The Evergreen, a unique anthology in 4 volumes from Edinburgh’s Old Town, revisits a 400-year old tradition that sparked the Evergreen anthologies of Allan Ramsay and Patrick Geddes, inspiring a civic and cultural revival within Edinburgh and beyond. After 120 years, it’s back!
The first number of The Evergreen opens with wonderful, sweeping, swirling views of the Old Town by painter Kate Downie—providing an overview of our home, and the people, places and ideas in this new literary and social journal.
Invoking and reaffirming the ideas of Patrick Geddes, The Evergreen concerns with local culture, people in the city, the arts, and social justice, – and encourage readers to look afresh at their environment and their place in it. No better place to start than the peculiar point of view presented by historian Robert Morris, that of Professor Geddes’s Cat, which sits atop Ramsay Garden – have you seen it?
The city’s literary history informs The Evergreen. Richard Rodger links David Hume to a brief history of space in the city (green and otherwise), Stuart Kelly looks at the relevance of the monumental Walter Scott in the anniversary year Waverley, and James Robertson reminds us to listen to three old and beautiful voices.
This issue abounds with poetry on themes rich and various: spring, tourism, freedom, geography, art and music, Robert Fergusson, Paul Klee, Edinburgh places, and places far from Edinburgh, Los Angeles, the stars. The poets are: Benjamin Morris, Nancy Somerville, Andrew McDougall, John McGlade, Ian McDonough, Marcas Mac an Tuairneir, Peter Kravitz, Owen O’Neill, David Herd, Jock Stein, Mike Saunders, Alan Gillis, Mario Relich, Christine De Luca, Samantha Walton.
In prose Leila Aboulela, Morelle Smith, Dominic Cooper and David Tomassini supply perspectives from other places: Aberdeen, the West Highlands, France and Venice – and Todd McEwen discovers that coffee is eating away the foundations of our cultural institutions.
The visual is essential to The Evergreen: Robin Gillanders offers five fine portraits of people whose life and work are essential to the community, and John Reiach shows us just how close to nature we are.
Finally, Richie McCaffrey and Elizabeth Elliott round out the issue by invoking Patrick Geddes again, his contributions to the intellectual renascence of Edinburgh as well as to the daily life of the city.
This publication is supported by Creative Scotland and the Leverhulme Trust.
Publication Date: September 2014
160 pages; ISBN: 978-0-9930544-0-2
Click here to purchase The Evergreen: A New Season in the North Volume 1.
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