Eggplant.place

196d

Agnes Owens in the archives
23 April, National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh. Free, ticketed

2026 is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Agnes Owens (1926–2014), described by Alasdair Gray in 2003 as "the most unfairly neglected of all living Scottish authors".

Explore how her archives are being used to reappraise her legacy & secure her status as a major Scottish literary figure.

https://www.nls.uk/whats-on/agnes-owens-in-the-archives/

#Scottish #literature #womenwriters #AgnesOwens #workingclass #20thcentury #archives

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114d

“The similarities between Spark & Schiaparelli are striking: both were witty, satirical. Both were artists depicting female desire & aspiration with a critical eye”

—via @literaryhub – Lilian Pizzichini looks for a dress from Muriel Spark’s THE GIRLS OF SLENDER MEANS

https://lithub.com/sciaparelli-and-spark-on-the-fashion-of-the-girls-of-slender-means/

#Scottish #literature #womenwriters #20thcentury #fashion #MurielSpark #Schiaparelli

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165d

Life, letters & low tide in Shetland: Valda and MacDiarmid

“Valda is clearly the more practical of the two. It would become apparent that without her at the helm, they were doomed.”

Shetland offered Hugh MacDiarmid solitude, but it was his wife Valda Trevlyn Grieve who kept life steady. Dr Colin McIlroy of the National Library of Scotland examines the letters of Hugh MacDiarmid & Valda Trevlyn Grieve

https://www.nls.uk/collections/stories/literature-and-poetry/valda-grieve-and-hugh-macdiarmid/

#Scottish #literature #poetry #modernism #20thcentury #Shetland

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177d

“Joyce considered how the ‘sister’ nations Ireland & Scotland might be linked through similar philosophical traditions, MacDiarmid saw modern Irish cultural & political developments as a source of inspiration for Scotland, & Heaney turned to the Buile Suibhne story as a way of stressing cultural commonalities”

Late Celticism in Irish & Scottish literature: binding ties

@litstudies

https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/2023/06/14/late-celticism-in-irish-and-scottish-literature-binding-ties/

#Scotland #Ireland #Scottish #Irish #literature #culture #CelticStudies #20thcentury

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120d

Josephine Tey – The Daughter of Time

Josephine Tey’s 1951 novel THE DAUGHTER OF TIME is considered by many to be one of the greatest works of crime fiction ever. The Lost Ladies of Lit podcast speaks to Tey’s biographer, Jennifer Morag Henderson, about the double life that allowed Tey to rocket to stardom while also flying under the radar in her home town of Inverness

@bookstodon

https://www.lostladiesoflit.com/podcast/josephine-tey-the-daughter-of-time-with-jennifer-morag-henderson

#Scottish #literature #CrimeFiction #20thcentury #womenwriters #podcast #Inverness

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191d

“I can’t begin to convey to you the power of Lindsay’s vision; I found it overwhelming when I first read the book, thirty years ago, & I’ve seldom seen its equal outside Blake.”
—Philip Pullman

David Lindsay (1876–1945) was born #OTD, 3 March – author of A VOYAGE TO ARCTURUS & other weird works

A 🎂 🧵

@bookstodon

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#Scottish #literature #ScienceFiction #fantasy #metaphysics #20thCentury #cultfiction

A battered paperback book cover, spread out to show front, back, and spine. The book title is A VOYAGE TO ARCTURUS, by David Lindsay. A puff quote reads, “One of the most brilliant flights of pure fantasy ever recorded” – London Times.

The cover shows a dark purple-black cliff-face. In front of it, from the back to the front cover, a slender dragonish creature coils. It has multiple green wings, and is covered in multi-hued scales: blue and blue-green on top, and yellow and orange beneath. Two slim, androgynous figures are mounted on the dragon's back. Both are dressed in loose robes. The leading figure sits upright, holding reins and directing the dragon; they are wearing a large, flowing red headdress. The figure behind is darker, with their arms wrapped around the leading figure's chest, and their head resting on the other's shoulder.

