Eggplant.place

238d

A Past Most Queer: Remembering Sylvia Townsend Warner’s Radical Gay Historical Fiction

B. Pietras on Queering “Flint Anchor,” LGBTQ Historical Stories, and Finding the Present in the Past

https://lithub.com/a-past-most-queer-remembering-sylvia-townsend-warners-radical-gay-historical-fiction/

Sylvia Townsend at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=sylvia+townsend

#books #literature #lgbt

Photo of Sylvia Nora Townsend Warner.

She is depicted seated in a modest setting, dressed in simple yet elegant clothing typical of the early to mid-20th century, with her hair neatly styled, parted at the side.

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

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240d

The International Council on Archives / Conseil international des archives was founded #OTD, 9 June, 1948, under the auspices of UNESCO.

To celebrate, here’s Edwin Morgan’s poem “Archives”, published in Centenary Selected Poems (Carcanet, 2020)

https://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?product=9781784109967

#Scottish #literature #poem #archives #poetry #InternationalArchivesDay #UNESCO #EdwinMorgan

Archives
by Edwin Morgan

generation upon
generation upon
generation upon
generation upon
generation upon
generation upon
generation upon
generation upon
generation upon
generation upon
generation upon
generation upon
generation upon
generation upon
generation upon
generation upon
generation upon
generation upon
generation upon
generation upon
g neration up n
g nerat on up n
g nerat n up n
g nerat n p n
g erat n p n
g era n p n
g era n n
g er n n
g r n n
g n n
g n
g

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255d

A Restless Intellect

“Widely respected – & regularly attacked (once physically) – in her lifetime, she is now largely neglected; an intriguing aside to feminism or to agnosticism. Dixie deserves better.”

Florence Dixie (1855–1905) – novelist, poet, dramatist, war correspondent, campaigning journalist, suffragist, & more – was born #OTD, 25 May. Valentina Bold explores Dixie’s roving life

@litstudies

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https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2021/12/a-restless-intellect-florence-dixie-1855-1905/

#Scottish #literature #Victorian #19thcentury #womenwriters

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240d

Well Versed Author Event: Peter Mackay

18 June, free online

Open Book welcomes Scotland’s Makar Peter Mackay to share some poems, have a chat, & give attendees a chance to ask questions. Part of Open Book’s Well Versed series in partnership with StAnza International Poetry Festival.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/well-versed-author-events-peter-mackay-tickets-1383659144749

#Scottish #literature #poetry

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240d

Where’s Brude? Where’s Brude?
So many souls to be saved!

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

Today, 9 June, is the feast day of St Columba (c.521–597), who led the Irish monastic missions to Dál Riata & the kingdoms of the Picts

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

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #EdwinMorgan #saints #StColumba

Columba's Song
by Edwin Morgan

Where's Brude? Where's Brude?
So many souls to be saved!
The bracken is thick, the wildcat is quick,
the foxes dance in the moonlight,
the salmon dance in the waters,
the adders dance in the thick brown bracken.
Where's Brude? Where's man?
There's too much nature here,
eagles and deer,
but where's the mind and where's the soul?
Show me your kings, your women, the man of the plough.
And cry me to your cradles.
It wasn't for a fox or an eagle I set sail!

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254d

Circe in The Odyssey: The Enchantress Who Defied a Hero

A goddess, a witch, a sorceress—Circe in The Odyssey has been called many things.

By Mandy Nachampassack-Maloney

https://www.thecollector.com/circe-the-odyssey-enchantress/

The Odyssey at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1727

#books #literature #mythology

Circe Offering the Cup to Odysseus by John William Waterhouse.

