The Armchair Monologues
Michael Pedersen
Animated by Ben Woodcock
In 2022, the Alasdair Gray Archive, in partnership with Creative Writing at the University of Strathclyde, commissioned the writer and poet Michael Pedersen to creatively respond to their collection. He wrote this poem, which was published in Gutter #28, responding to Gray’s famous green armchair. Michael’s poem was then interpreted by Ben Woodcock, a student at the Glasgow School of Art. These layers of creative response reflect Gray’s own approach to making. Throughout his working life, Gray sought to celebrate and declare his influences, seeing them as an integral part of all making. The Alasdair Gray Archive now encourages others to respond to Gray’s work, taking inspiration from it, but making new work of their own.
The Armchair Monologues
The writer sits here, sometimes, though mainly
it's the bums of visitants–crisps crunching
tongue-flappers–the odd dog with
Its belly full of sun. Cheek of them,
leaving litter braising in my fissures, the body's
party-bag of skin shavings, crushed
eyelashes, & the rest. To those gawking
at my tatty bits, smirking sanctimoniously,
I tell it straight: I took a bit
of all of them. A tad tatterdemalion for it, sure,
but anatomically sound: flush walnut,
emerald velvet, floral propellors & gold
studs–hammered home like rivets in a ship.
I am an island, a rock, a pucker fainting
couch. YesYes, the tear in my stocking,
but you're dead wrong, it's not
early on-set entropy, it's sweeter than that
–same as when words liquify to laughter.
A piece of advice, if you ask him
& he doesn't rejoinder, don't repeat
the damn question. He heard you fine–
it's not a shun, just not to his, albeit queer,
taste. One final musing
from this seventies kid, naebody's bairn,
found begging by the roadside:
when possible, do simple things
to make other's happy, even when it's easier
not to–it helps the crowded hearted ones
in their great uncluttering. That way when,
bumfuzzled or weary pegged, they come
to rest here, I can feel a heat in them,
the sound of distance underfoot
peacefully dissolve.
Michael Pedersen is a Scottish poet and author, whose most recent collection, The Cat Prince & Other Poems won Best Poetry Book at the 2023 Books are My Bag Readers Awards. He is currently Writer in Residence at The University of Edinburgh.
Benjamin Woodcock is a 4th Year student at the Glasgow School of Art who specialises in illustration.