Eggplant.place

68d

The mile-high buildings flashed, flushed, greyed, went dark,
greyed, flushed, flashed, chameleons under flak
of cloud and sun…

—Edwin Morgan, “Clydegrad”
from CENTENARY SELECTED POEMS (Carcanet, 2020)

Today, 3 September, is Skyscraper Day

1/2

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

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #20thcentury #sonnet #skyscraper #SkyscraperDay #EdwinMorgan #Glasgow #scifipoetry

Clydegrad
Edwin Morgan

It was so fine we lingered there for hours.
The long broad streets shone strongly after rain.
Sunset blinded the tremble of the crane
we watched from, dazed the heliport-towers.
The mile-high buildings flashed, flushed, greyed, went dark,
greyed, flushed, flashed, chameleons under flak
of cloud and sun. The last far thunder-sack
ripped and spilled its grumble. Ziggurat-stark,
a power-house reflected in the lead
of the old twilight river leapt alive
lit up at every window, and a boat
of students rowed past, slid from black to red
into the blaze. But where will they arrive
with all, boat, city, earth, like them, afloat?

ALT

Book cover

EDWIN MORGAN
CENTENARY SELECTED POEMS

edited by
HAMISH WHYTE

Carcanet Classics

The cover image shows a view looking up the face of a concrete tower block, angled against a star-strewn sky – as if the skyscraper was a starship, cruising the cosmos.

ALT

Edited 68d ago

1 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

47d

“It all started in the playground – the word was there was a vampire and everyone was going to head out there after school”

Beginning #OTD, 23 September 1954, and for three consecutive nights, over 200 children aged from 4 to 14 – armed with knives, clubs, & even a crucifix – hunted a 7-foot-tall vampire through Glasgow’s Southern Necropolis

https://dangerousminds.net/comments/the_gorbals_vampire_the_child-eating_monster_that_terrorized_glasgow_in_the/

#Scottish #folklore #Glasgow #Gorbals #vampires #vampire #urbanmyths #20thcentury

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

19d

Tenements lining the rather steep Gardner Street in Glasgow, which connects the areas of Partick at the bottom of the hill to Hyndland at top. Before they were both incorporated into the city, each of these areas set their own byelaws, and the impact of this can still be seen on their streets today. What am I talking about? Well, in one word: Pubs!

Cont./

#glasgow #pubs #hyndland #partick #glasgowhistory

Tenements lining a steep hill in the west of Glasgow.

ALT

1 0 1 View Post & Replies See Original

64d

NAMING THE SNAKES: New Writing Scotland 44
Glasgow launch
8 September, Waterstones Sauchiehall St, Glasgow – £5 / £12 with book

Celebrate the latest issue with a mix of readings of poetry, short fiction & non-fiction in English, Gaelic & Scots – all welcome!

https://www.waterstones.com/events/new-writing-scotland-44-launch/glasgow-sauchiehall-street

#Scottish #literature #Gaidhlig #Gaelic #Scots #Scotslanguage #poetry #shortfiction #writingcommunity #Glasgow

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

17d

On days when air was clarified by frost
and a translucent moon came close to earth
I’d hear the rhythms of pneumatic riveting hammers
in a high-tiered lecture room…

—James Aitchison, “Riveting”
Published in The Flight of the Turtle: New Writing Scotland 29 (ASL, 2011)

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Glasgow #GlasgowUniversity #Clydeside #shipyards

James Aitchison
RIVETING

On days when air was clarified by frost
and a translucent moon came close to earth
I’d hear the rhythms of pneumatic riveting hammers
in a high-tiered lecture room.

Some of the shipyard men had served their time
when white-hot iron bolts were still slammed home
by sledgehammers with half-width heads,
precision instruments in riveters’ hands.

Riveters worked a forty-eight-hour week
ten, twenty, thirty, forty, eighty feet
above the Clyde. They felt the scaffolding
sway like a ship at sea when strong winds blew.

Shipyard credentials? None. My student jobs –
summer gophering on Grangemouth building sites,
delivering Christmas mail –
were so short-term they were paid holidays.

Back in the lecture room, Alexander Scott
taught in a voice that rattled window panes,
electrified the air and woke the dead.
William Dunbar is chanting in my head.

