Eggplant.place

224d

I like seeing nurse frieda knitting
as I like watching my wife knitting
as I liked watching my mother knitting
though she was more of a dabber
(plain and purl, plain and purl)…

—“in hospital” by Tom Leonard

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/hospital/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #TomLeonard

in hospital
Tom Leonard

I like seeing nurse frieda knitting
as I like watching my wife knitting
as I liked watching my mother knitting
though she was more of a dabber
(plain and purl, plain and purl)

it’s not
“women being in their place”
or knitting the chains that keep them down

just

the future, knitting the future
the present peaceful, quiet
as if

the same woman knitting
for a thousand years

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224d

efturryd geenuz iz speel
iboot whut wuz right
nwhut wuz rang
boot this nthat
nthi nix thing
a sayzti the bloke
nwhut izzit yi caw
yir joab jimmy…

—Tom Leonard, “liason coordinator”
from GHOSTIE MEN (Galloping Dog Press, 1980)

https://www.tomleonard.co.uk/online-poetry-and-prose/liasoncoordinator.html

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Glasgow #Glaswegian #Scots #Scotslanguage #TomLeonard

efturryd geenuz iz speel
iboot whut wuz right
nwhut wuz rang
boot this nthat
nthi nix thing

a sayzti the bloke
nwhut izzit yi caw
yir joab jimmy

am a liason co-ordinator
hi sayz oh good ah sayz
a liason co-ordinator

jist whut this erria needs
whut way aw thi unimploymint
inaw thi bevvyin
nthi boayz runnin amock
nthi hoossyz fawnty bits
nthi wummin n tranquilisers
it last thiv sent uz
a liason co-ordinator

sumdy wia digree
in fuck knows whut
get peyd fur no known
whut thi fuck ti day way it

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224d

one of those with quiet, naturally restrained, insistently monotoned voices

with that little selfcontained smile, always going on about Respect for History and the Abiding Sense of the Traditional…

—Tom Leonard, “The Elect”
published in MARKINGS 27, 2008

https://www.tomleonard.co.uk/online-poetry-and-prose/the-elect.html

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #TomLeonard

The Elect
Tom Leonard

one of those with quiet, naturally restrained, insistently monotoned voices

with that little self-contained smile, always going on about Respect for History and the Abiding Sense of the Traditional

who want all poets to have a sense of “basic form” and who are always quoting Yeats’s “Under Ben Bulben” about poets having to Learn Their Trade and not be All Out of Shape from Toe to Top

who think this has nothing to do with Yeats’s views on eugenics – "the better stocks have not been replacing their numbers” – “The results are already visible in the degeneration of literature” –

who complain of people with voices yclept loud, varied, opinionated, up and down, showy, the insufferably “engaged”, the political johnnies, the performance crowd, the “disastrous influence of the sixties”

who hate poets who carry electrical appliances and who cling fast to Aristotle’s dictum that a poet is a poet insofar as they have a command of metaphor

who do not want to know all this stuff about “the page as a field of semantic tension” or blethers about “the connection between lower case and democracy” or pontificatory nonsense about “the punctuation of spacing” and “the reader being present at the shared point of articulation”

one of them leant over and said to me quietly

do you know if the 44 bus still goes to Knightswood

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224d

“Don’t you find
the use of phonetic urban dialect
rather constrictive?”

—Tom Leonard, “Fathers and Sons”
published in Intimate Voices: Selected Work, 1965–1983 (Galloping Dog Press, 1984)

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #TomLeonard

FATHERS AND SONS
Tom Leonard

I remember being ashamed of my father
when he whispered the words out loud
reading the newspaper.

“Don’t you find
the use of phonetic urban dialect
rather constrictive?”
asks a member of the audience.

The poetry reading is over.
I will go home to my children.

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224d

this is thi
six a clock
news thi
man said n
thi reason
a talk wia
BBC accent
iz coz yi
widny wahnt
mi ti talk
aboot thi
trooth wia
voice lik
wanna yoo
scruff. if
a toktaboot
thi trooth
lik wanna yoo
scruff yi
widny thingk
it wuz troo.
jist wanna yoo
scruff tokn.

—Tom Leonard, “The Six O’Clock News”
🎂 Tom Leonard, 22 Aug 1944

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Glasgow #Glaswegian #voice #Scots #Scotslanguage #TomLeonard

The Six O’Clock News
Tom Leonard

this is thi
six a clock
news thi
man said n
thi reason
a talk wia
BBC accent
iz coz yi
widny wahnt
mi ti talk
aboot thi
trooth wia
voice lik
wanna yoo
scruff. if
a toktaboot
thi trooth
lik wanna yoo
scruff yi
widny thingk
it wuz troo.
jist wanna yoo
scruff tokn.
thirza right
way ti spell
ana right way
to tok it. this
is me tokn yir
right way a
spellin. this
is ma trooth.
yooz doant no
thi trooth
yirsellz cawz
yi canny talk
right. this is
the six a clock
nyooz. belt up.

