Eggplant.place

16d

Nights and days of blinding rain, Atlantic lows
sweeping across the carse
trees and hills lost in thick noonday mist.

Now this raw light
and a hard Steppe wind pouring down Glen Tye
towards the late sun…

—Chris Powici, “The Wild Summer”
published in Talking About Lobsters: New Writing Scotland 34 (ASL, 2016)

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry

Chris Powici
The Wid Summer

i.m. Angus Dunn

Nights and days of blinding rain, Atlantic lows
sweeping across the carse
trees and hills lost in thick noonday mist.

Now this raw light
and a hard Steppe wind pouring down Glen Tye
towards the late sun.

A raven lifts from a fencepost
and gives itself to the cold, marvellous air
pitching and wheeling
as if there’s no tomorrow, as if there’s
only ever hunger, longing, flight – here, now

and this, as you know, is the real poem Angus –
a lone dark bird telling the truth about the world
telling it well –
not these words

though, given time, I’ll get them as right as I can
even if there’s no raven, just skeins of autumn greylag
flowing calmly south.

Even if it’s way too late by then.

ALT

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

57d

“…on one occasion the Highland Queen was berthed by the master and a boy, the rest of the crew being quite incapable…”

In this blog post, Donald Meek explores the origins of the terms, common to Scots & Gaelic: “steaming drunk” & “smùid”

https://meekwrite.blogspot.com/2013/04/maritime-and-linguistic-studies.html

#Scottish #literature #Glasgow #GlasgowFair #DoontheWatter #Scots #Scotslanguage #Gaidhlig #Gaelic #boozecruise

A late 19th-century postcard. The printed text reads:

Mottoes for those going
“Doon the Watter”

If it's losing the boat,
or losing your drink—
lose the boat.

The image shows a colour illustration of a moustachio'd young man, standing at a bar, wearing a boater hat at a rakish angle, a dark green jacket, a yellow-and-white striped waistcoat and a red bow tie. He has one hand in his pocket as he looks over his shoulder, out of the door of the bar to see, in the distance, a steamship leaving the harbour. He raises a full pint mug to toast its departure.

ALT

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

57d

jack an jill
went up thi hull
“tay huv a wee refreshmint”

guess whut

—published in Tom Leonard’s INTIMATE VOICES 1965–1983 (Galloping Dog Press, 1984)

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Scots #Scotslanguage #Glasgow #GlasgowFair #KeepTheHeid

jack an jill
went up thi hull
“tay huv a wee refreshmint”

guess whut

ALT

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

62d

The Satire and Style of Vanity Fair is as Relevant as Ever

Roshan Sethi on William Makepeace Thackeray’s Famous Novel

https://lithub.com/the-satire-and-style-ofvanity-fair-is-as-relevant-as-ever/?utm_source=Klaviyo&utm_medium=campaign&utm_id=01KX3AA4MED1MJ5M0GR6BGR0DW&_kx=3MZUehzXM-41qlWAMPUiuNZadX2p0SByuNf_t0eMLB0.U5D8ER

Vanity Fair at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/599

#books #literature

The title page of the 1848 first edition of Vanity Fair: A Novel without a Hero.

William Makepeace Thackeray (author/artist) - Houghton Library

The banner-style title hangs between two poles at the top, and below it an illustration shows a jester or fool-like figure reclining on the ground, holding up a mirror, with a town skyline in the background.

ALT

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

62d

He had been for decades on her trail,
determining the drop-zones where she dived, her size and scale,
the encumbrance of her head, the length of tail…

—Donald S Murray, “How the Loch Ness Monster Stole My Husband”

Published in WITH THEIR BEST CLOTHES ON: New Writing Scotland 36 (ASL, 2018)

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #LochNessMonster

Donald S. Murray
How the Loch Ness Monster Stole My Husband

He had been for decades on her trail,
determining the drop-zones where she dived, her size and scale,
the encumbrance of her head, the length of tail,

and there were times he stepped into our bedroom
wearing her scent – a faint, unfathomable perfume –
and hummed the song he said was the mating tune

that must have drawn him one dark night
not far from Arbriachan when she swirled towards his side
and pulled him close against her – neat, spiralling and tight,

how she must have coiled against another of her kind
centuries before that. Oh, I know they’ll never find
him. It’ll be a case of out of sight, out of mind

in a different way from how my sister claims
I’m long out of mine. They’ll argue that he never came
home one night, our life on Millburn Road too tame

for him, that he preferred the thrash and thrust of another’s limbs,
a different kind of current, rhythm
than those murky depths I know he slipped within.

