Eggplant.place

4d

<a href="/tags/otd/" rel="tag">#OTD</a> in 1770 English poet William Wordsworth was born.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Wordsworth" rel="nofollow" class="ellipsis" title="en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Wordsworth">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Wordsworth</a>Books by Wordsworth at PG:<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/2879" rel="nofollow" class="ellipsis" title="www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/2879">https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/2879</a><a href="/tags/books/" rel="tag">#books</a> <a href="/tags/literature/" rel="tag">#literature</a> <a href="/tags/poetry/" rel="tag">#poetry</a>

Portrait of William Wordsworth by William Shuter. He has brown hair and his left hand is tucked into his coat. His right hand is over a chair.

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4d

As by barren trackway on a mountain crest with view of scree and corrie, ridge and col, a traveller might pause…—“A cairn”, by Gael Turnbull (1928–2004) – born <a href="/tags/otd/" rel="tag">#OTD</a>, 7 April from WHILE BREATH PERSIST (The Porcupine’s Quill, 1992)1/3<a href="https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/cairn/" rel="nofollow" class="ellipsis" title="www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/cairn/">https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/cairn/</a><a href="/tags/scottish/" rel="tag">#Scottish</a> <a href="/tags/literature/" rel="tag">#literature</a> <a href="/tags/poem/" rel="tag">#poem</a> <a href="/tags/poetry/" rel="tag">#poetry</a>

A Cairn
by Gael Turnbull

As by barren trackway
on a mountain crest
with view of scree and corrie,
ridge and col,
a traveller might pause,
take bearings, cast
in tribute to record:
“A man came here, went on,
left common token, shared
with those who went before
and shall come after.”

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4d

It’s hard to think that the earth is one – This poor sad bearer of wars and disasters Rolls-Roycing round the sun with its load of gangsters, Attended only by the loveless moon.—Norman MacCaig, “Stars and Planets” published in The Poems of Norman MacCaig (Birlinn, 2009)<a href="https://birlinn.co.uk/product/the-poems-of-norman-maccaig/" rel="nofollow" class="ellipsis" title="birlinn.co.uk/product/the-poems-of-norman-maccaig/">https://birlinn.co.uk/product/the-poems-of-norman-maccaig/</a><a href="/tags/scottish/" rel="tag">#Scottish</a> <a href="/tags/literature/" rel="tag">#literature</a> <a href="/tags/poem/" rel="tag">#poem</a> <a href="/tags/poetry/" rel="tag">#poetry</a> <a href="/tags/20thcentury/" rel="tag">#20thcentury</a>

Stars and Planets
by Norman MacCaig

Trees are cages for them: water holds its breath
To balance them without smudging on its delicate meniscus.
Children watch them playing in their heavenly playground;
Men use them to lug ships across oceans, through firths.

They seem so twinkle-still, but they never cease
Inventing new spaces and huge explosions
And migrating in mathematical tribes over
The steppes of space at their outrageous ease.

It’s hard to think that the earth is one –
This poor sad bearer of wars and disasters
Rolls-Roycing round the sun with its load of gangsters,
Attended only by the loveless moon.

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4d

Nothing But the Poem – Robin RobertsonWinner of all three Forward Prizes for poetry, Robin Robertson also holds the distinction of writing the only poem ever nominated for the Booker Prize: his epic 2018 work The Long Take.In this new episode of the Scottish Poetry Library podcast, Samuel Tongue explores two vintage Robin Robertson poems: ‘Cat, Failing’ & ‘Swimming in the Woods’.<a href="https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/podcast/nothing-but-the-poem-robin-robertson/" rel="nofollow" class="ellipsis" title="www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/podcast/nothing-but-the-poem-robin-robertson/">https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/podcast/nothing-but-the-poem-robin-robertson/</a><a href="/tags/scottish/" rel="tag">#Scottish</a> <a href="/tags/literature/" rel="tag">#literature</a> <a href="/tags/poetry/" rel="tag">#poetry</a> <a href="/tags/podcast/" rel="tag">#podcast</a>

