20thcentury

333d

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 333d ago

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325d

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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324d

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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276d

Michel Byrne on poet & translator George Campbell Hay | Deòrsa Mac Iain Dheòrsa (1915–1984) – born #OTD, 8 Dec

Gaelic & Scots: Cultural Connections & Inspirations in the 20th Century (Forum for Research on the Languages of Scotland & Ulster webinar, 6 May 2025)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIesmENZ0Iw

#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #poetry #Gaelic #Gaidhlig #Scots #Scotslanguage

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276d

SCOTTISH LITERARY REVIEW 17/2 (Autumn/Winter 2025)

The latest issue of Scottish Literary Review is online now via Project MUSE (institutional access required). Print copies will be in the mail to subscribers shortly! Papers range from medieval poetry, through 18th- & 19th-century literature, to Muriel Spark & the Brontës

@litstudies

https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/55415

#Scottish #literature #poetry #medieval #18thcentury #19thcentury #20thcentury #JamesHogg #RobertBurns #MurielSpark #Brontes

A dark blue journal cover with white lettering:

SCOTTISH
LITERARY
REVIEW

Autumn | Winter 2025
Journal of the Association for Scottish Literature

The cover illustration shows an open book, lying on its back, with four stylised, twisty thistles growing from between its fanned pages.

Contents page 1

Editorial

Kang-yen Chiu: Resistance to Accommodation: Postcolonial Readings of the Highland Clearances in Iain Crichton Smith’s Consider the Lilies

Megan Coyer: ‘By famine, sword, and pestilence’: James Hogg and Cholera in Fraser’s Magazine for Town and Country

Alison Denham: William Thom (1798–1848), Weaver Poet: The London Years

Katherine Ferrier: The Literary Gossiping of Susan Ferrier

Mao Guihua and Zheng Ronghua: Animal Subjectivity in the Poetry of Robert Burns Under the Animal Turn

Scott Hames: Tom Nairn as Essayist: Romantic Negativity and Critical Imagination

Sarah Harlan-Haughey: Low Visibility: ‘wickit wedderis’ and the Contest of Knowledge in The Taill of Rauf Coilȝear

Kaiyue He: Muriel Spark and the House of the Brontës: Female Authorship and Autonomy

Contents page 2

Joanna Martin: ‘He in alle thing wele temperite was’: The Emotional Language of The Buik of King Alexander The Conquerour

Ian Cameron Robertson: Green Blades Among the Rubble – Posterity’s Judgement on The Minstrel?

Angus Sutherland: Hogg and the Ettrick Clearances

Annalisa Nicholson: Octonaries upon the Vanitie and Inconstancie of the World, by Esther Inglis; an essay, by Jamie Reid Baxter (review)

Trish Reid: Plays in Scots, Volume 1 and Volume 2, by Michel Tremblay (review)

Honor Rieley: The Edinburgh History of the British and Irish Press, Volume 1: Beginnings and Consolidation, 1640–1800, edited by Nicholas Brownlees (review)

Désha Osborne: Robert Wedderburn, Abolition, and the Commons: Romanticism’s Black Geographies, by Katey Castellano (review)

Adam Kozaczka: Law, Equity and Romantic Writing: Seeking Justice in the Age of Revolutions, edited by Michael Demson and Regina Hewitt (review)

Zsuzsanna Varga: A modern skót irodalom a 19. század végétől napjainkig [Modern Scottish Literature from the End of the Nineteenth Century to the Present Day], by Attila Dósa (review)

Contents page 3

Lois Burke: The International Companion to Scottish Children’s Literature, edited by Maureen A. Farrell and Robert A. Davis (review)

Scott Lyall: History of a Revoluter: The Life of James Leslie Mitchell/Lewis Grassic Gibbon, by William K. Malcolm (review)

Peter Auger: Mary Queen of Scots: The First Biography: With the Life and Times of Its Author, George Con, by Ronald Santangeli (review)

Amy Wilcockson: Kirkyard Romanticism: Death, Modernity and Scottish Literature in the Nineteenth Century, by Sarah Sharp (review)