ALT

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

69d

WayWORD Ekphrastic Poetry Prize
Deadline: 31 Aug 2026

The 2026 WayWORD Festival is asking writers across Scotland to respond to artworks featured in the University of Aberdeen’s Artworlds exhibition. Shortlisted poems will be read at a special event in October.

https://waywordfestival.com/ekphrastic-poetry-prize-2026/

#Scottih #literature #poet #poetry #art #visualart #ekphrasticpoems

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

56d

Belle Stewart (1906–1997) – singer, storyteller, tradition-bearer – was born #OTD, 18 July, in a bow tent on the banks of the Tay at Caputh, near Blairgowrie. She ranks alongside Jeannie Robertson in the roll of the finest Scots ballad-singers.

1/2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0sMwlevTMU

#Scottish #literature #travellers #folklore #folksong

1 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

56d

Harriet Beecher Stowe Wrote a Work of Fiction That Seemed So Real That It Changed the History of the Country

To fight against slavery, the author collected true stories then picked up a pen and distilled them into “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”

by Geraldine Brooks

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/harriet-beecher-stowe-wrote-work-fiction-that-seemed-so-real-changed-history-country-180988826/?utm_source=Klaviyo&utm_medium=campaign&utm_id=01KXQXW72R0HJTBNHTRQ1DAWG0&_kx=3MZUehzXM-41qlWAMPUiuNZadX2p0SByuNf_t0eMLB0.U5D8ER

Uncle Tom's Cabin at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/203

#books #literature

Eliza comes to tell Uncle Tom that he is sold, and that she is running away to save her child.

Title: Uncle Tom's Cabin

Author: Harriet Beecher Stowe

A 19th-century engraving depicting a rural scene: a woman in a shawl carrying an infant walks with a dog beside her, encountering two men on a path near a hedgerow. One man appears to be blowing or playing something held in cupped hands, while the other gestures toward her. A house is visible in the distant background.

ALT

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

56d

A Short Stay In Hell. Steven Peck.

You just died, and the hell assigned to you - it’s temporary the demon explains- is an endless library that contains all the books that ever could be written, and all you have to do is find the book that describes your life; you initially muse that things could be worse, but are soon forced to reconsider that.

4 of 5 library cats 📕 📕 📕 📕.

#bookstodon #books #library #libraries #reading #hell #religion #literature #amreading @bookstodon

Book cover featuring a sketchy drawing of very tall bookshelves

ALT

0 0 1 View Post & Replies See Original

22d

Parnassus Presents: Douglas Stuart with Ann Patchett

Douglas Stuart in conversation with Ann Patchett about his latest novel JOHN OF JOHN: a portrait of a father’s expectations & a son’s desires set on the Isle of Harris

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ri1fx58WFA4

#Scottish #literature #novel #DouglasStuart #BookerPrize #Hebrides #LGBTQ #LGBTQfiction #Queer #QueerWriters #QueerLiterature #AnnPatchett

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

116d

What Tradwife “Influencers” of Centuries Past Share With Their Social Media Contemporaries

Maia Chance on the Age-Old Phenomenon of Toxic Nostalgia For a Nonexistent Past

https://lithub.com/what-tradwife-influencers-of-centuries-past-share-with-their-social-media-contemporaries/

At PG:

"The American Frugal Housewife"

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13493

A Treatise on Domestic Economy

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/21829

American Woman's Home

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6598

#books #literature

The image shows a vintage, 1940s-style advertisement illustration featuring a woman standing next to a fully stocked, open refrigerator. She is blonde and is wearing blue-greenish dress with a yellow apron tied to her waist and black high heels. She is looking toward the viewer and closing the freezer at top of the refrigerator.