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225d

These 'Blondes' are turning 100, and they're still a lot of fun

by Maureen Corrigan

https://www.npr.org/2025/08/11/nx-s1-5469836/gentlemen-prefer-blondes-review

Books by Anita Loos at PG:

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/48921

#books #literature

A cover of "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" shows a blond woman in a black low cut gown. All around her are shadowy lecherous-looking men.

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223d

Starlings return
black commas spill from the sky
festooning rooftops
like coal-coloured bunting…

—Nalini Paul, “August”
published in The Flight of the Turtle: New Writing Scotland 29 (ASL, 2011)

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry

Nalini Paul
AUGUST

Starlings return
black commas spill from the sky
festooning rooftops
like coal-coloured bunting.

The blue, yellow and red have gone.
The County Show outshone Shopping Week
by a well-ploughed mile
and heralded winter.

Black cattle, smudges of soot
in the browning fields.

Sunlight spreads
like toffee melting;
blinds drawn by nine.

The wind comes home again
with rain for company
whips the sea back to life
fills the streets with dark song.

Storms wipe the slate of the year clean
as if summer had never been.

But the last few midge bites
still itch.

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223d

Brutalised Africans made Glasgow
amazing disgrace, how sweet the civic amnesia…
mansions without plaques
unrevised street names
no memorial.

—Kate Tough, “People Made Glasgow”

“A contemporary sickness has its roots in unredressed wrongs”

Today, 23 August, is the International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade & its Abolition

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/people-made-glasgow/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Glasgow #slavery #abolition #SlaveryHistory #RememberSlavery

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230d

Women Have Always Written SFF — But It Wasn’t Always Easy to Find

In the 1970s, many of the best new authors were women — do you remember how you first found their work?

By James Davis Nicoll

https://reactormag.com/women-have-always-written-sff-but-it-wasnt-always-easy-to-find/?utm_medium=email&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-8-Jz1eu4TLW6WeYT1nfVqXetVzQwA_H2BcdpfafyWXGvZqXaP0psgm71PUYlZCMcwX9FBeY_MJFuupaw6E6piDGgypgQ&_hsmi=375918471&utm_content=375918471&utm_source=hs_email

Science fiction at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/subject/36

#books #literature

Fresco found in Pompei representing a high society woman with accounting documents.

The fresco shows a young woman in a circular frame. She holds a stylus to her lips with her right hand, while in her left she carries a wax writing tablet bound with cords. Her gaze is steady and contemplative.

She is dressed in a green undergarment with a maroon cloak draped over her shoulders. Her hair is styled in tight curls, held back by a gold net or hairband, and she wears gold hoop earrings.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Sappho_fresco_(from_Pompeii)#/media/File:Sappho_fresco.jpg

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223d

Read the Dramatic 17th-Century Memoirs of Alice Thornton, Who Wrote Four Versions of Her Life Story

Researchers have digitized all four volumes, which are now available online. The autobiographies offer a compelling window into a tumultuous period in English history

By Sonja Anderson

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/read-the-dramatic-17th-century-memoirs-of-alice-thornton-who-wrote-four-versions-of-her-life-story-180987167/?utm_source=smithsoniandaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=editorial&lctg=93133550

The autobiography of Mrs. Alice Thornton is available at @internetarchive
https://ia801308.us.archive.org/9/items/autobiographyofm00thorrich/autobiographyofm00thorrich.pdf

#books #literature

Alice Thornton autobiography title page from 1875.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Alice_Thornton#/media/File:Alice_Thornton_title_page_from_1875.png/2

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222d

John Maclean (1879–1923), socialist & Red Clydesider, was born #OTD, 24 August

Listen to Hamish Henderson’s “The John Maclean March”, sung by Dick Gaughan (1972)
✊

1/3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uAs5cyy5EM

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #song #folksong #socialism #Scotland #workingclass #history #labourhistory #RedClydeside #HamishHenderson #JohnMaclean

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223d

William Blake’s painting The Ghost of a Flea speaks to processing childhood trauma

White paint dots the flea’s eye, so that he appears to be both looking ahead and looking at us.

By Sarah Corbett

https://theconversation.com/william-blakes-painting-the-ghost-of-a-flea-speaks-to-processing-childhood-trauma-234131

William Blake at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/295

#books #art #literature

The Ghost of a Flea, c. 1819–20. Tate. Tempera mixture panel with gold on mahogany, 21.4 cm × 16.2 cm (painting), 38.2 mm × 32.4 mm × 5.0 mm (frame).