The painting depicts the enchantress Circe, seated regally on a golden throne, clad in a flowing, deep-blue gown. She holds a golden cup aloft in her right hand, offering it to Odysseus, whom she has attempted to seduce and enchant.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circe#/media/File:Circe_Offering_the_Cup_to_Odysseus.jpg

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243d

“The Sodgers”, by Alexander Scott (1920–1989)

Alexander Scott landed in Normandy with the Gordon Highlanders, & saw action in the Ardennes & crossing the Rhine. He later became Head of Scottish Literature at the University of Glasgow, & was president of ASL from 1976–79

Published in FROM THE LINE: Scottish War Poetry 1914–1945, ed. David Goldie & Roderick Watson

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

#Scottish #literature #Scots #ScotsLanguage #poem #poetry #DDay #WW2 #WarPoetry

The Sodgers
by Alexander Scott

Nae wi the gallus captains
That niver jinkit war
But socht for glory's wildfire lowe
As wise men aince for anither star—

And nae wi the ramstam colonels
That leuch at the din o the drum
And skirled for the bleeze o battle's Inferno
As saunts micht skirl for Kingdom Come—

But aye wi the sweirt sodgers
That niver wished tae dee
And anelie marched the forrart road
Sen onie back they cudna see—

Near blind wi the reek o wappins
And the reek o leean words,
But niver near sae blind wi bluid
As faa in luve wi guns and swords.

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240d

‘Do you know what we should do
what turns over in my mind?
Begin to sing old songs!
Lend voice to our runes.’

Reading the Kalevala

By Lyonel Perabo

https://wildhunt.org/2025/06/reading-the-kalevala.html

Kalevala at PG:
https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/5186

#books #literature #poetry

Inside front title page of The "Old" Kalevala, Finnish national epos, collection of old Finnish poems, by Elias Lönnrot. First edition; volume 1, 1835.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalevala#/media/File:Kalevala1.jpg

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243d

When you have walked through a town, as an infantryman
you’ll never go through streets the same way again…

—Colin McIntyre (1927–2012), “Infantryman”
Published in FROM THE LINE: Scottish War Poetry 1914–1945

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

#Scottish #literature #poem #DDay #poetry #WarPoetry #WW2

Infantryman
by Colin McIntyre

When you have walked through a town, as an infantryman
you'll never go through streets the same way again.

There is shoulder-ache from rifle-sling, and sore
butt-bruise, of bolt, on hip and thigh.

The walk comes somewhere between slope and slow hike,
a wary step, splay-footed, as drawers cellular,
catch in the crotch, twist centrifugally around.

Our lot moved at slow deliberate plod, eyes down, look out,
Ted walked on the left, looks right; I took the right,
looked left. Well spaced out, bloody tired all the time.

Ted and I had a reputation, in Four Section, for hitting
the deck, together, quick as a flash, at the first shell.
Ted had a nose for crossroads ranged by guns.

Infantrymen grow fat in later years, from never walking.
Ted would have become quite gross. But Ted's dead.
Stepped on an AP mine in champagne country.
Cheers, Ted, you old sod, you.

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254d

From the Scottish Poetry Library archives: poet & novelist John Burnside discusses fellow Scottish poet W.S. Graham. During the talk, recorded at the National Library of Scotland, Burnside talks about poetry & visual art, the poet as nomad, & “feeding the dead”

https://splpodcast.podbean.com/e/john-burnside-on-ws-graham

#Scottish #literature #poetry #visualart #poets #JohnBurnside #WSGraham

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243d

We’re the D-Day Dodgers out in Italy,
Always on the vino, always on the spree…

—“The Ballad of the D-Day Dodgers”, a WW2 soldiers’ song collected by Hamish Henderson
Sung by Rod Paterson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDXoXx7RRWs&list=OLAK5uy_lyHb3w_CdLiyDsHl84M6obGIoyIc2Ydl4&index=2

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #song #soldiers #DDay #warpoetry #Italy

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241d

as we find a way to wipe your armpit
without lifting your arm up and away

you say, you’ve never seen me so (I forget
the word you use and replace it with close

as in, we’ve never been so close) and I say
I was thinking that…

—Kathrine Sowerby, “about your armpit”
published in GUTTER 28

A poem for #Pride 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/about-your-armpit/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Pride #Pride2025 #LGBTQ

about your armpit
Kathrine Sowerby

as we find a way to wipe your armpit
without lifting your arm up and away

you say, you’ve never seen me so (I forget
the word you use and replace it with close

as in, we’ve never been so close) and I say
I was thinking that—it’s because, you say

