foxhole and not far from Loch Ness.

 

I took a bus all the way to Inverness and shared a taxi with three other visitors who had come by train. The taxi was driven by Robert who has been doing that run since the centre first opened. I was in the front passenger seat so was lucky to get wonderful views as well as Robert’s detailed account of the Lovat family fortunes, (Lovat is the main land-owner in the area). The first Lovat was Hugh Fraser who was summoned to the Scottish Parliament in 1458 as Lord Fraser of Lovat. The Lovat family history has plenty of good material for a rip-roaring historical novel, including a beheading of one member as a result of his involvement in the 1745 Jacobite Rising. The aged Lord Lovat (he was 80 when he lost his head in 1747), was the last man ever to be executed by beheading on Tower Hill in London.


From the upstairs of the main house (a converted steading), you look out towards Glen Strathfarrar and Ben Wyvis, described by www.walkhighlands.co.uk as ‘an isolated, bulky Munro, rising like an elephant from the lower moors of Easter Ross’. 




There are two other buildings on the property – a cottage, once the croft, and a straw bale house, the latter with a turf roof, a wood burner for heating and some electrical power from solar panels, a place for peaceful contemplation of the unfolding hills beyond, as well as for the hard work of getting the words onto the screen or the blank page. (For more information on the construction see www.creativecarbonscotland.com/resource/case-study-the-straw-bale-studio-at-moniack-mhor/)


building the straw bale house


the straw bale house, outside and in

There were twelve of us on the course, all women, bearing our projects and uncertainties and hoping to attend to both. The most distant traveller was Ida Linehan Young, a published author from Nova Scotia and the closest, Marina Gertsen who manages the Inverness office of Moniack Mhor. Making it possible for staff to attend their courses is another feature of the centre. Rachel Humphries, the Centre Director, puts it very well in her long blog marking the 30th anniversary of the centre.  

 

“Why doesn’t Moniack feel like a job? Why does it lift my spirits every day when I drive along the road and turn down the track, past our little sign to the familiar hearth and home of Moniack Mhor?  Why does it feel like a safe place to be creative? I think it’s down to the people that inhabit the space; yes, the views are lovely and it’s an environment conducive to writing, but it’s the optimism of those that dive into the creative process every day that makes it work.”

 

In 2022 the centre hosted its first international writers’ residency, bringing writers from Nigeria, Togo, Canada, Spain, Scotland and England together to share their work.  This year something similar will be happening throughout the summer with ‘Here and Now’. Established writers from Scotland and West Africa will work in Scotland in August (including at the Edinburgh Book Festival) and then in October in Accra, Ghana at the Library of Africa and the African Diaspora. There is much more you can find out about all this at www.moniackmhor.org.uk

 

We twelve women were there for a ‘work in progress’ fiction writing week, mentored and taught by authors Carys Bray


 


and Wyl Menmuir


with Sarah Franklin as guest reader one evening mid-week. 


We wrote, we read, we talked, we even sang a little at times. Some of us (not me), got up early and ran along empty roads. Some of us walked in the woods and all of us helped with the preparation and cooking of the evening meal. 


A nearly perfect working week. I'll leave the last words to Carol Ann Duffy, one of the centre's patrons:

 

Moniack Mhor


Something is dealing from a deck of cards,

face up, seven, a week of mornings, today’s 

revealing the hills at Moniack Mhor, shrugging off 

their mists. A sheepdog barks six fields away;

I see the farm from here.

 

Twelve-month cards, each one thumbed, flipped,

weathered in its way – this the eighth, harvest time,

a full moon like a trump, a magic trick.

It rose last night above this house, affirmative.

I sensed your answer – hearts. 

…

 

  

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