Publications
Subjects & Sequences
A Margaret Tait Reader
Peter Todd and Benjamin Cook (eds.)
2004
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Subjects and Sequences gathers together essays on Orcadian film-poet Margaret Tait’s work, interviews, reprints of key poems, a story and texts as well as detailed filmography, chronology, bibliography and resources. Full colour throughout with contributions from Ali Smith, Gareth Evans, Lucy Reynolds, David Curtis, Ute Aurand, Sarah Wood, Janet McBain and Alan Russell.
Between Categories
The Films of Margaret Tait: Portraits, Poetry, Sound and Place
Sarah Neely
2016
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This book aims to address the lack of sustained attention given to Tait’s large body of work, offering a contextualisation of Tait’s films within a general consideration of Scottish cinema and artists’ moving image. Furthermore, the book’s grounding in detailed archival research offers new insights into Scotland (and Britain) in the twentieth century, relating to a diverse range of subjects and key figures, such as John Grierson, Forsyth Hardy, Hugh MacDiarmid, Lindsay Anderson and Michael Powell.
Margaret Tait
Poems, Stories, and Writings
Sarah Neely (ed.)
2012
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Sarah Neely, Lecturer in Film at the University of Stirling, draws on Tait’s three poetry collections, her book of short stories, her magazine articles and unpublished notebooks to make available for the first time a collection of the full range of Tait’s writing. Her introduction discusses Tait as filmmaker and writer in the context of mid-twentieth-century Scottish culture, and a comprehensive list of bibliographic and film resources provides an indispensible guide for further exploration.
Subjects and Sequences
Margaret Tait
1960
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Subjects and Sequences is one of Margaret Tait’s self-published poetry books. This is a rare, out-of-print ‘interim edition’. The book collects dozens of Tait’s poems, spanning the 1950s, a few of which first appeared in The Orkney Herald and The Voice of Scotland.
You can listen to recordings of Tait reading from this collection here.
The Hen and the Bees
Margaret Tait
1960
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The Hen and the Bees is one of Margaret Tait’s self-published poetry books. This is a rare, out-of-print “interim edition”. The book collects some of Tait’s poems, a few of which first appeared in The Orkney Herald and The Voice of Scotland. Cover by Robin Philipson.
You can listen to recordings of Tait reading from this collection here.
Origins and Elements
Margaret Tait
1959
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Origins and Elements is one of Margaret Tait’s self-published poetry books. This is a rare, out-of-print “interim edition”. Most of these poems were written during the winter of January, February, March 1958. A few of them first appeared in The Voice of Scotland. The cover design is by Peter Hollander.
You can listen to recordings of Tait reading from this collection here.
Lane Furniture
Margaret Tait
1956
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Lane Furniture is Margaret Tait’s only published book of fiction. The book contains six short stories, all written in 1956: ‘The Incomers’, ‘Sixteen Frames Per Second’, ‘The Sun and the Moon’, ‘Nice Little Home of a Big Steel Man’, ‘Out of Touch’ and ‘The Headless Monster’.