Eggplant.place

19d

The Scottish Novel – book launch & seminar
5 Sept, Edinburgh – free, ticketed

This seminar presents papers by contributors to The International Companion to the Scottish Novel (ed. Cairns Craig) with a focus on literature from the 20th & 21st centuries

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-scottish-novel-tickets-1541851020909

#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #novels

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19d

Ian Hamilton Finlay’s revolutionary instincts

“This is a centenary for an agoraphobic poet once notorious for maintaining a small militia of supporters who vandalised the office of the Evening Standard’s art critic Brian Sewell; an artist who employed the help of collaborator Jessie McGuffie to ‘defend’ his project by punching the literary editor of the Scotsman in 1962.”

@litstudies

https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/culture/art/70812/ian-hamilton-finlays-revolutionary-instincts

#Scottish #literature #poetry #concretepoetry #20thcentury #IanHamiltonFinlay

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14d

Novelist, historian, & politician John Buchan (1875–1940) – from son of the manse to Governor-General of Canada – was born #OTD, 26 Aug
A 🎂 🧵

Nick Rankin examines Buchan’s literary legacy in THE BUCHAN TRADITION – currently available on BBC Sounds

1/8

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05qjq6h

#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #JohnBuchan

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8d

A birthday 🧵 for Violet Jacob (1863–1946) – poet, novelist, short story writer, & key figure in the 20th-century Scottish renaissance & Scots language revival – born #OTD, 1 September

1/8

https://www.scottishwomenwritersontheweb.net/writers-a-to-z/violet-jacob

#Scottish #literature #Scots #Scotslanguage #19thCentury #20thcentury #WomenWriters #VioletJacob

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2d

The relentless brilliance of Muriel Spark

“I am not here to say that all a career in letters requires is tenacity and a can-do attitude, but rather that knowing the challenges Spark overcame makes me doubly grateful for her.’

Lauren J. Joseph reflects on a quality many writers have to develop – the “sheer bloody-mindedness” Spark had in spades.

https://www.rlf.org.uk/posts/the-relentless-brilliance-of-muriel-spark/

#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #womenwriters #MurielSpark #writing

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21h

“SANGSCHAW… gave other writers permission to push the boundaries of Scots as a language of literature, capable of expressing deep thought and not just for light comedy or mawkish whimsy”

Celebrating the 100th anniversary of Hugh MacDiarmid’s first book

https://www.thenational.scot/culture/25436484.100-year-tribute-hugh-macdiarmid-marking-crucial-work/

#Scottish #literature #poetry #Scots #Scotslanguage #20thcentury #MacDiarmid #HughMacDiarmid

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1y

A birthday 🧵 for Violet Jacob (1863–1946) – poet, novelist, short story writer, & key figure in the 20th-century Scottish renaissance & #Scots language revival – born #OTD, 1 September

#Scottish #literature #Scotslanguage #19thCentury #20thcentury #WomenWriters
1/7
https://www.scottishwomenwritersontheweb.net/writers-a-to-z/violet-jacob

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101d

Isobel Wylie Hutchison (1889–1982)—author, poet, film-maker, botanist, #arctic explorer—was born #OTD, 30 May. A 🎂 🧵

WalkHighlands shares an extract from PEAK BEYOND PEAK, describing how she tackled the Corrieyairack Pass between the #Cairngorms & Loch Ness

1/4

https://www.walkhighlands.co.uk/news/peak-beyond-peak-the-unpublished-scottish-journeys-of-isobel-wylie-hutchison/

#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #womenwriters #hillwalking #mountaineering

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101d

When you were people
We could have loved you,
Found out your names
And brought you presents…

—“Poem for Innocent Victims of War” by AC Jacobs (1937–1994) – born #OTD, 30 May

Published in NAMELESS COUNTRY: Selected Poems (Carcanet, 2018)

A 🎂 🧵

1/6

https://www.carcanet.co.uk/9781784106751/nameless-country/

#Scottish #literature #poetry #Jewish #diaspora #20thcentury #warpoetry

Poem for Innocent Victims of War
A. C. Jacobs

You did not die for me
Or love or desperation.
No-one chipped your names
On plaques on peaceful blocks of stone.
You are just the useless dead
Who mock our daily sin of passion,
Climb through our heads in cold, slow silence.

