Angelou on Burns

Dr Maya Angelou at Stirling Castle 1996 CREDIT Taylored Productions Ltd.JPG
My name is Maya Angelou. I grew up on dirt roads just like this. I was a mute. I was poor and black and female. The only key I had which would open the door to the world for me was a book. I read everything. I fell in love with poetry. And amazingly in a small village in Arkansas, I met Robert Burns.
— Dr Maya Angelou in ANGELOU ON BURNS
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Curator

May 2019 - Oct 2019

Having seen his great work building a strong community cinema network in Dumfries and Galloway, I’d wanted to work with Matt Kitson of Driftwood Cinema. The opportunity arose when he invited me to propose an event for the first Bookspired Film Festival taking place as part of the world famous Wigtown Book Festival.

Thinking about films that might chime in with the literary connections of Wigtown and its environs, I had previously come across a film called ANGELOU ON BURNS made in 1996 which originally screened on BBC television then shown widely at international film festivals. 

Having heard Dr Maya Angelou say she admired the work of Robert Burns, Scottish director Elly Taylor wrote to Dr Angelou inviting her to Scotland, to Burns’ landscape in Ayrshire. The resulting film is an incredible insight into the unusual pairing of two of the greatest writers and thinkers. Dr Angelou narrates the film and shares with us the significant human bond between the race and gender battles she lived through in the Deep South and those she identifies with in Burns’ words and songs.  

One of the joys of my job is tracking down the directors and sometimes subjects of archive films. I contacted Elly Taylor who is still based in Glasgow to ask her permission to screen the film which she generously gave as well as taking up my invitation to be part of the post-screening blether in Wigtown.  I also knew one of the film’s Burns experts so invited international Burns scholar Dr Valentina Bold to participate.  

I also wanted to reflect that passionate and deep connection Dr Angelou so powerfully passes on to my generation of creative women. Through the Scottish BAME Writers Network, I was recommended to contact Edinburgh-based poet Yemurai Chaza whose wide range of inspirations include Angelou and Burns. Yemurai was wonderful in taking up my invitation to join us in Wigtown, writing a new piece which she debuted at the screening, as well as running a brilliant poetry workshop with secondary school pupils in nearby Douglas-Ewart High School in Newton Stewart.

IMAGE: Taylored Productions Ltd.

Feature in The Times about the event