00:00 ‘Night Pillion’: real life story behind poem. Young artist who lived near EM: they had been to see art exhibition, and EM was offered lift home on a motorbike. Exciting: attracted by him and EM’s first time on a motorbike. Last two lines express intense moment of closeness that broke shell of solitude. Solitude as negative and positive in EM’s life: always wanted a seesaw between solitude and company.

05:30 ‘A Memorial’: poem written after coming out, able to write about unattended toilets as places to meet. Jean Genet had written in prose about such unspoken aspects of human experience, but EM didn’t know of any poetry that openly talks about such things. Wanted to write about this in an obvious way, without disguise, but to make it a good poem. If poetry is important, it can write about any aspect of human experience. It’s the kind of poem that would divide people.

08:07 ‘Persuasion’ in the collection ‘Hold Hands Among the Atoms’: EM now has the choice to write open, explicit poem or more coded.

09:20 [‘Christmas Eve’]: man’s hand on knee was a clear signal, along with ‘Don’t ge’ aff tae ah ge’ aff.’ Man had been drinking, so more open, less cautious. The codes of recognition in the 1950s and 1960s might be a walk, a glance, or stopping to look in a shop window – jeweller’s shop was a favourite. Could use reference to gay writers as a code, or as in the poem about Edith Piaf [‘Je ne regrette rien’], which EM again says he sees as a gay poem.

14:01 Politically, EM has never been a great joiner of movements, but sympathetic and gave support to the people in Dixon Street (LGBT Centre). Meant a lot when the law changed: took longer in Scotland, 1980 rather than 1967: ‘13 years more to be very careful.’ In Section 2A debate in Scotland [where repeal came earlier than repeal of Section 28 in the rest of the UK], EM was deeply involved, standing up against Cardinal Winning’s views and medieval language, and contrasting him with admirable figures from gay history: ‘Section 28’ poem on Not Winning ['You are not.

Winning, I mean.’] EM as a famous figure in the LGBT movement in Scotland. Earlier Scottish poets may have been gay, but no way of knowing due to secrecy in those times: EM thinks Robert Fergusson was probably gay. Mentions Fred Urquhart as a contemporary writer of short stories, who eventually came out. There is a whole hidden history to be brought out.

21:07 EM cautiously optimistic about present freedoms, puritan backlash always possible. Hostility comes from Glasgow thinking of itself as a macho city, West of Scotland masculinity, that is upset by suggestion that men are not manly all the time. In pubs, disapproval may be shown to gay people, or refusal to serve. Contradictions attract him: a writer likes drama. Reference back to army days: in the absence of women, natural for men to take pleasure in each other’s bodies. T.E. Lawrence wrote of this: probably bisexual, like so many others. Changing meaning of queer and gay: queer earlier used with disapproval, but now used positively with queer studies; gay goes a long way back, could involve women as well as men, not necessarily sexual.