ALT

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

54d

The beginning of it starts at the end

When it's time to walk away and start over again

- Tom Waits

#music #literature

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

33d

Sometimes in summertime a hangdog
weather man stands in front of shots

panning over Caribbean villas mangled
into matchwood, corpses of beached yachts,

palms ripped from sand…

—Andy Jackson, “The Naming of Hurricanes”
published in The Rooftop Busker: New Writing Scotland 33 (ASL, 2015)

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #hurricane #hurricanes

Andy Jackson
The Naming of Hurricanes

Sometimes in summertime a hangdog
weather man stands in front of shots

panning over Caribbean villas mangled
into matchwood, corpses of beached yachts,

palms ripped from sand. A time-lapsed arc
maps the march of this year’s cyclone,

wheeling to make its landfall, jerk
the world around it. Last year’s was Joan,

a hurricane with personality - in yer face,
busy, our eyes drawn to her in photographs

as she breezed in and out, visible from space,
leaving nothing standing in her path.

I wonder who compiles the list of names;
whose mother, daughter, lover, wife

brings to mind such desolation. The Janes
and Brendas all suggest ordinary life

might yet return once the summer storm
has blown itself into a half-remembered breeze.

Here, so far from paradise, the house is warm,
but colder winds are forecast from the east,

and suddenly the sky is full of clouds. A chill
simmers round my feet, and I think it’s best

we do not name this storm. Already it has filled
the room, blown your final letter off my desk.

ALT

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

54d

Laid-back in orbit, they found their minds.
They found their minds were very clean and clear.
Clear crystals in swarms outside were their fireflies and larks.
Larks they were in lift-off, swallows in soaring…

—Edwin Morgan, “A Home in Space”
from CENTENARY SELECTED POEMS (Carcanet, 2020)

#OTD, 20 July, 1969, Neil Armstrong & Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon

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

#Scottish #literature #MoonLanding #MoonLandingDay #poem #poetry #scifi #sciencefiction #scifipoem #spaceflight

A Home in Space
Edwin Morgan

Laid-back in orbit, they found their minds.
They found their minds were very clean and clear.
Clear crystals in swarms outside were their fireflies and larks.
Larks they were in lift-off, swallows in soaring.
Soaring metal is flight and nest together.
Together they must hatch.
Hatches let the welders out.
Out went the whitesuit riggers with frames as light as air.
Air was millions under lock and key.
Key-ins had computers wild on Saturday nights.
Nights, days, months, years they lived in space.
Space shone black in their eyes.
Eyes, hands, food-tubes, screens, lenses, keys were one.
One night – or day – or month – or year – they all –
all gathered at the panel and agreed –
agreed to cut communication with –
with the earth base – and it must be said they were –
were cool and clear as they dismantled the station and –
and gave their capsule such power that –
that they launched themselves outwards –
outwards in an impeccable trajectory, that band –
that band of tranquil defiers, not to plant any –
any home with roots but to keep a –
a voyaging generation voyaging, and as far –
as far as there would ever be a home in space –
space that needs time and time that needs life.

ALT

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

54d

20 July is World Chess Day! ♟️

Episode 2 of the Alasdair Gray Archive’s UNLIKELY OBJECTS MOSTLY looks at Alasdair Gray’s chessboard & the part #chess played in his practice, uncovering its role in the making of his Hillhead Subway mural & the novel POOR THINGS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vbB7OeYkeo

#Scottish #literature #AlasdairGray #art #mural #visualart #chess #WorldChessDay

1 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

33d

Kafka's Screwball Tragedy: Investigations of a Philosophical Dog

"Investigations of a Dog" is a funny and deeply philosophical tale of a lone, maladjusted dog who defies scientific dogma and pioneers an original research program in pursuit of the mysteries of his self and his world.

