20thcentury

10d

Dorothy K Haynes – Thou Shalt Not Suffer a Witch

Five supernatural and unsettling short stories from Dorothy K. Haynes’ award-winning collection first published in 1949. Produced by David Jackson Young and first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in December 2004.

@bookstodon

https://archive.org/details/bbc-radio-dorothy-k-haynes/BBC+Dorothy+K+Haynes+2004-12-xx+1+Gas.flac

#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #womenwriters #gothic #horror #weird #weirdfiction #weirdtales #audio #audiobooks #shortstories

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63d

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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40d

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

—“Question & Answer”, by James Findlay Hendry (1912–1986) – born #OTD, 12 Sep.

With GS Fraser & Henry Treece, JF Hendry was a contributor to the “New Apocalypse” poetic movement of the 1930s. He served in the Intelligence Corps during WW2

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

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #WarPoetry #WW2 #modernism #20thcentury

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.

Edited 40d ago

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62d

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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57d

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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51d

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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46d

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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44d

“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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41d

Robin Jenkins (1912–2005) – “the best-kept secret in modern British literature” & one of Scotland’s most prolific 20th-century novelists – was born #OTD, 11 Sep. Dr Linden Bicket argues that Jenkins anticipates the urban realist fictions of Janice Galloway, James Kelman, & Irvine Welsh

1/4

https://asls.org.uk/robin-jenkins-a-centenary-celebration/

#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #RobinJenkins

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29d

Leave, leave your well-loved nest,
Late swallow, and fly away.
Here is no rest
For hollowing heart and wearying wing…

—Edwin Muir, “The Late Swallow”
first published in One Foot in Eden (Faber, 1956)

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/late-swallow/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #20thcentury #EdwinMuir #autumn

The Late Swallow
by Edwin Muir

Leave, leave your well-loved nest,
Late swallow, and fly away.
Here is no rest
For hollowing heart and wearying wing.
Your comrades all have flown
To seek their southern paradise
Across the great earth’s downward sloping side,
And you are alone.
Why should you cling
Still to the swiftly ageing narrowing day?
Prepare;
Shake your pinions long untried
That now must bear you there where you would be
Through all the heavens of ice;
Till falling down the homing air
You light and perch upon the radiant tree.

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29d

You that through all the dying summer
Came every morning to our breakfast table,
A lonely bachelor mummer,
And fed on the marmalade
So deeply, all your strength was scarcely able
To prise you from the sweet pit you had made…

—Edwin Muir, “The Late Wasp”
from One Foot in Eden (Faber, 1956)

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #20thcentury #EdwinMuir #autumn

The Late Wasp
by Edwin Muir

You that through all the dying summer
Came every morning to our breakfast table,
A lonely bachelor mummer,
And fed on the marmalade
So deeply, all your strength was scarcely able
To prise you from the sweet pit you had made, –
You and the earth have now grown older,
And your blue thoroughfares have felt a change;
They have grown colder;
And it is strange
How the familiar avenues of the air
Crumble now, crumble; the good air will not hold,
All cracked and perished with the cold;
And down you dive through nothing and through despair.

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28d

Samuel Rutherford (S.R.) Crockett (1859–1914) was born #OTD, 24 Sep. A bestselling author in his lifetime of 60+ novels, he fell from fashion after WW1, and his books were dismissed as “kailyard”. But Tolkien cites Crockett as an inspiration, & in VIDA, or THE IRON LORD (1907) he possibly wrote the first car chase in fiction…

1/4

https://1890s.ca/crockett_bio/

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

Samuel Rutherford Crockett. Photograph by Elliott & Fry. The Critic, September 1905. P. 200. Wikimedia Commons. Crockett is bearded, and wears a jacket buttoned all the way up to his neck. His left hand rests in his jacket pocket and he is holding a book, casually, in his right. The photograph is in black and white.

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25d

“Spark thrived in institutions. This is because, like Miss Brodie, she was a conservative anarchist. Her anarchism was part of the Edinburgh Character and her conservatism rooted in respect for order, authority and ritual.”

Behind the Fame (and Inspirations) of Muriel Spark: Frances Wilson on the similarities between Spark’s favourite teacher and her most famous protagonist

https://lithub.com/behind-the-fame-and-inspirations-of-muriel-spark/

#Scottish #literature #MurielSpark #20thcentury #womenwriters

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22d

Faar’s Baabie Jeanie’s loon? The aal wife hersel
Stans treeshin hame the milkers at the ley park yett…

—“War: 1939–1945”, by Flora Garry (1900–2000) – born #OTD, 30 September
Published in FROM THE LINE: Scottish War Poetry 1914–1945

1/2

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

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

Flora Garry
War: 1939–1945

‘Faar’s Baabie Jeanie’s loon? The aal wife hersel
Stans treeshin hame the milkers at the ley park yett.
Faa caas the mornin cairt an fordals neeps an strae,
Wi waages up an risin an fee’d folk sae ull to get?
Baabie Jeanie’s Jockie, faar’s he?