I didn’t want you near what wasn’t my body
(I’m putting it into words before I forget)

there isn’t much space between the stiff
compression vest and your arm but I ease

the cloth in and two days later I’m thinking
of the word honour, as in what an honour

which is not a word I often use and I wonder
what you would say, if you knew I was writing

about your armpit

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254d

The Scottish anthropologist who inspired Dracula

“More decidedly evil is the nosferatu, or vampire, in which every Roumanian peasant believes as firmly as he does in heaven or hell…”

—from THE LAND BEYOND THE FOREST: Facts, Figures, & Fancies from Transylvania (1888), by Airdrie’s own Emily Gerard. Gerard’s work was a key part of Bram Stoker’s research materials for Dracula.

#DraculaDay 🧛‍♂️

https://crimereads.com/the-scottish-anthropologist-who-inspired-dracula/

#Scottish #literature #Romania #Vampire #Dracula

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254d

On a quiet riverbank a boy meets a stranger going through a rough patch, as the two keep tabs on a controversial rewilding project

Currently on BBC Sounds: “The Give & Take”, by Linda Cracknell

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002bv3p

#Scottish #literature #drama #radiodrama #rewilding

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241d

To quote my distant friend Imran MacLeod,
“A man with no culture has no identity”…

—Hamid Shami, “Lost”
published in Wish I Was Here: a Scottish multicultural anthology (pocketbooks, 2000)

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

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #multiculturalism

Lost
Hamid Shami

To quote my distant friend Imran MacLeod,
‘A man with no culture has no identity.’

The last I heard of him was, he was off
To the Himalayas.

He had a very confused childhood.

Father was Scottish,
Mother Pakistani.

They’d always be arguing over many things
Concerning him.

One was religion.

Father wanted him brought up
A Catholic; mother wanted a Muslim.

Was the only boy on our street who went
To mosque on Fridays and chapel on Sundays.

But in the mountains

God’s sure to find him.

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254d

Mrs Bram Stoker’s recipe for “Dracula Salad” – published in CRUDEN RECIPES & WRINKLES (Cruden Parish Church, 1912), & contributed shortly after Bram Stoker’s death – via Mike Shepherd on Facebook

#DraculaDay 🧛‍♂️

https://www.facebook.com/groups/scotlit/posts/10161485849160090/

#Scottish #literature #BramStoker #Dracula #recipes #Salad

Part of a page from Cruden Recipes and Wrinkles (1912). The paper is old and slightly spotted with age.

Salads, Sauces, &c.

SALAD.
(Mrs PIRIE, Bank House, Lonmay).
Wash and pick two heads of lettuce. Shred them, and add the white of a hard boiled egg cut in rings. Pound the yolk. Add a little salt, a large teaspoonful of made mustard, one breakfastcupful of cream, and a little vinegar. Mix well. Pour over the lettuce, and turn over the whole a few times with a spoon and fork. If liked a few slices of tomato may be added.

THE "DRACULA" SALAD.
(Mrs BRAM STOKER, 26 St George's Square, London, S.W.)
Arrange alternate slices of ripe tomatoes, and ripe, purple, egg-shaped plums in dish, and dress with oil and vinegar French dressing.

BREAD SAUCE.
(Mrs J. SMITH, Easterton, Peterhead).
1/2 pint milk.
2 cloves.
1 small onion.
2 oz. bread crumbs.
Pepper and salt.
1 oz. butter.

Stick the cloves in the onion. Put the milk in a saucepan. Add the onion, and set at the side of stove for half an hour. Warm it, but do not boil. Shake out the onion and add the crumbs, butter, salt, and a good pinch of pepper. Stir until the bread crumbs have absorbed the milk.