ALT

Edited 191d ago

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190d

The Worm Queen Turns: Helen Adam (1909–93)
From Dundee Manse to California Coven
10 March, University of Glasgow – free

From Celtic Twilight to the Beat Generation, Adam’s career explodes literary historical periodisation & tangles its sequential logic

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/corey-gibson-the-worm-queen-turns-tickets-1701079658049

#Scottish #literature #CelticTwilight #beats #20thcentury #womenwriters #poetry

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186d

Edwin Only Helped

Women Writers of the Scottish Literary Renaissance: the handmaids, midwives, mothers, mistresses, cooks, nannies, & skivvies to that literary revolution. Oh, & contributors, too. Let’s not forget about their own writing! Again…

https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2020/12/edwin-only-helped/

#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #womenwriters #InternationalWomensDay

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185d

How we could ever have come to this pass?
Is all we are asking…

—James Findlay Hendry (1912–1986), “Question & Answer”

With GS Fraser & Henry Treece, the author, poet & translator JF Hendry was a contributor to the “New Apocalyptics” poetic movement of the 1930s & 40s

https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/volumes/from_the_line/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #warpoetry #20thcentury #WW2

J. F. Hendry
Question and Answer

How we could ever have come to this pass?
Is all we are asking. Each of our
Bursts of anti-aircraft fire
Hangs a torn wound of questions in the air.

How we could ever, like cattle at grass,
Drift with shadowless clouds, unaware,
Into this era of lightnings and war?
There is no shelter, now or ever, from that answer.

ALT

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184d

Folklore Material in Ruaraidh Erskine’s Gaelic Magazines
13 March, free online

Dr Petra Poncarová discusses materials on Scottish & other Celtic folklore published in Ruaraidh Erskine of Mar’s Gaelic magazines from 1900 to the 1930s

https://llc.ed.ac.uk/celtic-scottish-studies/css-seminar-series-260313

#Scottish #literature #Gaidhlig #Gaeilc #folklore #CelticStudies #20thcentury

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183d

A filth of leaves, she said, a froth, she said
Of sudsy flowers, and there’s your mawkish Spring.
Oh, barebone tree, what has it done to you?
Black field, you’re gone but for remembering…

—Norman MacCaig, “Green stain”
published in THE POEMS OF NORMAN MacCAIG (Birlinn, 2009)

https://birlinn.co.uk/product/the-poems-of-norman-maccaig/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #NormanMacCaig #20thcentury #Spring

Green stain
Norman MacCaig

A filth of leaves, she said, a froth, she said
Of sudsy flowers, and there’s your mawkish Spring.
Oh, barebone tree, what has it done to you?
Black field, you’re gone but for remembering.

I keep my winter where my heart should be.
– I’d rather bear it in its blackest moods
Than see those frilly leaves and blossoms make
A haberdashery of wholesome woods.

A mish-mash green, a sickly groping, such
A fumbling into light! How could they surpass
The icy shapes of darling winter hidden
In luckless trees and ill-starred meadow grass?

ALT

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172d

My son has birds in his head.

I know them now. I catch
the pitch of their calls, their shrill
cacophonies, their chitterings, their coos…

—“Daedalus”, by Alastair Reid (1926–2014) – born 100 years ago #OTD, 22 March
published in WEATHERING, @canongatebooks 1978

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#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #20thcentury

Daedalus
Alastair Reid

My son has birds in his head.

I know them now. I catch
the pitch of their calls, their shrill
cacophonies, their chitterings, their coos.
They hover behind his eyes and come to rest
on a branch, on a book, grow still,
claws curled, wings furled.
His is a bird world.

I learn the flutter of his moods,
his moments of swoop and soar.
From the ground I feel him try
the limits of the air –
sudden lift, sudden terror –
and move in time to cradle
his quivering, feathered fear.

At evening, in the tower,
I see him to sleep and see
the hooding-over of eyes,
the slow folding of wings.
I wake to his morning twitterings,
to the croomb of his becoming.

He chooses his selves – wren, hawk,
swallow or owl – to explore
the trees and rooftops of his heady wishing.
Tomtit, birdwit.
Am I to call him down, to give him
a grounding, teach him gravity?
Gently, gently.
Time tells us what we weigh, and soon enough
his feet will reach the ground.
Age, like a cage, will enclose him.
So the wise men said.