Hilary Clydesdale: Scottish Women’s Writing in the Long Nineteenth Century: The Romance of Everyday Life, by Juliet Shields (review)

Notes on Contributors

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319d

Somhairle MacGill-Eain (Sorley MacLean, 1911–1996), one of the greatest European poets of the 20th century, was born #OTD, 26 Oct. A 🎂 🧵

Watch “Sorley MacLean’s Island” via the National Library of Scotland – Sorley MacLean in conversation with fellow writer Iain Crichton Smith

1/8

https://movingimage.nls.uk/film/3141

#Scottish #literature #Hebrides #Skye #Raasay #Gaelic #Gaidhlig #poetry #20thcentury #modernism

A closeup of two hands, playing a set of small pipes. Text overlay: SORLEY MACLEAN'S ISLAND

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319d

In Gránada, in Gránada,
They dumbed the mou o a makar,
In Gránada, in Gránada,
They strak doun Garcia Lorca…

—“In Gránada, in Gránada (Llanto por Federico Garcia Lorca)”, by Syndey Goodsir Smith (1915–1975) – a major figure in the 20th-century Scottish renaissance, born #OTD, 26 Oct

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

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

Sydney Goodsir Smith
In Gránada, in Gránada
(Llanto por Federico Garcia Lorca)

In Gránada, in Gránada,
They dumbed the mou o a makar,
In Gránada, in Gránada,
They strak doun Garcia Lorca.

Ye bard o the tinks, o gipsy Spain,
Frae Gránada, frae Gránada,
Aa the gangrel folk that scorn chains—
O wae for Garcia Lorca!

At dawin fornent a sunwhite waa
In Gránada, in Gránada,
The rifles reik, O see him faa,
Daith rins at the tyrant’s order.

But they sall pey for that fell deed,
In Gránada, in Gránada,
Franco and his men o bluid,
Their fingers reid wi murder.

Mair nor juist ane enemie
Was kill yon morn in Gránada,
For daith is neer a bundarie
Til the voice o a folk was Lorca.

Ay, he was Spain, anither Burns,
In Gránada, in Gránada,
O wae for thae when the tide turns
That strak doun Garcia Lorca!

And wae for thae in ilka land,
Or Galloway or Gránada,
That thirl the libertie o man
For bards nor daith are stranger.

And aye their leid is Freedom,
In Galloway or Gránada,
Ay, greit for the tinkler’s martyrdom
And the white dumb mou o a makar.

Ay, greit for Lorca, bard o the waifs,
Saw birth and daith in Gránada,
Wae for the sang was stanched yon day
While the sand ran reid wi clangor.

But sing o the victorie was gained,
In Gránada, in Gránada ———!
For aye your bluid sall dirl throu Spain,
Federico Garcia Lorca!

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317d

Jessie Kesson (1916–1994) was born #OTD, 28 Oct. Taken from her mother at 10, she spent 6 years in an orphanage; although she displayed obvious academic talent she was denied any chance of further education & was sent into domestic servitude aged 16.

Despite these & other hardships she became a highly regarded novelist whose works explore ordinary women’s lives with clarity & poetic prose

A 🎂🧵

1/5

https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/9964/jessie-kesson-novelist

#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #womenwriters #workingclass

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313d

Naomi Mitchison (née Haldane, 1897–1999) was born #OTD, 1 Nov, & saw almost every day of the #20thcentury. A hugely influential writer, with 80+ books—poetry, politics, historical novels, #ScienceFiction, #Fantasy, #ChildrensLiterature & more—to her credit

A 🎂🧵

“She liked to challenge, she liked to shock, she liked to deliver the unexpected, she liked to experiment”

—Jenni Calder looks at Mitchison’s life & work

@litstudies
1/9

https://dangerouswomenproject.org/2016/09/25/naomi-mitchison/

#Scottish #literature #womenwriters

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314d

Someone was playing the piano when suddenly
there they were standing in the room.
They would not sing or speak or tell their names.
Their skull faces blankly shifted round
as if they were studying us implacably…

—Iain Crichton Smith, “Halloween”
first published in the TLS (1982)

#Scottish #literature #Halloween #poem #poetry #20thcentury

Halloween
Iain Crichton Smith

Someone was playing the piano when suddenly
there they were standing in the room.
They would not sing or speak or tell their names.
Their skull faces blankly shifted round
as if they were studying us implacably.