An yon swack hashin chiel in Willum Sinclair’s shop?
He heeld ye oot o langour, sae joco an kin’ly wi’t.
‘Noo, lassie’ to the grunnies: ‘Weel, dearie’ to the quines,
He’s a want ahin the coonter, Willum’s sic a strunge breet.
I miss a news wi yon lad. Faar’s he?

An Droggie’s clivver dother? She could mak her fadder’s peels.
Nae hoven wyme or clocher, nae beelin, hack or strain
Bit she could ease; an fin royt nackets tummelt greetin at their play
She’d rowe up their bleedit sair bits, sen them duncin furth again.
The bairns likit Chrissie. Faar’s she?

An Cyaarnadellie’s foreman? I’ the clear Spring nichts
He trystit wi the banker’s deemie up at the market place.
Noo, she’s skycin roun the gable-eyn, her leen, i the early gloam,
Wi a muckle cwyte aboot her an a graavit ower her face.
Cyaarnadellie’s foreman, faar’s he?’

‘Speir at the waarslin tides, the desert saans, the caal starlicht.
They ken far.’

treeshin: calling; enticing
yett: gate
fordals: stores
swack: agile
hashin: hustling
heeld ye: held you
languor: boredom
joco: jovial
quines: young girls
strunge breet: surly chap
droggie: the chemist
peels: pills
hoven wyme: swollen stomach
clocher: cough
beelin: festering sore
royt nackets: boisterous children
trystit: met regularly, 'dated'
deemie: maid, general servant
skycin: scurrying
her leen: alone
cwyte: coat
graavit: scarf
speir: enquire

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5d

My father passed with his penny letters
Through closes opening and shutting like legends
When barbarous with gulls
Hamnavoe’s morning broke…

—“Hamnavoe”, by George Mackay Brown (1921–1996) – born #OTD, 17 Oct

“I have never seen his poetry sufficiently praised.”
—Seamus Heaney

A 🎂 🧵

You can listen to George Mackay Brown read his poem “Hamnavoe” online via the Poetry Archive

1/7

https://poetryarchive.org/poem/hamnavoe/

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

Hamnavoe
George Mackay Brown

My father passed with his penny letters
Through closes opening and shutting like legends
When barbarous with gulls
Hamnavoe's morning broke

On the salt and tar steps. Herring boats,
Puffing red sails, the tillers
Of cold horizons, leaned
Down the gull-gaunt tide

And threw dark nets on sudden silver harvests.
A stallion at the sweet fountain
Dredged water, and touched
Fire from steel-kissed cobbles.

Hard on noon four bearded merchants
Past the pipe-spitting pier-head strolled,
Holy with greed, chanting
Their slow grave jargon.

A tinker keened like a tartan gull
At cuithe-hung doors. A crofter lass
Trudged through the lavish dung
In a dream of corn-stalks and milk.

In the Arctic Whaler three blue elbows fell,
Regular as waves, from beards spumy with porter,
Till the amber day ebbed out
To its black dregs.

The boats drove furrows homeward, like ploughmen
In blizzards of gulls. Gaelic fisher girls
Flashed knife and dirge
Over drifts of herring,

And boys with penny wands lured gleams
From the tangled veins of the flood. Houses went blind
Up one steep close, for a
Grief by the shrouded nets.

The kirk, in a gale of psalms, went heaving through
A tumult of roofs, freighted for heaven.
And lovers Unblessed by steeples lay under
The buttered bannock of the moon.

He quenched his lantern, leaving the last door.
Because of his gay poverty that kept
My seapink innocence
From the worm and black wind;

And because, under equality's sun,
All things wear now to a common soiling,
In the fire of images
Gladly I put my hand
To save that day for him.

Edited 5d ago

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21d

For want o luve we live on hate,
For want o Heven praise the State,
For want o richts we worship rules,
For want o gods the glibbest fules…

—Sydney Goodsir Smith, “Prolegomenon: The Deevil’s Waltz”
published in A KIST O SKINKLAN THINGS: an anthology of Scots poetry
from the first & second waves
of the Scottish Renaissance (ASL, 2017)

Happy #Scotstober!

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

#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #Scots #Scotslanguage #poem #poetry #Scotstober #richts

Sydney Goodsir Smith
Prolegomenon
The Deevil’s Waltz

Rin an rout, rin an rout,
Mahoun gars us birl about,
He skirls his pipes, he stamps his heel
The globe’s gane gyte in a haliket reel.

