{"id":367,"date":"2025-05-12T09:48:31","date_gmt":"2025-05-12T09:48:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/estheringlis\/?p=367"},"modified":"2025-05-12T09:48:31","modified_gmt":"2025-05-12T09:48:31","slug":"an-afternoon-with-esther-inglis-event-summary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/estheringlis\/2025\/05\/12\/an-afternoon-with-esther-inglis-event-summary\/","title":{"rendered":"An Afternoon with Esther Inglis: Event Summary"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post was written by Jaycee Streeter, Outreach and Communications Intern for the Esther Inglis Project. Jaycee is a History MSc student at the University, with research interests in early modern Scottish literary and religious history.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

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Event poster for An Afternoon with Esther Inglis (c. 1570-1624)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On Saturday, April 26<\/span>th<\/span>, St. Cecilia\u2019s Hall in Edinburgh hosted \u201cAn Afternoon with Esther Inglis (c. 1570-1624)\u201d, marking the end of the Esther Inglis 2024 Project, coordinated by Anna-Nadine Pike and Jaycee Streeter. The project has been <\/span>running at Edinburgh University Library for the last eighteen months, marking 400 years since Esther Inglis death through new research, an online exhibition titled \u201cRewriting the Script\u201d, and a program designed to bring Esther Inglis story to wider audiences in Edinburgh and beyond. That program included concerts, an international colloquium, a physical exhibition in the Centre for Research Collections, and now, a grand finale with this final public event.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The event aimed to bring Inglis, with her work and context, to the public through a variety of forms\u2014a panel discussion, poetry performance, and musical performance\u2014and a mix of media both contemporary to Inglis and modern but inspired by her.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The panel featured two Esther Inglis experts, Anna-Nadine Pike and Jamie Reid-Baxter, as well as two acclaimed authors who have featured Inglis in their works, Sara Sheridan and Gerda Stevenson. Their discussion was extensive and varied, touching on Inglis\u2019 context in Edinburgh, how we can better tell the stories of Scottish women in this period, their research processes and how they manage\/utilize silence in the archives, and the role we can play in commemorating women today.\u00a0The audience was able to ask questions of the panel, and were curious to know more about Esther Inglis and her story.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Esther Inglis, Octonaries upon the vanitie and inconstancie of the world, 1607.\u200b Washington, DC: Folger Shakespeare Library, V.a.92<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Then, Gerda Stevenson and Jamie Reid-Baxter brought poetry to life with readings from Inglis\u2019 manuscripts, words written by Inglis herself, and contemporary poetry written praising Inglis and her skills. Reciting in French, English, and Scots, their performance brought the audience closer to Inglis\u2019 life and work.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This was followed by a modern composition, Gerda Stevenson\u2019s own \u201cNine Haiku for Esther Inglis\u201d which is featured in her poetry collection, \u201cQUINES: Poems in tribute to women of Scotland.\u201d She discussed her inspiration for the poem and the emotional connection she felt with Inglis, and the other women featured in the collection.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Then, the White Rose Ensemble took the stage. <\/span><\/span>The Ensemble, founded in 2017 by soprano Sally Carr and <\/span>clarinetist<\/span> Calum Robertson, is an Edinburgh-based duo known for their innovative chamber music rooted in Scottish and contemporary traditions. They were joined by pianist Ailsa Aitkenhead. Together, they played psalms <\/span>featured in Inglis\u2019 manuscripts<\/span> and <\/span>two songs written by contemporary Scottish women, <\/span>showing the audience the music that Inglis would have engage<\/span>d<\/span> with in her lifetime.\u00a0<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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The White Rose Ensemble<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The event concluded with a modern composition by Sheena Phillips, set to the text of Gerda Stevenson\u2019s \u201cNine Haiku for Esther Inglis,\u201d which Phillips describes as, \u201c<\/span>marvellous vignettes of key aspects of Esther\u2019s life and work, and full of musical possibilities. The musical setting of the haiku deliberately echoes aspects of Esther\u2019s work.\u201d\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This blending of Inglis\u2019 work and work contemporary to her and modern art inspired by it embodies the goal of this event, and in a greater sense, the whole Esther Inglis Project. If the panel posed the question, \u201cHow can we commemorate women like Esther Inglis today,\u201d then the rest of the program gave a resounding answer: Celebrate them, remember them and speak about them, and continue to let their stories inspire future generations through art and memory.\u00a0<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Sally Carr, Calum Robertson, Anna-Nadine Pike, Ailsa Aitkenhead, Gerda Stevenson, and Jamie Reid Baxter<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

…<\/strong><\/p>\n

On a personal note, being the Outreach and Communications Intern for this Project has been not only an honor, but a joy. Through the events hosted this spring, I got to know a community passionate about learning and celebrating early modern Scottish women<\/span>. I learned valuable lessons about engaging with the public in matters of history (and broadened by <\/span>perspective on what \u201cthe public\u201d even means)<\/span>, and to not underestimate the amount of interest th<\/span>at exist<\/span>s in even niche historical people and events. I am immensely grateful for my time with the project.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Anna-Nadine Pike, Project Curator, and Jaycee Streeter, Outreach and Communications Intern<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post was written by Jaycee Streeter, Outreach and Communications Intern for the Esther Inglis Project. Jaycee is a History MSc student at the University, with research interests in early modern Scottish literary and religious history.\u00a0 On Saturday, April 26th, St. Cecilia\u2019s Hall in Edinburgh hosted \u201cAn Afternoon with Esther Inglis (c. 1570-1624)\u201d, marking the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/estheringlis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/estheringlis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/estheringlis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/estheringlis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/209"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/estheringlis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=367"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/estheringlis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":375,"href":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/estheringlis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367\/revisions\/375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/estheringlis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/estheringlis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/estheringlis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}