“Yokels”, one thought. “Rustics”, thought another;
and truly they had trudged in out of the rain
with their masks, tall and white and bony-looking.
“Macbeth”, someone said, and someone “Hamlet”.
Or perhaps at least the “Elegy” by Gray.

The rain drummed on the roof and they were gone
in their muddy boots, squelching past cowering doors.
We looked at each other. It was graveyard time
as our black ties on our white shirts might say.

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309d

Roch the wind in the clear day’s dawin
Blaws the cloods heelster-gowdie ow’r the bay,
But there’s mair nor a roch wind blawin
Through the great glen o’ the warld the day…

—Hamish Henderson, “The Freedom Come-All-Ye”
Published in The Golden Treasury of Scottish Verse, @canongatebooks

https://canongate.co.uk/books/3267-the-golden-treasury-of-scottish-verse/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #song #HamishHenderson #20thcentury #change #hope

The Freedom Come-All-Ye
Hamish Henderson

Roch the wind in the clear day’s dawin
Blaws the cloods heelster-gowdie ow’r the bay,
But there’s mair nor a roch wind blawin
Through the great glen o’ the warld the day.
It’s a thocht that will gar oor rottans
– A’ they rogues that gang gallus, fresh and gay –
Tak the road, and seek ither loanins
For their ill ploys, tae sport and play

Nae mair will the bonnie callants
Mairch tae war when oor braggarts crousely craw,
Nor wee weans frae pit-heid and clachan
Mourn the ships sailin’ doon the Broomielaw.
Broken faimlies in lands we’ve herriet,
Will curse Scotland the Brave nae mair, nae mair;
Black and white, ane til ither mairriet,
Mak the vile barracks o’ their maisters bare.

So come all ye at hame wi’ Freedom,
Never heed whit the hoodies croak for doom.
In your hoose a’ the bairns o’ Adam
Can find breid, barley-bree and painted room.
When MacLean meets wi’s freens in Springburn
A’ the roses and geans will turn tae bloom,
And a black boy frae yont Nyanga
Dings the fell gallows o’ the burghers doon.

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273d

But in the climbing ecstasy of thought,
Ere consummation, ere the final peak,
Come hours like this…

—Nan Shepherd, “Summit of Coire Etchachan”
published in WANDERERS: A History of Women Walking, by Kerri Andrews

Today, 11 December, is International Mountain Day

https://www.un.org/en/observances/mountain-day

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #mountains #cairngorms #NanShepherd #climbing #20thcentury #womenwriters #naturewriting #InternationalMountainDay

Summit of Coire Etchachan
Nan Shepherd

But in the climbing ecstasy of thought,
Ere consummation, ere the final peak,
Come hours like this. Behind, the long defile,
The steep rock-path, alongside which, from under
Snow-caves, sharp-corniced, tumble the ice-cold waters.
And now, here, at the corrie’s summit, no peak,
No vision of the blue world, far, unattainable,
But this grey plateau, rock-strewn, vast, silent,
The dark loch, the toiling crags, the snow;
A mountain shut within itself, yet a world,
Immensity. So may the mind achieve,
Toiling, no vision of the infinite,
But a vast, dark and inscrutable sense
Of its own terror, its own glory and power.

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308d

Nan Shepherd & her friends
21 Nov, Aberdeen – free, ticketed

Nan Shepherd has often been imagined as a solitary walker & writer. In this talk, Dr Timothy Baker looks at the importance of female friendship in Nan Shepherd’s writing & life, placing her as part of a much larger network of Aberdonian women writers & thinkers

https://aberdeencity.spydus.co.uk/cgi-bin/spydus.exe/ENQ/WPAC/EVSESENQ?SETLVL=&RNI=16811409

#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #womenwriters #NanShepherd #Aberdeen