ALT

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

45d

Glasgow, late September and the city I spoke of
in another country (its fierce sandstone
burning, its bombast of finials built on the heads of slaves…

—Gerrie Fellows, “Dream Cities”
published in The Body in Space (Shearsman, 2014)

A poem for World Dream Day

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/dream-cities/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Glasgow #NewZealand #dream #dreams #dreaming #WorldDreamDay

Dream Cities
by Gerrie Fellows

I
Glasgow, late September and the city I spoke of
in another country (its fierce sandstone
burning, its bombast of finials built on the heads of slaves
the monumental tower blocks of a later order
catching fire from the west as a plane comes in)
has become in two months
a dream a nostalgia

For it is litter not grandeur
a muddied disturbance in a dirty river
a sullen reflection sliced by concrete
(the monumental pillars
and glorious boulevards of a later order)

Against the vivifying light
of the south the suburban avenues
of a world of space it is rain
rain and old world pallor

and beyond it
on the high points of Aonach Mor and Ben Nevis
(so early a door closing and opening)
the first snows of the winter

II
Early November and the city I parted from
in two months has become a dream technicolour
not quite Auckland or Christchurch
but a dream place of skyscrapers and heady blossom
stern waxy magnolia silk of almond and crab apple
A dream place but Christchurch as it was then
in mid-September Jane driving me to the airport
past gardens reeking with nectar

for there Spring has continued without me

And here I wake no longer at home

ALT

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

17d

The Word on the Street

Katherine Mackinnon discusses a range of books, pamphlets, & ephemera from Glasgow’s radical history

https://www.historyworkshop.org.uk/material-culture/the-word-on-the-street/

#Scottish #literature #history #workingclass #workingclasshistory #politics #Clydeside #RedClydeside #Glasgow #radical

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

43d

Archival Breezes 2, or de-Glasgowifying Agnes Owens

Kirstin Innes on the mis-categorisation of Agnes Owens as a ‘Glasgow writer’.

“[Owens] managed some strange alchemy of hyper-locality and universality which makes her a bard of small town existence, wherever that small town might be. But it isn’t of Glasgow.”

https://substack.com/@kirstininnes/p-216883261

#Scottish #literature #womenwriters #20thcentury #workingclasswriters #AgnesOwens #Glasgow

Edited 43d ago

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

42d

2026 Jimmy Reid Memorial Lecture: Jackie Kay
20 October, Glasgow City Chambers. Tickets £10

Poet & author Jackie Kay will deliver the Jimmy Reid Foundation’s annual lecture, chaired by Lyn Henderson, & talk about responding creatively to the challenges we face & the impact responding creatively can make.

https://reidfoundation.scot/2026/09/2026-jimmy-reid-memorial-lecture/

#Scottish #literature #JackieKay #creativity #Glasgow

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

5d

Liz Lochhead’s MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS GOT HER HEAD CHOPPED OFF
13 Feb–6 Mar 2027
Citizens Theatre, Glasgow

Heaving with theatricality & gallus wit, Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off weaves political relevance with fairytale storytelling. 40 years since it first premiered, this major new production brings the Scottish classic to a new generation of audiences.

https://citz.co.uk/whats-on/mary-queen-of-scots-got-her-head-chopped-off/

#Scottish #literature #drama #theatre #CitizensTheatre #Glasgow #WomenWriters #Scots #Scotslanguage

The opening page of Liz Lochhead's play, MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS GOT HER HEAD CHOPPED OFF

ACT ONE
SCENE ONE – SCOTLAND, WHIT LIKE?

(Alone, FIDDLER charges up the space with eldritch tune, wild and sad, then goes. Enter into the ring, whip in hand, our 'chorus', LA CORBIE. An interesting, ragged ambiguous creature in her cold spotlight)

