An early effort (before Opul) to blend poetry and music, featuring JL Williams

Lullullabye

Margaret Tait reading 'A Poem for a Morning' (originally published in Subjects and Sequences, 1960), from Poems, Stories and Writings edited with an introduction by Sarah Neely (Manchester: Carcanet, 2012).  This recording is made available online with the permission of the Estate of Margaret Tait and is © Alex Pirie. Images of Margaret Tait, in the projection room at Filmhouse, Edinburgh 1992 © Alex Pirie.

These recordings have been digitised from tape recordings made by Tait at various points throughout her life.  Some were produced to send to her friend in New Delhi, Saulat Rahman (who also starred in Tait’s film, Three Portrait Sketches, 1951).  Recordings were also likely to have been made for radio.  Tait’s work occasionally featured on Radio Orkney and there were also suggestions that her poems and stories were aired in the US.  Peter Hollander, a US-based filmmaker and co-founder of Ancona Films, wrote to Tait in February 1960 with news that a professor in Boston wanted to do a radio program on Tait’s poems and stories for a series called ‘Reading I’ve Liked’.  While it is not known if this proposal was ever realised, it is likely that  the recordings were made with this kind of project in mind. The recordings were digitised in 2011 with funding from the AHRC.
Dr Sarah Neely, University of Stirling


A Poem for a Morning by Margaret Tait

scottishpoetrylibrary

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