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306d

“The understated power of this writing is extraordinary. Something of that sense of human vision seeing beyond the time of its own life’s duration, surely appealed to T. S. Eliot, who published The Silver Darlings and more of Gunn’s novels”
—Prof Alan Riach re-examines Gunn’s legacy

Neil M. Gunn (1891–1973), one of the most important writers of the 20th century Scottish renaissance, was born #OTD, 8 Nov – a 🎂 🧵

1/5

https://www.thenational.scot/news/15637617.neil-gunn-and-the-search-for-scotlands-soul/

#Scottish #literature #modernism #20thcentury

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196d

He blinks upon the hearth-rug,
and yawns in deep content,
accepting all the comforts
that Providence has sent…

—Alexander Gray, “On a Cat, Ageing”

#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #poem #poetry #cats #aging #ageing

Alexander Gray
On a Cat, Ageing

He blinks upon the hearth-rug,
and yawns in deep content,
accepting all the comforts
that Providence has sent.

Louder he purrs, and louder,
in one glad hymn of praise
for all the night’s adventures,
for quiet, restful days.

Life will go on for ever,
with all that cat can wish;
warmth and the glad procession
of fish and milk and fish.

Only – the thought disturbs him –
he’s noticed once or twice,
the times are somehow breeding
a nimbler race of mice.

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303d

Hamish Henderson (1919–2002) – poet, soldier, intellectual, activist, songwriter – was born #OTD, 11 Nov. A hugely important figure in Scottish culture, Henderson fought in North Africa & Italy in WW2. A 🎂🧵

There were no gods and precious few heroes…
—“Elegies for the Dead in Cyrenaica”

1/10

#Scottish #literature #HamishHenderson #20thcentury #culture #poetry #poem #warpoetry #WW2 #RemembranceDay

Hamish Henderson
from Elegies for the Dead in Cyrenaica

FIRST ELEGY
End of a Campaign

There are many dead in the brutish desert, who lie uneasy
among the scrub in this landscape of half-wit
stunted ill-will. For the dead land is insatiate
and necrophilous. The sand is blowing about still.
Many who for various reasons, or because of mere unanswerable compulsion, came here
and fought among the clutching gravestones, shivered and sweated,
cried out, suffered thirst, were stoically silent, cursed
the spittering machine-guns, were homesick for Europe
and fast embedded in quicksand of Africa agonised and died.
And sleep now. Sleep here the sleep of the dust.

There were our own, there were the others.
Their deaths were like their lives, human and animal.
There were no gods and precious few heroes.
What they regretted when they died had nothing to do with race and leader, realm indivisible,
laboured Augustan speeches or vague imperial heritage.
(They saw through that guff before the axe fell.) Their longing turned to
the lost world glimpsed in the memory of letters:
an evening at the pictures in the friendly dark,
two knowing conspirators smiling and whispering secrets; or else
a family gathering in the homely kitchen
with Mum so proud of her boys in uniform: their thoughts trembled
between moments of estrangement, and ecstatic moments
of reconciliation: and their desire

crucified itself against the unutterable shadow of someone
whose photo was in their wallets.
Then death made his incision.

There were our own, there were the others.
Therefore, minding the great word of Glencoe’s
son, that we should not disfigure ourselves
with villainy of hatred; and seeing that all
have gone down like curs into anonymous silence,
I will bear witness for I knew the others.
Seeing that littoral and interior are alike indifferent
and the birds are drawn again to our welcoming north
why should I not sing them, the dead, the innocent?

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300d

Norman MacCaig (1910–1996) was born #OTD, 14 November. A self-described “Zen Calvinist”, when asked how long it took him to write a poem he would reply “one cigarette – or two for a long one”

A 🎂🧵

“Toad”
published in THE POEMS OF NORMAN MacCAIG (Birlinn, 2009)

1/12

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

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

Toad
by Norman MacCaig

Stop looking like a purse. How could a purse
squeeze under the rickety door and sit,
full of satisfaction, in a man’s house?

You clamber towards me on your four corners –
right hand, left foot, left hand, right foot.

I love you for being a toad,
for crawling like a Japanese wrestler,
and for not being frightened.

I put you in my purse hand, not shutting it,
and set you down outside directly under
every star.