The muscular and nude Flea is depicted using its jutting tongue to gorge on a bowl of blood. Part human, part vampire and part reptile, the beast strides from right to left between heavy and richly patterned curtains.

In his left hand he holds an acorn and in his right a thorn, both items drawn from the tradition of fairy iconography.

His massive neck is similar to that of a bull and holds a disproportionally small head, marked by glaring eyes and open jaws, and a venomous slithering tongue.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ghost_of_a_Flea#/media/File:William_Blake_002.jpg

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221d

Shakespeare’s Greatest Rival

Without Christopher Marlowe, there might not have been a Bard.

by Nina Pasquini

https://www.harvardmagazine.com/books-literary-life/harvard-shakespeare-marlowe-literature

Christopher Marlowe at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/410

#books #literature

A 1585 portrait believed to be of Christopher Marlowe, by an unknown artist.

It depicts a young man, with long hair and a light beard, with his arms folded. He is expensively dressed in a dark doublet, possibly velvet, with rows of golden buttons. The doublet has a zig-zag pattern made by cuts in the cloth, exposing the orange lining.

The upper left hand corner of the portrait contains the date anno dni 1585, together with the age of the sitter expressed by the Latin text ætatis suæ 21, meaning of his own age 21.

Below this is a Latin motto, Quod me nutrit me destruit, in English That which nourishes me destroys me.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marlowe_portrait#/media/File:Christopher_Marlowe.jpg

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202d

Roald Dahl (1916–1990) was born #OTD, 13 September. A huge influence on his writing was Saki (Hector Hugh Munro, 1870–1916). Dahl wrote,

“In all literature, [Saki] was the first to employ successfully a wildly outrageous premise in order to make a serious point. I love that. And today the best of his stories are still better than the best of just about every other writer around.”

@bookstodon

1/3

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v38/n16/katherine-rundell/ferrets-can-be-gods

#Scottish #literature #RoaldDahl #kidlit #ChildrensLiterature #Saki

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220d

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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203d

Writer, Resistance Fighter, and Kafka’s First Translator: Milena Jesenská, Forgotten No More

Christine Estima on Breathing Fictional Life Into a Long-Overlooked Literary Figure

https://lithub.com/writer-resistance-fighter-and-kafkas-first-translator-milena-jesenska-forgotten-no-more/

Kafka at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/1735

#books #translators #literature

Milena Jesenská (1896 - 1944) - Czech journalist, writer and translator.

Milena Jesenská appears as a poised young woman with strong, well-defined features. Her face is oval with expressive dark eyes, a straight nose, and full lips. She often wears her dark hair in a short, modern bob. She is dressed quite simply.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milena_Jesensk%C3%A1#/media/File:Milena_Jesensk%C3%A1.jpg

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203d

10 Famous Authors and Their Unfinished Manuscripts

By Bess Lovejoy (from the archives)

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/67424/10-famous-authors-and-their-unfinished-manuscripts

Twain, Dickens, Virgil, Kafka, Hemingway, Gogol, Chaucer at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/53
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/37
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/129
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/1735
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/50533
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/531
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/144

#books #literature

Mark Twain photo portrait, 1907.

He is shown with a full head of thick, white hair. His large, bushy mustache dominates his face. Twain is dressed formally in a light-colored suit, waistcoat, and tie.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mark_Twain#/media/File:MarkTwain.LOC.jpg/2

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1y

American writer Harriette Woods Baker was born #OTD in 1815.

She wrote under the pseudonym "Madeline Leslie." She devoted herself successfully to novels; but after about 15 years, she wrote popular religious literature. Some of her well-known titles include The Family in the Parsonage (1853), The Mother’s Mission (1854), and The Orphan Children (1856).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriette_Woods_Baker

Books by Madeline Leslie at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/31136

#books #literature

Harriette Newell Woods Baker
G. Derby & J. T. White - T. White The National Cyclopædia of American Biography: Being the History of the United States as Illustrated in the Lives of the Founders, Builders, and Defenders of the Republic, and of the Men and Women who are Doing the Work and Moulding the Thought of the Present Time

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222d

From Renaissance Florence to today’s global stage, Guicciardini’s shrewd maxims show that medieval political wisdom never goes out of style.

https://www.medievalists.net/2025/08/medieval-wisdom-for-modern-politics/

Medieval history and literature at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/subject/2863

#books #literature #history

Ritratto di Francesco Guicciardini.