By: Aaron Schuster (from the archives)

https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/kafkas-screwball-tragedy-investigations-of-a-philosophical-dog/

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

#books #literature #literaryCriticism

ALT

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

54d

How a forgotten Toronto story shows Hemingway beginning to invent himself as a fiction writer

During his four years with the Toronto Star, Hemingway produced nearly 200 pieces, 170 under his own name plus around 30 with verified pseudonym bylines.

by Irene Gammel

https://theconversation.com/how-a-forgotten-toronto-story-shows-hemingway-beginning-to-invent-himself-as-a-fiction-writer-286101

Books by Hemingway
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/50533

#books #literature

Hemingway´s wood-cut from portrait by henry strater.

Title: In our time

Author: Ernest Hemingway

Editor: Ezra Pound

Illustrator: Henry Strater

A stylized woodcut portrait of a bearded man, rendered with bold cross-hatching and line textures

ALT

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

33d

CFP: Ali Smith & Her Work
The 28th METU British Novelists International Conference
3–4 Dec 2026, Ankara, Türkiye

Submissions invited on any aspect of Ali Smith’s work from any theoretical perspective. Proposals by graduate students also welcome. Deadline 31 August.

@litstudies

https://britishnovelists.metu.edu.tr/en

#Scottish #literature #novelist #AliSmith #callforpapers

Poster

MIDDLE EAST TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY
FACULTY OF EDUCATION
DEPARTMENT OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE EDUCATION

28th METU BRITISH NOVELISTS INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE:

ALI SMITH And Her Work

KEYNOTE SPEAKER:
PROF. MARK CURRIE, QUEEN MARY UNIVERSITY OF LONDON
3–4 DECEMBER 2026
METU CULTURE AND CONVENTION CENTER
ANKARA, TURKEY

ALT

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

33d

Scotland has a rich history of comics (The Beano, first published in 1938, has now sold 2 billion copies – more than any comic outside Japan). Glasgow’s comic-book duo metaphrog share 10 great Scottish comics for kids & YAs

@bookstodon

https://www.booktrust.org.uk/book-recommendations/booklists/10-favourite-scottish-comic-books/

#Scottish #literature #comic #comics #comicbooks #graphicnovel #kidlit #YA

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

33d

A Kick Up the Arts: Val McDermid & Jo Sharp

Host Nicola Meighan speaks to Val McDermid & Jo Sharp about their new book, This Door of the Seas. The novella is the seventh book in Polygon’s acclaimed Darkland Tales series, in which some of Scotland’s best-loved writers re-imagine stories from Scottish history, myth & legend through a contemporary lens.

https://www.akickupthearts.org/blog-3-1/val-mcdermid-and-jo-sharp-this-door-of-the-seas

#Scottish #literature #historicalfiction #novella #podcast #ValMcDermid

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

53d

Is there a whim-inspired fool,
Owre fast for thought, owre hot for rule,
Owre blate to seek, owre proud to snool,
Let him draw near…

Robert Burns (1759–96) died #OTD, 21 July, aged 37. “A Bard’s Epitaph” is the final poem in the 1786 Kilmarnock Edition of Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect

1/4

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Scots #Scotslanguage #RobertBurns #18thcentury #romanticism

A Bard’s Epitaph
Robert Burns

Is there a whim-inspired fool,
Owre fast for thought, owre hot for rule,
Owre blate to seek, owre proud to snool,
Let him draw near;
And owre this grassy heap sing dool,
And drap a tear.

Is there a bard of rustic song,
Who, noteless, steals the crowds among,
That weekly this area throng,
O, pass not by!
But, with a frater-feeling strong,
Here, heave a sigh.

Is there a man, whose judgment clear
Can others teach the course to steer,
Yet runs, himself, life’s mad career,
Wild as the wave,
Here pause—and, thro’ the starting tear,
Survey this grave.

The poor inhabitant below
Was quick to learn the wise to know,
And keenly felt the friendly glow,
And softer flame;
But thoughtless follies laid him low,
And stain’d his name!

Reader, attend! whether thy soul
Soars fancy’s flights beyond the pole,
Or darkling grubs this earthly hole,
In low pursuit:
Know, prudent, cautious, self-control
Is wisdom’s root.