A jewel in your head? Toad,
you’ve put one in mine,
a tiny radiance in a dark place.

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2y

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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298d

Don Roberto: the Adventure of Being Cunninghame Graham
18 Nov, Carnoustie – free

Jamie Jauncey talks about his extraordinary great-great-uncle Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham – traveller, adventurer, politician, writer, etc. etc. – & asks why RBCG is so overlooked today

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/don-roberto-the-adventure-of-being-cunninghame-graham-tickets-1674565473409

#Scottish #literature #19thcentury #20thcentury

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298d

Elspeth Barker (1940–2022) was born #OTD, 16 Nov

Maggie O’Farrell called Barker’s classic O CALEDONIA “one of those books you proselytize about… I once decided to become friends with someone on the sole basis that she named [it] as her favourite book”

A 🎂🧵

1/4

https://lithub.com/maggie-ofarrell-on-elspeth-barkers-modern-scottish-classic-o-caledonia/

#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #womenwriters #gothic #comingofage

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181d

“Read it now” – Ursula K. Le Guin

Weaving folklore, fairy tale & Norse myth into a shimmering, witty & slyly subversive tapestry, Naomi Mitchison’s TRAVEL LIGHT – a rediscovered gem of classic fantasy writing – has just been republished in the UK by Virago

@bookstodon

https://store.virago.co.uk/products/travel-light

#Scottish #literature #fantasy #kidlit #20thcentury #womenswriting #ursulaLeGuin #NaomiMitchison #folklore #mythology

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293d

Reigniting Spark: Jewish Values in the Modernism of Muriel Spark
26 Nov, University of Edinburgh & online – free

Prof Holli Levitsky investigates how Muriel Spark navigates her Jewish identity amidst the broader themes of modernity, nationalism, & personal identity

@litstudies

https://www.iash.ed.ac.uk/event/professor-holli-levitsky-reigniting-spark-jewish-values-modernism-muriel-spark

#Scottish #literature #murielspark #20thcentury #womenwriters #Jewish #Catholic #modernism #identity

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289d

“Laidlaw is the melancholy heir to Marlowe. Reads like a breathless scalpel cut through the bloody heart of a city’ – Denise Mina

William McIlvanney discusses and reads from his LAIDLAW trilogy at Dundee Literary Festival 2013, in conversation with Russel D. McLean

@bookstodon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K879j3KVFvo

#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #CrimeFiction #WilliamMcIlvanney

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290d

The night tinkles like ice in glasses.
Leaves are glued to the pavement with frost.
The brown air fumes at the shop windows,
Tries the doors, and sidles past…

—Norman MacCaig, “November night, Edinburgh”
published in The Poems of Norman MacCaig (Birlinn, 2011)

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

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #20thcentury #November #winter #Edinburgh #normanmacCaig

Norman MacCaig
November night, Edinburgh

The night tinkles like ice in glasses.
Leaves are glued to the pavement with frost.
The brown air fumes at the shop windows,
Tries the doors, and sidles past.

I gulp down winter raw. The heady
Darkness swirls with tenements.
In a brown fuzz of cottonwool
Lamps fade up crags, die into pits.

Frost in my lungs is harsh as leaves
Scraped up on paths. – I look up, there,
A high roof sails, at the mast-head
Fluttering a grey and ragged star.

The world’s a bear shrugged in his den.
It’s snug and close in the snoring night.
And outside like chrysanthemums
The fog unfolds its bitter scent.

Edited 290d ago

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289d

“Scottishness is not some pedigree lineage. This is a mongrel tradition!”

William McIlvanney (1936–2015) – author & poet (& provider, at a rally in Edinburgh in 1992, of our profile header, as quoted in Neal Ascherson’s 2002 book STONE VOICES) – was born #OTD, 25 November

A 🎂 🧵

@bookstodon

1/9

#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #WilliamMcIlvanney #Scottishness #identity

And then, in a tone of tremendous pride, he said this. “Scottishness is not some pedigree lineage. This is a mongrel tradition!” At those words, for reasons which perhaps neither he nor they ever quite understood, the crowd broke into cheers and applause which lasted on and on.

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