Creative Scotland, Jenny Lindsay and Alice Tarbuck - cracking Scotsman column

[Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g]

As re-tweeted by JKR. Artists should be demanding the closure of Creative Scotland (scotsman.com) There is an archived copy, apparently, but I was able to read the whole thing despite not being a subscriber.

The gist is that Jenny Lindsay, a performance poet, criticised the behaviour of a trans-identified male five years ago for abusing lesbians at Pride, and found herself hounded out of Scottish cultural life as a result. It is alleged that the part-time literature officer at Creative Scotland, Dr Alice Tarbuck, has recently been found to have phoned a bookshop telling them they shouldn't stock JL's new book Hounded, which is about women being hounded out of public life for having gender critical views. Creative Scotland agrees this happened, and shouldn't have happened, but has not sacked Tarbuck.

The organisation went through a “disciplinary” procedure and allowed Tarbuck to remain in post. Not only that, it was agreed she would not deal with “gender critical” writers to avoid a “conflict of interest”. That is deranged. Tarbuck is a living, breathing conflict of interest. Not only was she protected, her bosses made life more comfortable for her, removing from her the triggering duty of reading and thinking about things that made her unhappy, and allowing her to stay, a malevolent presence, a schoolyard bully given legitimacy, and then protected, by cowardly and amoral philistines.

That gives you a flavour. It's absolutely coruscating stuff. Good.

Crikey that Euan McColm chap doesn't pull any punches, does he? I don't exactly know the meaning of coruscating, OP, but now if I was asked to define 'coruscating', I'd just post a link to this article and say 'This'.

It's not often you see somebody say of a poet that they are not a poet and what they write is not poetry - a brave call, as poetry appreciation is so subjective.
But gloriously done:
Dr Alice Tarbuck describes herself as a poet in much the same way as I might describe myself as a sprinter if I caught the 66 before it pulled away from the bus stop by the chippy....
The little work she has had published lacks rhythm, originality and, crucially, profundity. It’s squiggly nonsense for people who want the physical feeling of reading poetry without the associated complicated emotions.

I wonder what response the article will get, and I wonder if the response would be different if it had been written by a GC woman.

Thank you so much for posting it, I enjoyed every opinionated word of it, and will treasure and re-use 'Squiggly nonsense'

To be perfectly frank, I'm having a crisis of confidence about coruscating now and will have to go off and check that it does mean what I thought it did. [short pause for googling]

Ooh. It does mean what I thought it meant, but only because I'm one of the growing number of confused people who thought it meant scathing or excoriating and who have caused the OED to add this as a new meaning very recently indeed. A close call. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/sep/10/misusing-words-can-change-their-dictionary-definitions-coruscating

PS I liked the bit you quoted enormously. Also this bit:

Tarbuck, a quango employee whose sole responsibility is the nurturing and support of writers, abused her position to try to harm the career of a writer. Not only that, her behaviour was identical to that of her friends who’d terrorised the same writer back in 2019. One novelist friend asked me whether Tarbuck was stupid or sadistic, to which my reply was that she appears to be both. Perhaps this is the way in which Tarbuck, who (of course) identifies as a witch, contains multitudes.

Personal shame should see Tarbuck remove herself from the literary scene. And her behaviour should prevent any serious agent or publisher ever dealing with her. In the world of literature, Tarbuck should consider herself cancelled. And if she feels hard done by, she should promptly take the matter up with herself.

I imagine The Scotsman's in-house lawyer has had a long hard look at this and possibly had a poor night's sleep.

"The little work she has had published lacks rhythm, originality and, crucially, profundity. It’s squiggly nonsense for people who want the physical feeling of reading poetry without the associated complicated emotions." Ouch 😂

I always thought 'coruscating' could be used as a posh synonym for 'throb'.

Flashing and sparkling is the original meaning. I think most of us ignorant people who have used it to mean scathing were confusing it with excoriating, which has a few letters in common, but a different Latin root, meaning to flay.

It is really interesting how the sound of the word has contributed to its evolution in meaning. Not just because it sounds like excoriating and scathing (and perhaps caustic), but because it sounds intrinsically harsh, cutting, destructive. It is the hard c, predominantly, that achieves this effect, particularly in conjunction with the softer swishier sounds that are also present in both words.
In "excoriating" the hard c comes second, so that the word sounds like a knife that enters through a mass of soft tissue and then splinters bone. In 'coruscating' the hard c comes first, smashing through a hard shell and mincing the soft stuff within

It's always made me think of corrugated, like a sine wave, which probably explains why I think of it as 'throb'.