When you were people
We could have loved you,
Found out your names
And brought you presents.
We could have walked around with your response.

Or even if you chose to die
We might have understood your longing
And written down your utmost fear.

Now, though, you have got beyond our feelings,
And we can never almost follow
To learn your last shared and perfect secret.

ALT

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100d

Twentieth-Century Radical Scottish Gaelic Magazines and Contacts with Wales

A recording of Dr Petra Johana Poncarová’s talk, given on 22 May at the Centre for Advanced Welsh Celtic Studies

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wiKkgWYyhW8

#Scottish #literature #magazines #20thcentury #Gaelic #Gaidhlig #Wales #Welsh #CelticStudies

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97d

“Of aal the fish there iss in the sea,” said Para Handy, “nothing bates the herrin’; it’s a providence they’re plentiful and them so cheap!”

Neil Munro (1863–1930) – journalist, novelist, short-story writer, & poet – was born #OTD, 3 June. Rigby’s Encyclopaedia of Herring discusses Munro’s PARA HANDY stories, as well as giving the full text of the tale “The Herring – A Gossip”

1/4

https://www.herripedia.com/para-handy/

#Scottish #literature #humour #shortstory #herring #19thcentury #20thcentury

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97d

Archie Hind (1928–2008), author of THE DEAR GREEN PLACE (1966), was born #OTD, 3 June

“The only other 20th-century novel I know that places a writer’s struggle in an equally well-imagined city is Nabokov’s THE GIFT”
—Alasdair Gray

https://www.scotswhayhae.com/post/with-hind-s-sight-a-review-of-archie-hind-s-the-dear-green-place

#Scottish #literature #20thCentury #novel #Glasgow

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96d

Gaelic & Scots: Cultural Connections & Inspirations in the 20th Century

Talks form the FRLSU’s May 6 webinar are now online, looking at

▶️ George Campbell Hay | Deòrsa Mac Iain Dheòrsa
▶️ William Neill | Uilleam Nèill
▶️ Douglas Young
▶️ translations between Gaelic & Scots
▶️ Derick Thomson | Ruaraidh MacThòmais & GAIRM

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvLWE-AoQoGZ7NF6Vt2oYlKn74u0_TKsW

#Scottish #literature #Gaelic #Gaidhlig #Scots #Scotslanguage #translation #minoritylanguages #20thcentury

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107d

What Scotsman was caught up in a civil war before the age of twenty? Wrote a book that became the inspiration for an Oscar-winning film? Met a runaway teenager in Paris and married her against the wishes of his family? Lost his ranch to raiding Apaches?

Buckle up – it’s going to be a long, wild 🧵 …

1/18

#Scottish #literature #19thcentury #20thcentury #Victorian #Edwardian

A still from THE MISSION (1986). Robert De Niro, with a black beard and swept-back dark hair, stands in a haze of smoke in a jungle scene. He is dressed in a black shirt, and is holding a rapier out in front of him in his right hand. His left is on his hip, in a fencer's fighting stance. He looks unsmilingly along the length of his sword to whatever faces him.

ALT

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107d

“I don’t write about people that are nice people. They’ve got to be sinners, with a wee touch of goodness here and there, you know.”

Giving “people like that” a voice: a conversation with Agnes Owens (1926–2014) – born #OTD, 24 May
A 🎂 🧵

1/4

https://journals.openedition.org/etudesecossaises/89?lang=en

#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #womenwriters #WorkingClass

Alt text

Book cover People Like That Agnes Owens Cover illustration shows ten drawings by Alasdair Gray of ten various people, young and old, who could be seen around the west of Scotland in the 1980s

ALT

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94d

Ye think thon wes the end?
Yon meetin in the wuids
When Thracian Orpheus heard the drum, the cries,
The whud o the bacchantes’ thrangan feet…

—“Orpheus”, by Tom Scott (1918–1995), born #OTD, 6 June
Published in A KIST O SKINKLAN THINGS

1/3

https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/volumes/a-kist-o-skinlan-things/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Scots #Scotslanguage #20thcentury #Mythology #GreekMythology

Tom Scott
Orpheus

Ye think thon wes the end?
Yon meetin in the wuids
When Thracian Orpheus heard the drum, the cries,
The whud o the bacchantes’ thrangan feet
And, seik in saul,
Mad to be jyned for aye to his Eurydikee,
Strung his harp
And gaed to meet them wi a sang.
Ye think thon wes the end?

