Poems, Stories and Writings

By Margaret Tait and Ali Smith

Drawing upon a pioneering filmmaker’s poetry collections, short stories, magazine articles, and unpublished notebooks, this collection contains the full range of Margaret Tait’s writing. As it discusses Tait as filmmaker and writer in the context of mid-20th-century Scottish culture, this account offers valuable insights into her writing processes and how these might have translated into her film work. With poetry that is generous and independent in its vision of the world, this book will appeal to anyone interested in the crossovers between literature and film.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Carcanet Press Ltd.
• Release date: May 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781847776617

Margaret Tait

Margaret Tait was a filmmaker and writer. She published three books of poetry and two collections of short stories (one of them for children), and made thirty-two short films and the feature-length Blue Black Permanent (1992). She was born in Orkney in 1918. After qualifying in medicine at Edinburgh University in 1941, she joined the Royal Army Medical Corps, serving in India, Sri Lanka and Malaya, before returning to Orkney in 1946. She then studied in Italy, learning Italian at Perugia's School for Foreigners and, from 1950 to 1952 studying filmmaking at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome. On her return to Scotland, Tait established her own film company, Ancona Films, in Edinburgh. In the 1960s she moved back to her native Orkney where she continued to make films until her death in 1999.