My son has birds in his head.

ALT

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181d

“Had a fit of the scunners: heart withered up.”

—Willa Muir (1890–1970) was born #OTD, 13 March, 1890. Her translations of Kafka solidified his reputation in English, & then internationally.

Prof Michelle Woods looks at Willa Muir – a Shetland translator in Prague

1/5

https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2020/12/willa-muir-a-shetland-translator-in-prague/

#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #womenwriters #translation #translator #FranzKafka #Shetland #Prague

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181d

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

—AC Jacobs, “Poem for Innocent Victims of War”
Published in NAMELESS COUNTRY: Selected Poems (Carcanet, 2018)

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

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #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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180d

Currently on the BBC iPlayer: The 39 Steps: The Read with John Hannah

Murder, conspiracy and espionage are the themes of John Buchan’s gripping novel that sees Richard Hannay, a bored adventurer, become embroiled in a plot to assassinate a political figure.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002rxp2/the-read-series-4-the-39-steps-the-read-with-john-hannah

#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #thriller #The39Steps #JohnBuchan

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170d

As I came over the Harden hill
A whaup on the moor was whistling shrill
In his pride to be first recorder
Of new life stirred in the sleeping ling
Of laughter and love and song—and Spring—
And the first blue day on the Border.

—Will H. Ogilvie, “The First Blue Day on the Border”
from The Border Poems of Will H. Ogilvie (John Murray Hood, 1959)

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/first-blue-day-border/

#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #poem #poetry #Spring

The First Blue Day on the Border
Will H. Ogilvie

As I came over the Harden hill
A whaup on the moor was whistling shrill
In his pride to be first recorder
Of new life stirred in the sleeping ling,
Of laughter and love and song—and Spring—
And the first blue day on the Border.

As I came down on the Borthwick side
The thorn stood white as a waiting bride
And the willow was leaning toward her;
The song of the river was sweet and loud,
The sky had never a single cloud
On the first blue day on the Border.

The ash was jewelled with buds of jet,
The crimson tufts on the larch were set
To be lit when the gods gave order;
Over the elm was a ruby sheen
Where the sunlight glittered the boughs between
On the first blue day on the Border.

ALT

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168d

I’m out here now
on the roof. Look!
I had to get nearer the sky,
For the city was too full of rooms
And I can’t be content with a window…

—Margaret Tait, “A Poem for a Morning”
published in Margaret Tait: poems, stories & writings (Carcanet, 2012)

https://www.carcanet.co.uk/9781800173798/poems-stories-and-writings/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #20thcentury #womenwriters #Orkney

A Poem for a Morning
Margaret Tait

I’m out here now
on the roof. Look!
I had to get nearer the sky,
For the city was too full of rooms
And I can’t be content with a window.

It’s too small a thing to accept the ready-made frame.
We builders must keep making our own cities.
Oh, please
Don’t fell the trees
For your city, because I need them for mine.

ALT

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168d

Florence Marian McNeill (1885–1973) was born #OTD, 26 March. A notable figure in Scotland’s 20th-century literary renaissance, she wrote on politics, food & folklore – including THE SILVER BOUGH, a 4-volume study of Scottish festivals & folk-belief

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https://www.scottishwomenwritersontheweb.net/writers-a-to-z/florence-marian-mcneill

#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #womenwriters #folklore #foodhistory

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168d

RE: https://mastodon.scot/@scotlit/116295049247030578

There are 2 episodes of the Scottish Food History Podcast on the life and legacy of Florence Marian McNeill. Presented by Dr Lindsay Middleton and Peter Gilchrist, with guests Jeremy Lee and Dr Gina Lyle.

Part 1:

https://rss.com/podcasts/the-scottish-food-history-podcast/1922679/

#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #womenwriters #folklore #foodhistory #podcast

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167d

“The life & career of the gifted Glaswegian writer Catherine Carswell was marked by such alarming & recurrent notoriety that her present obscurity is baffling”

—Emma Garman in the Paris Review on the life & work of Catherine Carswell (1879–1946)—born #OTD, 27 March

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https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/06/10/feminize-your-canon-catherine-carswell/

#Scottish #literature #modernism #20thcentury #womenwriters