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4d

Chì mi rè geàrd na h-oidhche dreòs air chrith ’na fhroidhneas thall air fàire, a’ clapail le a sgiathaibh, a’ sgapadh ’s a’ ciaradh rionnagan na h-àird’ ud…—Deòrsa Mac Iain Deòrsa (George Campbell Hay), “Bisearta”. Hay witnessed the Allied bombing of Bizerte in 1943<a href="/tags/scottish/" rel="tag">#Scottish</a> <a href="/tags/literature/" rel="tag">#literature</a> <a href="/tags/gaidhlig/" rel="tag">#Gaidhlig</a> <a href="/tags/gaelic/" rel="tag">#Gaelic</a> <a href="/tags/poem/" rel="tag">#poem</a> <a href="/tags/poetry/" rel="tag">#poetry</a> <a href="/tags/warpoetry/" rel="tag">#warpoetry</a> <a href="/tags/ww2/" rel="tag">#ww2</a>

Deorsa Mac lain Deòrsa (George Campbell Hay)
Bisearta

Chì mi rè geard na h-oidhche
dreòs air chrith ’na fhroidhneas thall air fàire,
a’ clapail le a sgiathaibh,
a’sgapadh ’s a’ ciaradh rionnagan na h-àird’ ud.

Shaoileadh tu gun cluinnte,
ge cian, o ’bhuillsgein ochanaich no caoineadh,
ràn corraich no gàir fuatha,
comhart chon cuthaich uaith no ulfhairt fhaolchon,
gun ruigeadh drannd an fhòirneirt
on fhùirneis òmair iomall fhèin an t-saoghail.
Ach siud a’ dol an leud e
ri oir an speur an tostachd olc is aognaidh.

C’ainm nochd a th’ orra,
na sràidean bochda anns an sgeith gach uinneag
a lasraichean ’s a deatach,
a sradagan is sgreadail a luchd thuinidh,
is taigh air thaigh ga reubadh
am broinn a chèile am brùchdadh toit’ a’ tuiteam?
Is cò a-nochd tha ’g atach
am Bàs a theachd gu grad ’nan cainntibh uile,
no a’ spàirn measg chlach is shailthean
air bhàinidh a’ gairm air cobhair, is nach cluinnear?
Cò a-nochd a phàigheas
seann chìs àbhaisteach na fala cumant?

Uair dearg mar lod na h-àraich,
uair bàn mar ghile thràighte an eagail èitigh,
a’ dìreadh ’a uair a’ teàrnadh,
a’ sìneadh le sitheadh àrd ’s a’ call a mheudachd,
a’ fannachadh car aitil
’s ag at mar anail dhiabhail air dhèinead,
an t-Olc ’na chridhe ’s ’na chuisle,
chì mi ’na bhuillean a’ sìoladh ’s a’ leum e.
Tha ’n dreòs ’na oillt air fàire,
’na fhàinne ròis is òir am bun nan speuran,
a’ breugnachadh ’s ag àicheadh
le ’shoillse sèimhe àrsaidh àrd nan reultan.

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Bizerta
translated by George Campbell Hay

I see during the night guard
a blaze flickering, fringing the skyline over yonder,
beating with its wings
and scattering and dimming the stars of that airt.

You would think that there would be heard
from its midst, though far away, wailing and lamentation,
the roar of rage and the yell of hate,
the barking of frenzied dogs from it or the howling of wolves,
that the snarl of violence would reach
from yon amber furnace the very edge of the world;
but yonder it spreads
along the rim of the sky in evil ghastly silence.

What is their name tonight,
the poor streets where every window spews
its flame and smoke,
its sparks and the screaming of its inmates,
while house upon house is rent
and collapses in a gust of smoke?
And who tonight are beseeching
Death to come quickly in all their tongues,
or are struggling among stones and beams,
crying in frenzy for help, and are not heard?
Who tonight is paying
the old accustomed tax of common blood?

Now red like a battlefield puddle,
now pale like the drained whiteness of foul fear,
climbing and sinking,
reaching and darting up and shrinking in size,
growing faint for a moment
and swelling like the breath of a devil in intensity,
I see Evil as a pulse and a heart
declining and leaping in throbs.
The blaze, a horror on the skyline,
a ring of rose and gold at the foot of the sky,
belies and denies
with its light the ancient high tranquillity of the stars.