ALT

1 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

53d

Scotland’s a sense of change, an endless
becoming for which there was never a kind
of wholeness or ultimate category.
Scotland’s an attitude of mind.

—“Speaking of Scotland” by Maurice Lindsay (1918–2009) – born #OTD, 21 July
Published in COLLECTED POEMS 1940–1990 (AUP 1990)

1/2

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #20thcentury #Scotland #ScottishIdentity

Speaking of Scotland
Maurice Lindsay

What do you mean when you speak of Scotland?
The grey defeats that are dead and gone
behind the legends each generation
savours afresh, yet can’t live on?

Lowland farms with their broad acres
peopling crops? The colder earth
of the North East? Or Highland mountains
shouldering up their rocky dearth?

Inheritance of guilt that our country
has never stood where we feel she should?
A nagging threat of unfinished struggle
somehow forever lost in the blood?

Scotland’s a sense of change, an endless
becoming for which there was never a kind
of wholeness or ultimate category.
Scotland’s an attitude of mind.

ALT

1 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

52d

The Letters of Heloise: Love, Learning, and Life as a Medieval Woman

Heloise’s letters reveal a medieval woman caught between enduring love, religious duty, and the expectations of her age. Andrea Maraschi explores how they also showcase her remarkable learning and her willingness to express thoughts and emotions rarely preserved in medieval women’s writing.

By Andrea Maraschi

https://www.medievalists.net/2026/07/the-letters-of-heloise-love-learning-and-life-as-a-medieval-woman/

Letters of Heloise at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=Letters+of+Heloise

#books #literature

Abelard and Héloïse in a manuscript of the Roman de la Rose (14th century).

It is showing a man in a pink/orange robe kneeling and gesturing toward a woman in black nun's habit, both with raised hands in a conversational or devotional pose, set against a decorative patterned background with fleur-de-lis motifs.

ALT

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

52d

Charles Brockden Brown Declares Independence

Ed Simon explores Charles Brockden Brown’s Wieland; or, The Transformation: An American Tale, often considered the first American Gothic novel.

By Ed Simon

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2026/07/20/charles-brockden-brown-declares-independence/?utm_source=Klaviyo&utm_medium=campaign&utm_id=01KY2BG97GH10QY0WN9JSBXNW6&_kx=3MZUehzXM-41qlWAMPUiuNZadX2p0SByuNf_t0eMLB0.U5D8ER

Books by Charles Brockden Brown (including Wieland) at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/416

#books #literature

Engraving of American writer Charles Brockden Brown. From The Life of Charles Brockden Brown by William Dunlap. Published by James P. Parke, 1815.

This is an engraving portrait of Charles Brockden Brown, an early American novelist, shown wearing early 19th-century formal attire with a large white cravat and dark coat, set against a draped curtain background.

ALT

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

52d

And we left our beds in the dark
And we drove a cart to the hill
And we buried the jar of ale in the bog
And our small blades glittered in the dayspring
And we tore dark squares, thick pages
From the Book of Fire…

—George Mackay Brown, “Peat Cutting”
published in Selected Poems: 1954–1992 (John Murray, 1996)

#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #Orkney #GeorgeMackayBrown #poem #poetry

George Mackay Brown
Peat Cutting

And we left our beds in the dark
And we drove a cart to the hill
And we buried the jar of ale in the bog
And our small blades glittered in the dayspring
And we tore dark squares, thick pages
From the Book of Fire
And we spread them wet on the heather
And horseflies, poisonous hooks,
Stuck in our arms
And we laid off our coats
And our blades sank deep into water
And the lord of the bog, the kestrel
Paced round the sun
And at noon we leaned on our tuskars
– The cold unburied jar
Touched, like a girl, a circle of burning mouths
And the boy found a wild bees’ comb
And his mouth was a sudden brightness
And the kestrel fell
And a lark flashed a needle across the west
And we spread a thousand peats
Between one summer star
And the black chaos of fire at the earth’s centre.

ALT

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original