There, the statesman’s silken cheats,
Here, the bairnless mither greits,
There, a tyrant turns the screw,
Here, twa luvers’ broken vows.

Enemies out, enemies in,
Truth a hure wi the pox gane blinn,
Nou luvers’ lips deny luve’s name
An get for breid a chuckie-stane,

We kenna hert, we kenna heid,
The deevil’s thirled baith quick an deid,
Jehovah snores, and Christ himsel
Lowps in the airms o Jezebel.

The sweit that rins frae his thorned brou
Is black as the staunan teats o his cou
In the waltz o tears, an daith, an lies,
Juliet’s fyled wi harlotries.

O luve itsel at Hornie’s lauch
Skeers lik a caunel i the draucht,
The dance is on, the waltz o hell,
The wund frae its fleean skirts is snell.

It whups black storm frae lochan’s calm,
Sets banshees in the house o dwaum,
Gars black bluid spate the hert o me
—An watters guid-sirs’ barley bree!

A few damned feckless fanatics
Wad halt the borneheid dance o Styx,
Their cry o truth the whirlwind reaps,
For pity’s deid, and mercy sleeps.

Orpheus alane dow sauve frae deid
His ravished Bride gin but she’d heed—
Ay, truth an luve like Albyn’s life
Hing wi a threid, kissed be a knife.

Ilk derkenin owre some huddered toun
The pipes an fiddles screich an boom,
The cauldron’s steered by Maestro Nick
Wi a sanct’s shin-bane for parritch-stick.

He lauchs his lauch, the angels greit
Wi joy as they dine on carrion meat;
Ablow, bumbazed, dumfounered cods,
We seek the starns in dubs an bogs.

Oor ingyne’s deaved, oor mous are shut,
Oor saul contract like a runkled nut,
Een cannae see the trees for the wuid
An hert is cauld for want o bluid.

For want o luve we live on hate,
For want o Heven praise the State,
For want o richts we worship rules,
For want o gods the glibbest fules.

Obey, Obey; ye maunna spier!
(Libertie’s disjaskit lear!)
While Cloutie pipes it’s crime tae think,
—It’s taxed e’en higher nor the drink!

O, rin an rout, we birl about,
Tae the rhythm o the Deil’s jack-boot,
Black as auld widdie-fruit, Mahoun
Bestrides a kenless mappamound.

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19d

Against the Croak for Doom: Hamish Henderson’s Vision of Freedom
28 Oct, Clydebank – free

Corey Gibson on the “anonymous song poetry of Scotland” & the “comradely solidarity of the anti-Fascist struggle” in the life & work of the poet, folklorist, & radical Hamish Henderson (1919–2002)

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/against-the-croak-for-doom-hamish-hendersons-vision-of-freedom-tickets-1756445268079

#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #HamishHenderson

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4d

Wanting to go,
all the leaves want to go
though they have achieved
their kingly robes.

Weary of colours,
they think of black earth,
they think of
white snow…

—Norman MacCaig, “Autumn”
published in The Poems of Norman MacCaig (Birlinn, 2009)

https://birlinn.co.uk/2022/10/21/poem-of-the-week-autumn-by-norman-maccaig/

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

Autumn
Norman MacCaig

Wanting to go,
all the leaves want to go
though they have achieved
their kingly robes.

Weary of colours,
they think of black earth,
they think of
white snow.

Stealthily, delicately
as a safebreaker
they unlock themselves
from branches.

And from their royal towers
they sift silently down
to become part of
the proletariat of mud.

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4d

Autumn, and the nights are darkening.
The old lady tells us of her past once more.
She muses on the days she spent nursing

at ten shillings a month…

—Iain Crichton Smith, “The Old Lady”
published in NEW COLLECTED POEMS (Carcanet, 2011)

https://www.carcanet.co.uk/9781857549607/new-collected-poems/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #20thcentury #autumn

The Old Lady
Iain Crichton Smith

Autumn, and the nights are darkening.
The old lady tells us of her past once more.
She muses on the days she spent nursing

at ten shillings a month. ‘And what exams!
I could understand anything in those days.
What summers we had then, what lovely autumns.’

And so I imagine her cycling to her work
among the golden leaves, down avenues,
to hospitals which were disciplined and stark

with hard-faced matrons, doctors jovial
with an authority that was never quizzed,
while grizzled Death suckled at his phial,

and autumn glowed and died, outside the ward,
and girlishly she saw it fade in red
in sky and sheet, and evening was barred
with strange sweet clouds that hung above the bed.