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3d

Living without my selfOur culture valorises the big, coherent self: reading Robert Musil helps me embrace the beauty of my no-self existenceby Mette Leonard Høeg<a href="https://aeon.co/essays/robert-musil-gives-confidence-to-the-no-self-minority-like-me?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=a074b02ade-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2026_04_07&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-4ef8a26106-72664972" rel="nofollow" class="ellipsis" title="aeon.co/essays/robert-musil-gives-confidence-to-the-no-self-minority-like-me?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=a074b02ade-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2026_04_07&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-4ef8a26106-72664972">https://aeon.co/essays/robert-musil-gives-confidence-to-the-no-self-minority-like-me?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=a074b02ade-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2026_04_07&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-4ef8a26106-72664972</a>Musil at PG: <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/37187" rel="nofollow" class="ellipsis" title="www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/37187">https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/37187</a><a href="/tags/books/" rel="tag">#books</a> <a href="/tags/literature/" rel="tag">#literature</a>

Robert Musil in 1900

Unknown author - Scan du livre .Musil, Journaux

Musil faces the camera directly with a composed, self-possessed expression. He has short, neatly parted dark hair, a trim moustache, and wears a dark jacket with a white collar and bow tie.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Robert_Musil#/media/File:Robert_Musil_1900.jpg

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3d

“The ballad’s enduring appeal (and Romantasy’s, too) is that it flips the traditional narrative of heroism on its head”In the early Scottish ballad “Tam Lin”, the titular man is rescued from the fairies by the bravery of Janet, the heroine<a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/romantasy-history-acotar-celtic-folklore" rel="nofollow" class="ellipsis" title="www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/romantasy-history-acotar-celtic-folklore">https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/romantasy-history-acotar-celtic-folklore</a><a href="/tags/scottish/" rel="tag">#Scottish</a> <a href="/tags/literature/" rel="tag">#literature</a> <a href="/tags/folklore/" rel="tag">#folklore</a> <a href="/tags/ballad/" rel="tag">#ballad</a> <a href="/tags/romantasy/" rel="tag">#romantasy</a> <a href="/tags/tamlin/" rel="tag">#TamLin</a> <a href="/tags/16thcentury/" rel="tag">#16thcentury</a>

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3d

The boy is ten and today it is his birthday. Behind him on the lawn his mother and his little sister unfurl a rainbow crayoned big and bright on a roll of old wallpaper…—Liz Lochhead, “The Spaces Between” – Glasgow, April 2020 published in A HANDSEL (Birlinn, 2023)<a href="https://birlinn.co.uk/product/a-handsel/" rel="nofollow" class="ellipsis" title="birlinn.co.uk/product/a-handsel/">https://birlinn.co.uk/product/a-handsel/</a><a href="/tags/scottish/" rel="tag">#Scottish</a> <a href="/tags/literature/" rel="tag">#literature</a> <a href="/tags/poem/" rel="tag">#poem</a> <a href="/tags/poetry/" rel="tag">#poetry</a> <a href="/tags/covid/" rel="tag">#covid</a> <a href="/tags/lockdown/" rel="tag">#lockdown</a>

The Spaces Between
Liz Lochhead

(for Leslie McGuire)

The boy is ten and today it is his birthday.
Behind him on the lawn
his mother and his little sister
unfurl a rainbow crayoned big and bright
on a roll of old wallpaper.
His father, big-eyed, mock-solemn, pantomimes ceremony
as he lights the ten candles on the cake.
Inside her living-room
his grandmother puts her open palm to the window.
Out in the garden, her grandson
reaches up, mirrors her, stretching fingers
and they smile and smile as if they touched
warm flesh not cold glass.

More than forty thousand years ago
men or women splayed their fingers thus
and put their hands to bare rock, they
chewed ochre, red-ochre, gritted charcoal and blew,
blew with projectile effort that really took it out of them,
their living breath.
Raw gouts of pigment
spattered the living stencil
that was each’s own living hand
and made their mark.
The space of absence
was the clean, stark picture of their presence
and it pleased them.
We do not know why they did it
and maybe they did not either but
they knew they must.
It was the cold cave wall
and they knew they were up against it.

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The birthday boy is juggling.
He has been spending time in the lockdown learning
but though he still can’t keep it up for long
his grandmother dumb-shows most extravagant applause.
She toasts them all in tea
from her Best Granny in the World mug, winking
and licking her lips ecstatically as,
outdoors, they cut the cake,
miming hunger, miming
prayer for her hunger to be sated.
The slim girl dances
and her grandmother claps
and claps again, blinking tears.
Another matched high-five at her window.