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243d

Ye think thon wes the end?
Yon meetin in the wuids
When Thracian Orpheus heard the drum, the cries,
The whud o the bacchantes’ thrangan feet…

—“Orpheus”, by Tom Scott (1918–1995), born #OTD, 6 June
Published in A KIST O SKINKLAN THINGS

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

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Scots #Scotslanguage #20thcentury #Mythology #GreekMythology

Tom Scott
Orpheus

Ye think thon wes the end?
Yon meetin in the wuids
When Thracian Orpheus heard the drum, the cries,
The whud o the bacchantes’ thrangan feet
And, seik in saul,
Mad to be jyned for aye to his Eurydikee,
Strung his harp
And gaed to meet them wi a sang.
Ye think thon wes the end?

Na. Eftir the thrang breeled on, red
Fingert, bluidie-mawed, the riven limbs
Quiveran aye amang the mairtyred gress,
There wes a lull
And throu it syne a roun
And syne as muckle’s a moan
And syne a voice,
Yon voice o his
That quietit the forest and its fowk,
That reconcilit lion and lamb,
Ordert the rain,
Spoke frae the grund
And threept in the greitan tree
‘Euridikee! Euridikee!’

And at the name
A ferlie thing wes duin.
Thir broken bits o bodie, bits o bane,
Brisket, gash, airm and droukit hair
Cam thegither as gin some will
Mair nor the merely real
Had wrocht on them.
And on yon slauchtert grund was formed
Orpheus anew,
Orpheus the singer, Orpheus the makar,
Orpheus cleansed o the auld despair.
And by the halie tree
In the leaman licht o the wuid,
Squired by a houlet, a hawk and a doo,
Wes his Euridikee.

They say he made a new sang,
A nobler nor the auld,
And sings it aye in the great haa o the warld.

They say it will nevir end.

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254d

‘A steamy wrestle’: Guardian article inspires play on Shakespeare and Marlowe collaboration

Exclusive: Born With Teeth by Liz Duffy Adams, coming to West End, imagines rival dramatists working together

By Dalya Alberge

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2025/may/26/guardian-article-inspires-rsc-play-shakespeare-marlowe

Shakespeare and Marlowe at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/65
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/410

#books #literature #literarycriticism

William Shakespeare by John Taylor.

Shakespeare is depicted with a high forehead, dark eyes, and a trimmed moustache and goatee. His dark, curled hair is shoulder-length, and he wears a black doublet with a soft white collar and a gold earring in his left ear—a detail that adds a touch of artistic flair and Elizabethan style.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shakespeare#/media/File:William_Shakespeare_by_John_Taylor,_edited.jpg

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Anonymous portrait, possibly of Marlowe, at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.

It depicts a young man, thought by some scholars to be Marlowe, at the age of 21, wearing a richly patterned black doublet embroidered with gold thread in a swirling vine motif—typical of late 16th-century fashion.

The subject has dark, curled hair, a fine complexion, and a direct, confident gaze.

Above the figure, a Latin inscription reads: "Quod me nutrit me destruit" (“That which nourishes me destroys me”)—a phrase associated with dangerous intellect and intense passion, further fueling speculation that the portrait may represent Marlowe.

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

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253d

You told me the brightest flowers grow on sand.

By the breakwater, a frayed nest of fishers’ rope
twined into a bouquet: pale blue, green, teal,
and peach; a twisted tale of what growth is…

—Jane McKie, “Rope”
Published in nobody remembers the birdman: New Writing Scotland 40 (ASL, 2022)

https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/newwriting/nws40/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry

Jane McKie
ROPE

You told me the brightest flowers grow on sand.

By the breakwater, a frayed nest of fishers’ rope
twined into a bouquet: pale blue, green, teal,
and peach; a twisted tale of what growth is.
But you are right – they are flowers in the way
of any weathered thing, unpicking itself,
or hollowing itself into something eye-catching,
essential: a split egg of rock, a breaking wave.