The painting presents Guicciardini in the formal, sober style typical of early 16th-century Florentine portraiture. He is shown as a mature man with a thoughtful, somewhat severe expression.

Dressed in dark, dignified clothing, likely a scholar’s or statesman’s robe, he embodies intellectual authority and civic responsibility.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francesco_Guicciardini#/media/File:Ritratto_di_Francesco_Guicciardini.jpg

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222d

Practical Translation: Proust

A panel discussion moderated by Merve Emre

https://www.nybooks.com/online/2025/08/24/on-translation-practical-translation-merve-emre/

Marcel Proust (as an author and translator) at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/987

#books #literature #Translation

First galley proof of A la recherche du temps perdu: Du côté de chez Swann with handwritten revision notes by Marcel Proust (1871 - 1922). Auctioned by Christie's in July 2000 for £663,750 — a world record for a French literary manuscript.

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%80_la_recherche_du_temps_perdu#/media/Fichier:MS_A_la_recherche_du_temps_perdu.jpg

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202d

Tweed: conversations I
27 Sept, Galashiels. Free, ticketed.

Join Connecting Threads at Little Art Hub, Galashiels, for a session of poetry reading, riverside conversation & printmaking in celebration of Tweed, a new full-length poem in Scots by Borders-based poet Craig Aitchison.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/tweed-conversations-i-tickets-1635888339059

#Scottish #literature #poetry #printmaking

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219d

…but witness these brittle August
bluebells casting seed,
like tiny hearts in caskets
tossed onto a battle ground.

—Kathleen Jamie, “Reliquary”
published in THE TREE HOUSE (Picador, 2004)

1/4

https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/kathleen-jamie/the-tree-house/9781509891825

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #history

Reliquary
by Kathleen Jamie

The land we inhabit opens to reveal
the stain of ancient settlements,
plague pits where we’d lay
our fibre-optic cables;

but witness these brittle August
bluebells casting seed,
like tiny hearts in caskets
tossed onto a battle ground.

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219d

SCOTTISH LITERARY REVIEW 17/1
Spring/Summer 2025

Special issue

Scotland’s Branches: Language, Literature & Culture across Time

Guest edited by Gioia Angeletti & Marina Dossena

Now online FREE on Open Access via Project MUSE

@litstudies

https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/55288

#Scottish #literature #literarystudies #culturalstudies

A yellow journal cover with black lettering:

SCOTTISH
LITERARY
REVIEW

Spring | Summer 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.

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Contents

Editorial

Alessandra Petrina – On the Margins: Early Modern Scottish Writing

Allison L. Steenson – ‘Nusquam Audita’: Mary, Queen of Scots, the Hawthornden Manuscripts, and the Union of the Crowns

Licia Masoni – Revisiting the Past for Young Readers: Retellings of Traditional Tales in Scottish Picturebooks

Manuela D’Amore – Past and Current Trends in Italian Scottish Migration Writings: Time and Memory in Joe Pieri and Anne Pia

Gioia Angeletti – The Future of the Past: Revisionism, Theatricality, and National Identity in Three Scottish Plays from the 1970s to 2010

Notes on Contributors

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219d

A CHAOS OF LIGHT
New Writing Scotland 43
Ed. by Kirstin Innes, Chris Powici & Niall O’Gallagher

“writing that unsettles and challenges, that questions assumptions and gets us to look at, when it feels so much less painful to look away… A rich, boisterous, tender, charming, angry, sorrowful, gleeful mix”

Available now from all good bookshops!

@bookstodon
@writingcommunity

https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/newwriting/nws43/

#Scottish #literature #poetry #shortstories #shortfiction #newwriting #writingcommunity

Book cover

A Chaos of Light
New Writing Scotland 43

Edited by Kirstin Innes and Chris Powici
Gaelic Editor: Niall O'Gallagher

A dark purple-black cover. The book title is in pale yellow. A beam of white light rises up from the foot of the cover, forming the letter I in LIGHT. It hits the bottom of the capital A in CHAOS – represented by an upwards-pointing solid triangle – and a burst of colour emerges from the right-hand side of the triangle, as if light was passing through a prism. Multicoloured sparkles rise from the right-hand edge of the cover where the spectrum of light hits it.

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217d

Two Years After Cormac McCarthy’s Death, Rare Access to His Personal Library Reveals the Man Behind the Myth

The famously reclusive novelist amassed a collection of thousands of books ranging in topics from philosophical treatises to advanced mathematics to the naked mole-rat

By Richard Grant

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/two-years-cormac-mccarthys-death-rare-access-to-personal-library-reveals-man-behind-myth-180987150/?utm_source=smithsoniandaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=editorial&lctg=93133550

#books #literature