Norman Bissell
Norman Bissell (not to be confused with the Edinburgh-based poet, Norman Bissett) is a writer of many disciplines, who has published widely, far beyond the contexts in which one might expect a poet to be found.
His only poetry collection to date, Slate, Sea and Sky- A Journey from Glasgow to the Isle of Luing, 2008, is based on his life from the city of his birth to one of the slate islands off Scotland’s west coast, which he lives and works from as a writer and editor.
He credits Kenneth White with introducing him to radical thinking on cultural renewal and the environment, while he was a student of White’s at the University of Glasgow in the 1960s, taking part in meetings of the Jargon Group which White had set up. Twenty years later, he tracked White down in Brittany via the Sorbonne and established the Open World Poetics group in Glasgow in 1989 to discuss a whole range of cultural issues and to organise outdoor events and conferences, resulting in the publication of Open World magazine in the early 1990s.
This led to the founding of the Scottish Centre for Geopoetics in Edinburgh in 1995 which Tony McManus initiated and led until his death in April 2002. Since August 2002, Bissell has been the organisation’s director and has put together numerous geopoetics events, as well as editing its journal, Stravaig.
He worked as a history teacher for 17 years at Braidhurst High School in Motherwell, after studying for a Masters in philosophy and history at the University of Glasgow.
Bissell has used his poetry in collaboration with theatre, photographers and musicians, with the Tabula Rasa Dance Company and archaeologists at the Pier Arts Centre in Orkney.
His articles and reviews encompass cultural issues, literature and music, extending into the Scottish Trade Union Research Network. Recently, he has spoken out against money spent on bureaucracy in the arts and called for government support to be given to those working in creative industries during the Covid pandemic.
For more than 10 years, he has working on a feature film script about Geopoetics and the state of the environment which he is currently crowdfunding for.
A figure who features heavily in Bissell’s worldview is George Orwell, who he has written about essays and, most notably in Barnhill, a novel, 2019, an imaginary meditation on the latter years of Orwell’s life.
Read the poems
Further Information
Bissell keeps a blog, which can be read on his website