Just going to check the etymology of corrugate. Then I'll try to post something in relation to the actual article. Ngl though I love digressions.

My word

i enjoyed that

i imagine Dr Alice Tarbuck feels a little differently

Marvellous article, thanks @Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g

Cracking article OP. Euan McColm is also worth a follow on Twitter.

Just read a piece of the poetry (Dr Tarbuck has a website, I'm not linking because MN might decide it's getting too personal and take down the thread). Lots of the links to the work seem to be broken. I got one prose poem about Elvis, a short poem read out on a YouTube and one that I'm not sure was a poem, it might have been a transcript of an interview with a man who spoke in word salad. The Elvis poem would have been improved if the photos that inspired it had been put at the beginning and then the poem itself deleted. The YouTube was short and hard to hear, so that was good. I think my favourites were the ones with the broken links.

The DM (obligatory boo, hiss!) published an article on Creative Scotland a couple of days ago

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13797829/Wokery-witchcraft-hard-core-porn-Scotlands-96million-arts-quango-lost-plot.html

It's a good read. Apparently Jenny Lindsay had put, in writing, that she was happy with the disciplinary action CS had taken. Which was news to her.

'Corrugated' comes from the Latin 'ruga', wrinkled, so no connection to coruscate 😢

Does anyone know anything about the inciting incident, the male author who called for lesbians at Pride to be assaulted? Imo he should have had his collar felt or been referred to Prevent.

I wonder if Jenny Lindsay has grounds to sue.

I particularly liked "the bestupiding effects of trans ideology" I will be adding "bestupiding" to my frequently used non-words along with embiggen and cromulent.

is it just me or does it seem to others that the tone of these "trans activists are fucking bonkers" articles becoming less mealy mouthed in pointing out the lunacy? Cannot imagine that being published even two years ago.

Thank you for link.

That was a great read. 🥳🤣🤣🤣🤣

Agreed! I am so looking forward to the next Scottish Government elections. I have high hopes that the SNP will be wiped out, which has to slightly increase the chances of sanity returning. I was staying with my Mum last week and amused to see that in a forthcoming council by-election for her area there are many candidates but nobody from the SNP. The candidate they selected stood down just before the deadline for 'personal reasons' and no one else could be persuaded to step in, I suppose. It's just possible that the SNP know that in this constituency in particular they would be lucky to get their votes into double figures, given the horrific problems with the ferry over the last couple of years.

I cannot Link to it, but if you want a good laugh, check out a clip doing the rounds on X-its a trans nutter at the SNP conference being, er, entertaining.

Yes, I saw that. Clip is here: https://x.com/historywoman/status/1830261731404460442

Link is in here. I thought it might be a parody at first but it seems not. Extraordinary. Transitioned during lockdown, apparently.

I had no idea I had started a whole thing about the meaning of coruscating, Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g . It is one of those words that I've heard, but never used because I was a bit vague about it, but I didn't doubt that you were 100% right in your use of it.

“coruscāre”; to flash or vibrate' Well well well. Every day a school day on FWR
The idea that people 'misusing' words can actually change their dictionary definition is deeply disturbing to me - I'm a pedant, can't help myself.

Does that mean than one of these days the dictionary will say that disinterested means uninterested... sorry I must go an lie down in a darkened room - the very thought..😱

[that's self-parody BTW - I know that irony doesn't always come across onscreen!]

Thanks for the post, OP👏

Thank you for posting - very illuminating, and a good reminder to look out for Jenny Lindsay's book.

I have a touch of synesthesia which is sometimes useful with words I'm not certain of.
Coruscating feels like the scrape of a scratchy sea shell on sun exposed skin. Pretty close I think.

Loved the article. Thank you for sharing.

I think it probably will, Marie. The OED and other lexicographers seem to be pretty clear that they're recording how people use the language, not laying down rules on what words should mean. Uninterested/disinterested is a useful distinction but less and less understood and observed.

It will be a dark day when they eventually have to record 'would of' and similar constructions as alternative but standard usage to 'would have' and so forth.

'Does anyone know anything about the inciting incident, the male author who called for lesbians at Pride to be assaulted? Imo he should have had his collar felt or been referred to Prevent.'

I think that will be 'Cathy Brennan', who attempted to assault Julie Bindel:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/3602996-Edinburghs-The-Skinny-magazine-publishes-defence-of-fuck-up-terfs-tweet

More background on Jenny Lindsay's hounding:

https://www.thedarkhorsemagazine.com/anatomy-of-a-hounding-lindsay

https://www.scotsman.com/news/scottish-news/feminist-speaker-julie-bindel-attacked-by-transgender-person-at-edinburgh-university-after-talk-545841