A VIRTUAL tour exploring Edinburgh’s “hidden” links to slavery through poetry is one of the events kicking off this year’s Book Week Scotland.
A review of controversial statues and street names in the city is underway after Black Lives Matter protests were held in the summer over the Melville statue, which commemorates controversial 18th-century politician Henry Dundas.
In an online event taking place tomorrow, Lisa Williams, founder of the Edinburgh Caribbean Association, takes playwright and poet Hannah Lavery around some of the less well-known aspects of the capital’s links to the slave trade.
It is part of the week-long programme for Book Week Scotland, which features a host of well-known names including Ian Rankin, Jackie Kay, Douglas Stuart, Christopher Brookmyre, Denise Mina, Alexander McCall Smith and Louise Welsh.
Williams, who runs regular Black history walking tours, said the sites explored include one of Edinburgh’s first sugar shops and a sugar refinery on the Royal Mile, which relied on goods produced by slaves from places like Antigua and Jamaica.
She said: “We also talk about Parliament House, as there were some really interesting slavery legal cases which happened there.
“I usually get people to imagine what it was like being Joseph Knight coming from Jamaica and walking into Parliament House and having to fight for his freedom.
“Another stop is at the back of the National Museum where there is a plaque to Charles Darwin, where we talk about the story of John Edmonstone. He was originally an enslaved man who came over to Scotland and ended up teaching Darwin taxidermy while he was a student at the university.”
The event also explores slavery through poetry, including works by Guyanese poet John Agard and Lorna Goodison, who has just stepped down as Poet Laureate for Jamaica.
Williams said: “There is so much Scottish poetry from that period where people are writing pro-slavery poetry but also a lot of abolitionist poetry – women as well as men. So it is teasing out some of those responses.”
Both Williams and Lavery have also prepared special Caribbean poetic responses to Scottish history.
Last week it was announced Sir Geoff Palmer will lead the Edinburgh Slavery and Colonialism Legacy Review Group, which is expected to meet for the first time before the end of the year.
Williams welcomed the review and said it would be important to get a wide range of people involved.
“We can only have a really mature conversation about what to do with statues if people know the history and we all understand it,” she said.
“We must not get stuck in this binary between just pulling statues down or putting up a plaque – I think there are lots of things in between which we could do.”
For information on Book Week Scotland visit: www.scottishbooktrust.com/book-week-scotland
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