Na. Eftir the thrang breeled on, red
Fingert, bluidie-mawed, the riven limbs
Quiveran aye amang the mairtyred gress,
There wes a lull
And throu it syne a roun
And syne as muckle’s a moan
And syne a voice,
Yon voice o his
That quietit the forest and its fowk,
That reconcilit lion and lamb,
Ordert the rain,
Spoke frae the grund
And threept in the greitan tree
‘Euridikee! Euridikee!’

And at the name
A ferlie thing wes duin.
Thir broken bits o bodie, bits o bane,
Brisket, gash, airm and droukit hair
Cam thegither as gin some will
Mair nor the merely real
Had wrocht on them.
And on yon slauchtert grund was formed
Orpheus anew,
Orpheus the singer, Orpheus the makar,
Orpheus cleansed o the auld despair.
And by the halie tree
In the leaman licht o the wuid,
Squired by a houlet, a hawk and a doo,
Wes his Euridikee.

They say he made a new sang,
A nobler nor the auld,
And sings it aye in the great haa o the warld.

They say it will nevir end.

ALT

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82d

Pink sand and sandpipers pink in the setting
sun and pink granite and the pink swirl
of green waves…

—“Camas Tuath”, by poet, playwright & novelist Tom Buchan (1931–1995) – born #OTD, 19 June

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/camas-tuath/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #20thcentury

Camas Tuath
Tom Buchan

Pink sand and sandpipers pink in the setting
sun and pink granite and the pink swirl
of green waves: no mediterranean relics
here, no ruined amphitheatres, no amphorae,

no half-submerged statuary – only the
children’s wet sand-pies and a standing
stone, a druidic lingam standing for nothing
anyone knows about nowadays, a stony

finger, green with years, specific of an idea
which was no doubt straight, strong and complex
once, but is now obliterated by the hysterical
cries of children and the birds’ pink squealing.

ALT

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64d

John Buchan, Master Storyteller – with Ursula Buchan
5 September, Dunfermline – tickets £8.03

Ursula Buchan, John Buchan’s granddaughter & biographer, marks the 150th anniversary of one of the most influential Scottish novelists of the 20th century with an in-depth examination of his literary accomplishments

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/outwith-writing-john-buchan-master-storyteller-with-ursula-buchan-tickets-1366141067709

#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #JohnBuchan #novelist

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63d

“Annie S. Swan both requires revaluation through her own biography & calls into question easy valorisations of ‘danger’ as expressed in terms of explicit challenge & radicalism. The extent of her appeal & influence demands a more nuanced analysis of the politics of emotion & the gendering of reader response”

—Prof Glenda Norquay on Annie S. Swan (1859–1943) – born #OTD, 8 July

@litstudies

1/3

https://dangerouswomenproject.org/2016/09/08/annie-shepherd-swan/

#Scottish #literature #19thcentury #20thcentury #romance #womenwriters

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85d

The Far Side of Lorna Moon

“I’m always either convinced that nobody can write as I can – or that I’m the world’s louseyest writer.”

Lorna Moon (1886–1930) was born #OTD, 16 June, as Nora Helen Wilson Low, in Strichen. Dr Glenda Norquay writes about her journey from Aberdeenshire to Hollywood

1/4

https://asls.org.uk/the-far-side-of-lorna-moon/

#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #owmenwriters #screenwriting #Hollywood #HollywoodHistory #film #cinema #Aberdeenshire

MGM publicity portrait of Lorna Moon (1926)
Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences / Academy Film Archive

A black-and-white photograph of a dark-haired, dark-eyed young woman, wearing a sleeveless dress which leaves here arms and shoulders bare. Her hair is cut in a 1920s bob. She has her left side turned towards us, and she is looking over her shoulder at the camera.

ALT

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35d

But, John, have you seen the world, said he,
Trains and tramcars and sixty-seaters,
Cities in lands across the sea –
Giotto’s tower and the dome of St Peter’s?

