The Why?s Man
"My art is place specific and people specific." George Wyllie
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The Why?s Man "My art is place specific and people specific." George Wyllie |
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LIZ LOCHHEAD
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"George Wyllie is a seriously playful artist. All his life he has been driven by the desire to play, driven to make things, to ask the big questions, and the wee ones too, as freely, as straight-forwardly, as outrageously and with all the fun, the indomitable life force of a child, all the long-lived courage of a wise-man, the whys-man,who knows the worst, as well as the very best, that human-kind is capable of. He celebrates us in all our glory and ludicrousness. His structures are poems, just as the poems in this book are structures. He makes me happy in the way that ooh... Alan Davie, Joan Miro, Mozart, Edwin Morgan, Alexander Calder, Robert Burns in merry mood, Don Marquis, e.e.cummings, The Simpsons, Adrian Mitchell, Ivor Cutler, John Sampson (my friend who can play two flutes at once), can make me happy. My good friend, and George's Bill Paterson, who worked with him on A Day Down A Goldmine, once suggested George and I should do some sort of theatre piece, a revue, together. Just we had a title, Wyllie & Lochhead, he said would work well (at least here in Glasgow and with wrinklies like oorsels...). I was well chuffed that Bill thought me fit for collaboration with such illustrious company. Never got round to that yet, did we? But - for George's seventy-fifth birthday - I was proud to be asked to write a poem in honour of the occasion. Whether it's any great shakes as a poem or not, looking at it now, well, the fundamental things apply, and I feel I can't do better than resprise that now, as I wish this fine and long overdue book well." Liz Lochhead (March, 2012) Foreword to "Some serious, Some not, Some not even that", poetry collection by George Wyllie, published 2012. Reproduced with permission. |
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A Wee Multitude of Questions for George Wylie On his 75th birthday Who is the man 'it pleases as much to doubt as to be certain'? Whose faith is in the questioned faith? Which Great Scot (pronouncedly Scottish) pronounces Scul?ture most Scotchly with a question mark and a glottal stop? Who puts a question mark at the centre of everything? Who lives unbowed under the slant of Scottish weather, loves the white light of stones, walks on wiry grass and, feeling the electric earth beneath him, turns his wide gaze to the open sea? Who was the young sailor who walked in a place of ash and char, fused glass, bone? Who saw that, aye, rocks do
melt wi' the sun and let pulverised granite run through his fingers like the Sands of Time Shall Run? (The name of the place was Hiroshima and in the middle of the word was the hugest question-mark.) Who will surely interpret for us the monograms of the stars? Who is the man whose name belies his nature? (for 'wily' he is not; there is craft in it, and art, but no guile. He is true and straight, his strategy is honesty, and to ask - in all innocence in all experience - the simplest, starkest, startling questions.) Who makes biting satire out of mild steel? Who wishes to avoid Incorrect Assumptions leading to False Conclusions? Wants
us to question mark, yen, buck, pound? Who in A Day Down A Goldmine asked us to resist the Golden Fleece, the Big 'I-con' that would swizz us all to sell our souls? Whose Berlin Burd faced an absurd obstacle? (Which the bird keeked over and The Wall keeled over.) Who, one Christmas, made gorgeous guano-free robins cheep in George Street, Edinburgh, more multitudinous than were starlings once in Glasgow's George Square? Which George is the Captain of The Question Mark and Daphne his first mate? Whose Jubilee was happily misspelled Jubliee on page thirty-five of his lovely, jubbly, jubilee catalogue? Who decided a locomotive might descend a staircase and a tramcar might have wings? Who made the out of order Standing Stones walk? Who made Holyrood into almost Hollywood for the Festival fringe? Whose spires inspire us, unquestionably celebrate? What the devil was the de'il wha danced away wi the exciseman? (Art did! Art is the very devil that danced awa wi the exciseman.) Who is the Mad Professor up all night in the attic inventing The Great British Slap and Tickle Machine? Who is our ain National Genius, wir true Caledonian McBrain? Who speculates about what is below the surface, douses, divines? Whose rod is not a Y but a why? Whittled
to a ? (His 'by hook, by crook' he
advances with, slowly over rough ground in his good grasp; his shepherds crook; his boat hook hauling us aboard - hang on to your sou-westers, shipmates, it'll likely be a bumpy ride.) In the dark spaces of our heads divers, multitudinous, unmarked, the questions float
above a straw locomotive and a paper boat. [From The Colour of Black and White (Birlinn, 2003)] |
| Liz Lochhead reading the poem |
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