LA CORBIE: Country: Scotland. Whit like is it?
It's a peatbog, it's a daurk forest.
It's a cauldron o' lye, a saltpan or a coal mine.
If you're gey lucky it's a bricht bere meadow or a park o' kye.
Or mibbe ... it's a field o' stanes.
It's a tenement or a merchant's ha'.
It's a hure hoose or a humble cot. Princes Street or Paddy's Merkit.
It's a fistfu' o' fish or a pickle o' oatmeal.
It's a queen's banquet o' roast meats and junkets.
It depends. It depends ... Ah dinna ken whit like your Scotland is. Here's mines.
National flower: the thistle.
National pastime: nostalgia.
National weather: smirr, haar, drizzle, snow.
National bird: the crow, the corbie, le corbeau, moi!
How me? Eh? Eh? Eh? Voice like a choked laugh. Ragbag o' a burd in ma black duds, a' angles and elbows and broken oxter feathers, black beady een in ma executioner's hood. No braw, but Ah think Ah ha'e a sort of black glamour.
Do I no put ye in mind of a skating minister, or, on the other fit, the parish priest, the dirty beast?
My nest's a rickle o' sticks.
I live on lamb's eyes and road accidents.
Oh, see, after the battle, after the battle, man, it's a pure feast – ma eyes are ower big even for my belly, in lean years o' peace, my belly thinks my throat's been cut.

(Laughing, LA CORBIE cracks whip for THE ENTRANCE OF THE ANIMALS. In a strange circus our characters, gorgeous or pathetic, parade: MARY, ELIZABETH, HEPBURN, DANCER/RICCIO, KNOX, DARNLEY all dirty and down on his luck. They circle, snarling, smiling, posing. And halt. Drumbeat ceases. With both Queens by the hand, parading them)

Once upon a time there were twa queens on the wan green island, and the wan green island was split inty twa kingdoms ...

ALT

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

4d

Some rather beautiful tiles from a tenement close in the Govanhill area of Glasgow.

#glasgow #architecture #architecturephotography #tiles #tenement #govanhill

Decorative floral tiles from a Victorian tenement in Glasgow.

ALT

0 0 1 View Post & Replies See Original

33d

Rich Things with Chitra Ramaswamy
23 October, Glasgow. Free, ticketed

Mark Black History Month with an event exploring Rich Things, Chitra Ramaswamy’s new work for the Alasdair Gray Archive. Chitra will talk with Sorcha Dallas, Custodian of the Archive, uncovering stories from the Archive, the communities of north Glasgow, & Alasdair Gray’s anti-colonial thinking, legacy & enduring impact.

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/rich-things-with-chitra-ramaswamy-tickets-2002542250779

#Scottish #literature #BlackHistory #BlackHistoryMonth #Glasgow #AlasdairGray

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

54d

Wanted a husband who doesn’t suppose,
That all earthly employments one feminine knows—
That she’ll scrub, do the cleaning, and cooking, and baking,
And plain needlework, hats and caps, and dressmaking…

—“Wanted A Husband”, by Marion Bernstein (1846–1906), born #OTD, 16 September. A 🎂🧵

1/3

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Glasgow #19thcentury #Victorian #womenwriters #feminism

Wanted a Husband
Marion Bernstein

‘Baking and cooking, scrubbing and dressing
Accomplishments grand, well worth possessing;
Economy too, with wisdom discreet,
My wife must practise to make all ends meet.’
—Eleve.

Wanted a husband who doesn’t suppose,
That all earthly employments one feminine knows—
That she’ll scrub, do the cleaning, and cooking, and baking,
And plain needlework, hats and caps, and dressmaking.
Do the family washing, yet always look neat,
Mind the bairns, with a temper unchangeably sweet,
Be a cheerful companion, whenever desired,
And contentedly toil day and night, if required.
Men expecting as much, one may easily see,
But they’re not what is wanted, at least, not by me.

Wanted a husband who’s tender and true,
Who will stick to his duty, and never get ‘fou,’
But when all his day’s work he has blithely gone through,
Help his wife, ‘set to rights,’ till her work is done too;
Who will not absurdly, and helplessly go,
And trouble the wife about ‘buttons to sew,’
On his shirt, or his gloves, or his coat, or his vest,
But will sew them himself, and not think he’s oppressed.
Now, if such a lad you should happen to see,
He’s wanted by many, but yet—not by me!

ALT

2 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

23d

I love how clear the skies are in Glasgow at this time of year. From Queen's Park this morning, you could see all the way from the nearby autumn trees across the city, out to the Campsie Fells and then on up to Ben More and Stob Binnein, close to Crianlarich more than 40 miles away.

#glasgow #queenspark #glasgowtoday #autumn

The view today from the base of the flagpole in Queen's Park in Glasgow.

ALT

0 0 1 View Post & Replies See Original