Norman Bissell
Home address:
Mo Dhachaidh, 51 Cullipool, Isle of Luing, Argyll, PA34 4UB, ScotlandTelephone:
01852 314322Email:
normanbissell@btinternet.comBRAW network:
noLL funded:
yesPublisher:
Luath PressBiography:
I was born in Glasgow and lived most of my life there and in East Kilbride but now live on the Isle of Luing in Argyll which looks out to the long coast of Mull and beyond to the Atlantic Ocean. I graduated MA Hons in philosophy and history from the University of Glasgow and worked as a principal teacher of history at Braidhurst High School in Motherwell for 17 years then as a full-time Area Officer for Scotland’s largest teaching union, the Educational Institute of Scotland. I lectured for ten years to undergraduate and post-graduate teachers at the University of Glasgow on The Teacher and the Law and also at the University of Edinburgh Office of Lifelong Learning on geopoetics. In June 2010 I was awarded the Fellowship of the Educational Institute of Scotland ‘for signal service to education’. I’ve been writing for many years, mostly poetry, essays on cultural themes and book and music reviews which have been widely published. I founded and led the Open World Poetics group from 1989 -1999 and since August 2002 have been director of the Scottish Centre for Geopoetics which is affiliated to the International Institute of Geopoetics and promotes radical cultural renewal based on a poetics of the earth. I have provided poetry workshops to primary pupils in Argyll and East Kilbride and performed my poems with composer and musician Mark Sheridan and Gaelic singer Mairi Macinnes in Songs of the Sea which toured in Argyll and Moray in 2010. I have a full disclosure from Disclosure Scotland, January 2010.About writer's work:
II write poetry, essays and book reviews which have been widely published online and in literary journals, books and newspapers and am a very experienced teacher and lecturer. My poems have appeared in The Scotsman, Cencrastus, Classwork, island, Luing Newsletter, Open World and Scottish Book Collector magazines, the booklet Circles and Lines and the books The Reckoning, Making Soup in a Storm (New Writing Scotland 24) and The Dynamics of Balsa (New Writing Scotland 25). My first poetry collection Slate, Sea and Sky. A Journey from Glasgow to the Isle of Luing, accompanied by photographs by Oscar Marzaroli, was published by Luath Press in 2008, received national press and BBC Radio Scotland news coverage and has been critically acclaimed. My articles on cultural issues and book and music reviews have been published in The Herald, The Scotsman, the Scottish Educational Journal, The Keelie, Cencrastus, Chapman, Edinburgh Review, island, Northwords, West Coast, Classwork, the Luing Newsletter, Hi-Arts Northings, in the books The Reckoning and Grounding a World, Essays on the work of Kenneth White, and by the Scottish Trade Union Research Network. Two days on Luing, a special issue of the journal island in autumn/winter 2005, contained an essay and poems by me along with work by other writers and visual artists. I have appeared at many festivals and cultural events including interviews with Iain Anderson at Celtic Connections, talks at the Changin’ Scotland conference in Ullapool and the Nairn Book and Arts Festival in 2006, a talk and poetry reading at the Aye Write Book Festival, poetry readings at Edinburgh’s Ceilidh Culture and at the Edinburgh International Book Festival in 2008, and poetry readings and a talk at the Festival of the Sea in 2010. My interest in geopoetics and the work of the Scottish poet and thinker Kenneth White led me to edit and write the Introduction to Coast to Coast, Interviews and Conversations 1985-1995 by Kenneth White and co-edit and contribute to Grounding a World: Essays on the work of Kenneth White published by Alba Editions in May 2005. I have worked with local communities to produce poems and other suitable text for interpretation panels on the Oban seafront, at the Islay Chaluim Chille Centre and for the Oban to Fort William cycling and walking route. I am currently working on a memoir about growing up in Glasgow and overcoming prostate cancer, and will be collaborating with the Tabula Rasa Dance Company and archaeologists in Orkney in 2011.
Language:
EnglishAge groups:
5-8, 9-12, Teens, AdultsBooks written
Edited by Gavin Bowd, Charles Fodsdick and Norman Bissell
This was the first comprehensive analysis in the English language of the internationally renowned Scottish poet and thinker ...
This striking combination of poems and photographs creates a remarkable new soundscape and vision of Glasgow and of a land far beyond its crowded streets. From the screech of buses to the ...