—Robert Rendell, “Angle of Vision”
from The Edinburgh Book of Twentieth-Century Scottish Poetry (Edinbrugh University Press, 2005)

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #20thcentury

Angle of Vision
Robert Rendall

But, John, have you seen the world, said he,
Trains and tramcars and sixty-seaters,
Cities in lands across the sea –
Giotto’s tower and the dome of St Peter’s?

No, but I’ve seen the arc of the earth,
From the Birsay shore, like the edge of a planet,
And the lifeboat plunge through the Pentland Firth
To a cosmic tide with the men that man it.

ALT

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84d

Brown burn water dropping
Between the grey stones,
The lapse and the murmur,
The bright overtones
Of cuckoo and curlew…

—Dorothy Margaret Paulin (1904–1982)
from Springtime by Loch Ken, & other poems (J.H. Maxwell Ltd., 1963)

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/galloway-burn-june/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Galloway #20thcentury #Womenwriters

A Galloway Burn in June
Dorothy Margaret Paulin

Brown burn water dropping
Between the grey stones,
The lapse and the murmur,
The bright overtones
Of cuckoo and curlew
And faraway trill
Of a lark; great blue shadows
Stride over the hill:
Breeze and bird-call are blended
With murmur of bees;
Sun and wind stroke the grasses
And finger the trees.
Is it sunlight or greenlight?
This shimmer of leaves;
Is it seeing or dreaming,
The dapple that weaves
Across the brown water
That murmurs and spills
Through the grey stones forever
Among the green hills?

ALT

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78d

It is a land of wee
hard men and all I
am wanted for is to
stand and cheer…

Prof Alan Riach considers the life & work of the poet & playwright Joan Ure (1918–1978) – born #OTD, 22 June

1/6

https://www.thenational.scot/news/17455955.joan-ure-the-scots-poet-and-playwright-who-set-a-precedent/

#Scottish #literature #poetry #poet #drama #playwright #20thcentury #womenwriters

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50d

Happy Glasgow Fair Monday!

“…on one occasion the Highland Queen was berthed by the master and a boy, the rest of the crew being quite incapable…”

Steamships, “steaming”, drunkenness & “smùid” – Donald Meek on going doon the watter, & early Scottish booze-cruising

https://meekwrite.blogspot.com/2013/04/maritime-and-linguistic-studies.html

#Scottish #Scotland #Scots #Scotslanguage #Gaelic #Gaidhlig #steaming #GlasgowFair #FairMonday #culturalstudies #19thcentury #20thcentury #alcohol #steamboat

A late 19th-century postcard. The printed text reads:

Mottoes for those going
“Doon the Watter”

If it's losing the boat,
or losing your drink—
lose the boat.

The image shows a colour illustration of a moustachio'd young man, standing at a bar, wearing a boater hat at a rakish angle, a dark green jacket, a yellow-and-white striped waistcoat and a red bow tie. He has one hand in his pocket as he looks over his shoulder, out of the door of the bar to see, in the distance, a steamship leaving the harbour. He raises a full pint mug to toast its departure.

ALT

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53d

[To Sheila Lanyon, on the Flyleaf of a Book]
W. S. Graham

Inscribed by the author on the flyleaf of a copy of THE WHITE THRESHOLD belonging to Sheila Lanyon, widow of the late painter Peter Lanyon. The poem is dated June 18, 1966 and the “second summer” referred to is the second since Peter’s death, after a gliding accident, on August 31, 1964.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/145185/to-sheila-lanyon-on-the-flyleaf-of-a-book

#Scottish #literature #poetry #20thcentury #WSGraham

[To Sheila Lanyon, on the Flyleaf of a Book]
by W. S. Graham

Sheila, we speak here on the fly
Leaf of a book which was myself
A good few graves ago.
Now I am maintained by other
Words for better or for worse
To whisper my hello.

The seasons turn. Threshold on thresh
Hold forms continually and falls
Under grief’s lonely hammer.
What did you say? I thought between
These fly leaf words I heard you speak
Out of your Second Summer.

The summer chimes and turns its blue
Dragon-flying eyes to see
We two are not afraid.
Hello, Sheila, I can hear
Your breath on the other side of the word
And see you turn your head.

ALT

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