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13d

Daith an’ dule will stab ye surely,
Be ye man or wife,
Mony trauchles an’ mischances
In ilk weird are rife;
Bide the storm ye canna hinder,
Mindin’ through the strife,
Hoo the luntin’ lowe o’ beauty
Lichts the grey o’ life.

—Helen Cruickshank, “Sea Buckthorn”
published in A KIST O SKINKLAN THINGS (ASL, 2017)

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

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #20thcentury #Scots #Scotslanguage #Scotstober

Sea Buckthorn
by Helen Cruickshank

Saut an’ cruel winds tae shear it,
Nichts o’ haar an’ rain –
Ye micht think the sallow buckthorn
Ne’er a hairst could hain;
But amang the sea-bleached branches
Ashen-grey as pain,
Thornset orange berries cluster
Flamin’, beauty-fain.

Daith an’ dule will stab ye surely,
Be ye man or wife,
Mony trauchles an’ mischances
In ilk weird are rife;
Bide the storm ye canna hinder,
Mindin’ through the strife,
Hoo the luntin’ lowe o’ beauty
Lichts the grey o’ life.

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13d

In conversation with Sara Sheridan, Damian Barr discusses his novel THE TWO ROBERTS, which reimagines the lives of Scottish artists Robert MacBryde & Robert Colquhoun. Recorded at the National Galleries on 7 October 2025

https://www.youtube.com/live/T44S_tndnfM

#Scottish #literature #art #artists #visualart #20thcentury

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10d

A gifted writer of gothic & horror fiction, Dorothy K. Haynes (1918–1987) was born #OTD, 12 Oct. Haynes & her twin brother spent 4 years in Aberlour Orphanage, from 1929 to 1933: last year, we republished her long out-of-print childhood memoir, HASTE YE BACK

1/4

https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/volumes/haste-ye-back/

#Scottish #literature #memoir #gothic #horror #weird #weirdtales #20thcentury #womenwriters

Book cover: Haste Ye Back, by Dorothy K. Haynes
Edited by Craig Lamont

The cover image is "Blue Flax", an oil painting by Edward Atkinson Hornel (1927). The image shows three cheerful little girls in white smocks, lying on a grassy mound which is covered in small blue flowers. Behind them is a beach and a sunlit bay.

Edited 10d ago

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2d

Dreaming the Daily Darg: Working Lives in Scottish Writing since 1918
Studies in Scottish Literature 50/1, 2025

A special issue exploring work & working life in Scottish writing chiefly of the 20th & 21st centuries – available now on Open Access

@litstudies

https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/ssl/vol50/iss1/

#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #21stcentury #work #working

Articles

Introduction: Dreaming the Daily Darg
Corey Gibson

Jute mill songs: Mary Brooksbank and industrial tradition in a dying industry
Erin Farley

‘And On One Toils, Into The Hill’: Working and Walking in Nan Shepherd’s North East
Sarah Leith

Labour and (Class) Struggle in James Barke’s Compositionist Imaginaries: Dreaming with Rob Roy, Marx & Burns
Arianna Introna

Proletarian Nights in Archie Hind’s The Dear Green Place
Corey Gibson

Agnes Owens and the Parliament of Insignificant Lives
Marie-Odile Pittin-Hedon

Writing Loss, Culture and Change: Deindustrialisation and Community Writers’ Groups In Glasgow
Kate Wilson

James Kelman and the Impossibility of Managerial Souls
Joseph H. Jackson

‘Just Get It On The Table’: Gendered Food Labour in Janice Galloway’s Fiction
Gina Lyle

Scottish Workers’ Stories of Life and Labour during Covid-19 from the Workers’ Stories Project
Hailey Maxwell, Ruth Gilbert, Suki Sangha, and Ewan Gibbs

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1d

Tap me with your finger,
rub me with your sleeve,
hold me, sniff me, peel me
curling round and round
till I burst out white and cold
from my tight red coat…

—Edwin Morgan, “The Apple’s Song”
published in CENTENARY SELECTED POEMS (Carcanet, 2020)

A poem for Apple Day – 21 Oct – which is definitely about an apple 🍎

https://www.carcanet.co.uk/9781784109967/centenary-selected-poems/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #20thcentury #EdwinMorgan #AppleDay

The Apple’s Song
by Edwin Morgan

Tap me with your finger,
rub me with your sleeve,
hold me, sniff me, peel me
curling round and round
till I burst out white and cold
from my tight red coat
and tingle in your palm
as if I’d melt and breathe
a living pomander
waiting for the minute
of joy when you lift me
to your mouth and crush me
and in taste and fragrance
I race through your head
in my dizzy dissolve.

I sit in the bowl
in my cool corner
and watch you as you pass
smoothing your apron.
Are you thirsty yet?
My eyes are shining.

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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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