Who Will Be Remembered Here - Queer Spaces in Scotland

LoveReading Says

Curated by playwright Lewis Hetherington and visual artist CJ Mahony, Who Will be Remembered here shines a dazzling, enriching light on places that have played a pivotal role in shaping the queer identities of fourteen authors, including Ali Smith, Damian Barr, Ink Asher Hemp, Mae Diansangu, Jeff Meek, Rona Munro and Louise Welsh.

Pieces are presented in prose and poetic forms, as autobiography, histories and visceral in-the-moment, almost musical accounts of seminal experiences in Scottish spaces, including sanctuaries in prejudiced times and places of inspiration. Here we also hear from individuals who’d long felt they had no place at all until variously finding allies, transformational first loves, or someplace they belonged, including theatres, parks, clubs and local libraries. Staying on the theme of books and literature, I especially appreciated discovering 16th-century poet Marie Maitland through Ashley Douglas’ fascinating account of Edinburgh as a Sapphic city in which she shares detail on a writer “whose significance to not just Scottish, but global, queer history can scarcely be overstated”.

In the words of the book’s curators, “Queerness threads and weaves through every part of Scottish history, but it is largely intangible. Records are not kept or are deliberately destroyed. Very few places or buildings belong specifically to our community as evidence of the queer lives that have come before. By making these invisible stories visible, Who Will be Remembered Here captures something of the richness, complexity and beauty of this shared queer history.” By turns enlightening, lively and moving, Who Will be Remembered Here certainly fulfils its aim of illuminating stories that have long been lost in shadow.

Joanne Owen

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