Neither the blown candles or the blown kisses
will leave any permanent mark
– unless love does? –
on them on this the only afternoon
they will be all alive together on just this day the boy is ten.

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2d

Shakespeare Gardens Around the World Honor the Playwright—and Hold Their Own Storied HistoryThe curated plots of flowers, herbs and trees serve as windows into Shakespeare’s work and lifeby Mary Randolph<a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/shakespeare-gardens-around-the-world-honor-the-playwright-and-hold-their-own-storied-history-180988497/?utm_source=smithsoniandaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=editorial&lctg=93133550" rel="nofollow" class="ellipsis" title="www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/shakespeare-gardens-around-the-world-honor-the-playwright-and-hold-their-own-storied-history-180988497/?utm_source=smithsoniandaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=editorial&lctg=93133550">https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/shakespeare-gardens-around-the-world-honor-the-playwright-and-hold-their-own-storied-history-180988497/?utm_source=smithsoniandaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=editorial&lctg=93133550</a>Flowers from Shakespeare's Garden at PG: <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/64102" rel="nofollow">https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/64102</a><a href="/tags/books/" rel="tag">#books</a> <a href="/tags/literature/" rel="tag">#literature</a>

Illustration from Walter Crane's 1906 book, Flowers from Shakespeare's Garden.

A young woman in a pink Regency-style dress and wide-brimmed floral hat kneels in a garden, gathering an armful of vividly coloured flowers — daisies, poppies, irises, marigolds and more — before a marble bust of Shakespeare on a pedestal, set against dark topiary.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Shakespeare_garden.jpg

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2d

This is the animal that never was. Not knowing that, they loved it anyway: its bearing, its stride, its high, clear whinny— right down to the still light of its gaze…—Don Paterson, “Unicorn” after Rilke’s “Die Sonette an Orpheus” published in POETRY, June 2004Today, 9 April, is National Unicorn Day! 🦄<a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?volume=184&issue=3&page=73" rel="nofollow" class="ellipsis" title="www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?volume=184&issue=3&page=73">https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?volume=184&issue=3&page=73</a> <a href="/tags/scottish/" rel="tag">#Scottish</a> <a href="/tags/literature/" rel="tag">#literature</a> <a href="/tags/poem/" rel="tag">#poem</a> <a href="/tags/poetry/" rel="tag">#poetry</a> <a href="/tags/nationalunicornday/" rel="tag">#NationalUnicornDay</a> <a href="/tags/unicorn/" rel="tag">#unicorn</a> <a href="/tags/rilke/" rel="tag">#Rilke</a>

Unicorn
by Don Paterson
after Rilke’s “Die Sonette an Orpheus”

This is the animal that never was.
Not knowing that, they loved it anyway:
its bearing, its stride, its high, clear whinny-
right down to the still light of its gaze.

It never was. And yet such was their love
the pure beast arose; they had cleared the space.
And in the stable of its nothingness
it shook its white mane out and stamped its hoof.

They fed it, then, not with hay or corn,
but with the chance that it might come to pass.
All this gave the creature such a power

its brow put out a horn; one single horn.
It grew inside a maiden’s looking-glass
then one day walked out, and passed into her.

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2d

“What the hell do the love letters of that old fraud H.P. Lovecraft have to do with the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs?”A slight departure for National Unicorn Day – the Hugo Award-winning novella “Equoid” by Charles Stross <a href="https://wandering.shop/@cstross" class="u-url mention" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@cstross</a> 🦄 🐙@bookstodon <a href="https://reactormag.com/equoid/" rel="nofollow">https://reactormag.com/equoid/</a><a href="/tags/scottish/" rel="tag">#Scottish</a> <a href="/tags/literature/" rel="tag">#literature</a> <a href="/tags/unicorn/" rel="tag">#unicorn</a> <a href="/tags/nationalunicornday/" rel="tag">#NationalUnicornDay</a> <a href="/tags/sciencefiction/" rel="tag">#sciencefiction</a> <a href="/tags/scifi/" rel="tag">#scifi</a> <a href="/tags/lovecraft/" rel="tag">#lovecraft</a> <a href="/tags/horror/" rel="tag">#horror</a> <a href="/tags/squamous/" rel="tag">#squamous</a> <a href="/tags/rugose/" rel="tag">#rugose</a> <a href="/tags/batrachian/" rel="tag">#batrachian</a>

