This post was written by Gwen with support from Brian, FoDC
Feature Graphic: photo credit Live Around the World with Stu & Co
Dr Maya Angelou at Dundonald Castle
The idea that every year in every nation there should be a day to celebrate social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women across the globe, was greeted with unanimous approval by over 100 women from 17 countries at a Conference of Working Women in Copenhagen in 1910.
From this, International Women’s Day has emerged to become the fixture in our calendars which we know today. Now in its 110th year, “Choose to Challenge” has been picked as the theme for this International Women’s Day: 8th March 2021. We thought that there was no better way for us to celebrate than to pay remembrance to Dr Maya Angelou (1928-2014) who was something of a ‘Choose to Challenge’ champion even as early as when her working life began in San Francisco at the age of 16 by becoming the first ever black, female cable car conductor. In 2014 she received a lifetime achievement award from the Conference of Minority Transportation Officials as part of a session billed ‘Women Who Move the Nation’.
Her noteworthy career went on to see her working as a singer, dancer, actress, composer and becoming Hollywood’s first female black director. She became most famous though, as one of America’s most highly commended writers and poets, as well as a civil rights activist, working with Dr Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X.
Dr Angelou received dozens of awards and more than 50 honorary degrees in her lifetime. She is best known for her series of autobiographies which recount her childhood and early adult life which she began writing about in the late 1950s when she joined the Harlem Writer’s Guild. This was where she was inspired to write her best known book ‘I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings’ published in 1970, which received international acclaim and made the bestseller list.
It is no coincidence though that we choose to remember Dr Angelou today for International Women’s Day in 2021, not only for being a highly influential woman who certainly chose to challenge social and cultural ideologies in her life, but 25 years ago, Dundonald Castle had the honour of having her visit here when she attended a ceilidh evening to celebrate the life of Robert Burns!
This came about when in an interview with BBC Radio 4 Dr Angelou had commented that her “second favourite poem was ‘Tam O’Shanter’” by our Ayrshire Bard Robert Burns. This comment went on to inspire Ely Taylor, award winning producer director, also brought up in Ayrshire, to set about putting together a documentary combining these two great poets. Ely went to meet Dr Angelou in her home in USA in 1995, and when The BBC and The Film Production Fund (now Creative Scotland) agreed to put her idea into reality, Dr Angelou flew across the Atlantic to Scotland to meet like-minded Burnsians in various places throughout Scotland.
As part of this documentary which became entitled ‘Angelou on Burns’, Dr Angelou was invited here to Dundonald Castle to be able to experience Burns’ music and poetry first hand in his homelands of Ayrshire. We’re sure that this was an evening she would never forget in the company of local Burns enthusiasts and invited musicians and speakers, all seated beneath the huge barrel-vaulted ceiling which King Robert II had built in 1371, possibly for the very purpose of hosting many a fine evening of music and poetry!
It was his grandfather King Robert the Bruce about whom the song ‘Scots Wha Hae” was written by Robert Burns as a fictional address given by The Bruce to his army shortly before the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314, to which Dr Angelou is listening in this wonderful clip of film. It shows how clearly moved Maya is on hearing one of Burns’ best loved songs resounding through the hall, emotionally sung by Dick Gaughan, with Iain Fraser on fiddle and William Jackson on harp.
Those who attended may also recall that John Rodie, miner-turned-poet whose prose has also been widely acclaimed at home and overseas, who sadly passed away in 2015, was present at this Burns’ ceilidh evening inside Dundonald Castle that night. We were pleased to find a photograph taken by the Ayrshire Post where John is clearly enthralling Dr Angelou with some Burns or perhaps one of his own poems in the Ayrshire Dialect.
We can only imagine the enjoyment had by them all on a momentous evening such as this, and are so glad to know that Dundonald Castle played some part in Dr Angelou’s distinguished life. We’re sure she enjoyed the sharing of tales and the reciting of her ‘second favourite poem’ in a place with such a unique historical past. You may spot some weel kent faces in the audience in the film or the photo, and perhaps you were present at this event? Let us know what your memories of this are since we’d love to hear more about it!
We wish you a happy International Women’s Day 2021 from us all at Friends of Dundonald Castle, and with the troubling days we presently inhabit, we hope that this short passage from Dr Maya Angelou’s uplifting poem “On the Pulse Morning” might help us all be hopeful of better days to come:
Lift up your eyes upon
This day breaking for you.
Give birth again
To the dream.
Women, children, men,
Take it into the palms of your hands,
Mold it into the shape of your most
Private need. Sculpt it into
The image of your most public self.
Lift up your hearts
Each new hour holds new chances
For a new beginning.
Do not be wedded forever
To fear, yoked eternally
To brutishness.
The horizon leans forward,
Offering you space to place new steps of change.
Here, on the pulse of this fine day
You may have the courage
To look up and out and upon me, the
Rock, the River, the Tree, your country.
No less to Midas than the mendicant.
No less to you now than the mastodon then.
Here, on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sister’s eyes, and into
Your brother’s face, your country
And say simply
Very simply
With hope—
Good morning.ON THE PULSE OF MORNING by Maya Angelou, copyright © 1993 by Maya Angelou
Sources:
https://www.internationalwomensday.com
https://www.pressreader.com/uk/ayrshire-post/20160311/281870117540557
‘A Collier Lad of a Collier Son- John Rodie. Prancing Jack Productions. 2014:
https://poets.org/poem/pulse-morning
Gwen Sinclair, Digital and Outreach Assistant, FoDC
outreach@dundonaldcastle.org.uk