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253d

Robert Burns & Black Lives

24 June, Alloway. Free – booking recommended

Clark McGinn examines Burns’s connections to the transatlantic slave trade, highlighting the paradoxes & moral conflicts during the poet’s time. He does not shy away from uncomfortable truths, presenting a nuanced portrait that challenges readers to reconcile Burns’s literary genius with the ethical ambiguities of his time.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/highlight-talk-clark-mcginn-on-burns-and-black-lives-tickets-1354716606839

#Scottish #literature #RobertBurns #TransatlanticSlaveTrade #18thcentury

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253d

The Wrong Side and The Right Side (of History) - Albert Camus On Being 'Human and Simple'

By Paul Sorene

https://flashbak.com/albert-camus-the-wrong-side-and-the-right-side-475865/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=albert-camus-the-wrong-side-and-the-right-side

More information:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Camus

#books #literature #history

Albert Camus, Nobel prize winner, half-length portrait, seated at desk, facing left, smoking cigarette.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Camus#/media/File:Albert_Camus,_gagnant_de_prix_Nobel,_portrait_en_buste,_pos%C3%A9_au_bureau,_faisant_face_%C3%A0_gauche,_cigarette_de_tabagisme.jpg

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253d

Behind the Scenes Tour at the Mitchell Library
14 June, Mitchell Library, Glasgow. Free, ticketed

An exclusive guided tour of the Mitchell Library – one of Europe’s largest public libraries. Dawn Vallance, Principal Librarian at the Mitchell Library, will lead a tour of the vast back stacks of the Mitchell, not usually accessible to the public.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/behind-the-scenes-tour-at-the-mitchell-library-tickets-1374282378589

#Scottish #literature #libraries #architecture #history #Glasgow #MitchellLibrary

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253d

Moscow is milling with watermelons.
Everything breathes a boundless freedom.
And it blows with unbridled fierceness
from the breathless melonvendors…

“Commended as a Russian translator… for his rendering of Mayakovsky into Scots, Morgan gets the muscles of the English language working with similar vigour in his treatment of Voznesensky”

—Carol Rumens on Edwin Morgan’s translation of Andrei Voznesensky

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/may/26/poem-of-the-week-selling-watermelons-by-andrei-voznesensky-translated-by-edwin-morgan

#Scottish #literature #translation #Russian #poem #poetry

Selling Watermelons
by Andrei Voznesensky
translated by Edwin Morgan

Moscow is milling with watermelons.
Everything breathes a boundless freedom.
And it blows with unbridled fierceness
from the breathless melonvendors.

Stalls. Din. Girls’ headscarves.
They laugh. Change bangs down. Knives —

and a choice sample slice.
— Take one, chief, for a long life!
Who’s for a melon?
Freshly split! —

And just as tasty and just as juicy are
the capbands of policemen
and the ranks of motor-scooters.
The September air is fresh and keen
and resonant as a watermelon.

And just as joyfully on its own tack
as the city-limit melon-multitudes,
the earth swings in its great string-bag
of meridians and latitudes!

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241d

This week; the sermon is salt
and the taste of it as song. A clean, cold burn

quickens the blood…

—A.M. Havinden, “Sea Chapel”
published in Break in Case of Silence: New Writing Scotland 39 (ASL, 2021)

https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/newwriting/nws39/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry

A. M. Havinden
Sea Chapel

This week; the sermon is salt
and the taste of it as song. A clean, cold burn

quickens the blood. Unseen, underfoot,
deep notes of wrack and weed wind

ankles. We raise our voices
in bright blasphemy, in shock and defiance

a hymn of human-scale endurance,
how great and small we are;

how outrageously alone; how far
we’ve come, suddenly, from shore.

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241d

Died this Day:

Murray Leinster (June 16, 1896 – June 8, 1975), an American writer of science fiction. He is best known for “First Contact,” which won the 1996 Retro-Hugo Award for Best Novelette. Leinster also won the 1956 Hugo Award for “Exploration Team” and is honored by the Sidewise Award, named after his story “Sidewise in Time”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Leinster
#Literature
#SciFi
#ScienceFiction
#books
#bookstodon
#coverart
#MurrayLeinster

Groups:
@books
@scifi
@Scifiart
@sciencefiction

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