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2d

<a href="/tags/otd/" rel="tag">#OTD</a> In 1859, Samuel Langhorne Clemens receives his steamboat pilot’s license. <a href="https://lithub.com/lit-hub-daily-april-9-2026/" rel="nofollow" class="ellipsis" title="lithub.com/lit-hub-daily-april-9-2026/">https://lithub.com/lit-hub-daily-april-9-2026/</a>Books by Mark Twain at PG:<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/53" rel="nofollow" class="ellipsis" title="www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/53">https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/53</a><a href="/tags/books/" rel="tag">#books</a> <a href="/tags/literature/" rel="tag">#literature</a>

Young Mark Twain. He is turned to his left. He moustache and hair appear brown.

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2d

‘When the knife came up through the pool table, audiences gasped’Within six months of its launch in 2006, the National Theatre of Scotland (NTS) produced a globe-conquering hit. Inspired by tragic events at Camp Dogwood in Iraq, Black Watch was a humane portrayal of young squaddies on the frontline.In this article, the makers of the devastating drama recall how it grew and grew.<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2026/apr/08/iraq-war-black-watch-national-theatre-of-scotland-fife-pub" rel="nofollow" class="ellipsis" title="www.theguardian.com/stage/2026/apr/08/iraq-war-black-watch-national-theatre-of-scotland-fife-pub">https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2026/apr/08/iraq-war-black-watch-national-theatre-of-scotland-fife-pub</a><a href="/tags/scottish/" rel="tag">#Scottish</a> <a href="/tags/literature/" rel="tag">#literature</a> <a href="/tags/drama/" rel="tag">#drama</a> <a href="/tags/theatre/" rel="tag">#theatre</a> <a href="/tags/theater/" rel="tag">#theater</a> <a href="/tags/iraq/" rel="tag">#Iraq</a> <a href="/tags/iraqwar/" rel="tag">#IraqWar</a> <a href="/tags/blackwatch/" rel="tag">#BlackWatch</a>

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16h

How Amazing Stories Served as the Blueprint for American Science FictionEd Simon Goes Back to When the Past was the Future<a href="https://lithub.com/how-amazing-stories-served-as-the-blueprint-for-american-science-fiction/" rel="nofollow" class="ellipsis" title="lithub.com/how-amazing-stories-served-as-the-blueprint-for-american-science-fiction/">https://lithub.com/how-amazing-stories-served-as-the-blueprint-for-american-science-fiction/</a>Amazing stories at PG: <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=amazing+stories" rel="nofollow" class="ellipsis" title="www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=amazing+stories">https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=amazing+stories</a><a href="/tags/books/" rel="tag">#books</a> <a href="/tags/literature/" rel="tag">#literature</a> <a href="/tags/pulpfiction/" rel="tag">#pulpfiction</a>

Cover image: Trajectory to Taurus

Author: Les Cole

Illustrator: Virgil Finlay

This image is a vintage pulp magazine cover with a bold, eye-catching science fiction theme.

At the top, the large title reads Amazing Science Fiction Stories, with a smaller headline above it saying “When the Moon Was Red.” The issue is dated September, and the price (35¢) is shown on the left.

Central illustration: the Moon is depicted as a large, greenish, human-like face with exaggerated features—bulging eyes, deep wrinkles, and a mischievous or menacing expression. A small rocket is flying toward the Moon, and it looks as if the Moon is smoking it like a cigar, with a trail of smoke extending outward.

https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/72539/pg72539-images.html

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12h

<a href="/tags/otd/" rel="tag">#OTD</a> in 1935 Anna Katharine Green died. "She was one of the first authors of detective fiction in the United States and distinguished herself by writing well plotted, legally accurate stories."<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Katharine_Green" rel="nofollow" class="ellipsis" title="en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Katharine_Green">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Katharine_Green</a>Books by Green at PG:<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/541" rel="nofollow" class="ellipsis" title="www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/541">https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/541</a><a href="/tags/books/" rel="tag">#books</a> <a href="/tags/literature/" rel="tag">#literature</a>

Photograph of Anna Katharine Green. She is turned to her right, but her face is towards the camera. Her coat is fur-lined.

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