Eggplant.place

203d

Book launch:

the many days / uno dei tanti giorni
A revised and extended bilingual edition of poems by Norman MacCaig

7 June, The Waverley Bar, Edinburgh

This new publication contains an introductory appreciation of MacCaig's poetry by his translator, Marco Fazzini, & a preface by Seamus Heaney.

Marco will be joined by a number of poets reading MacCaig's work in both their original English and new Italian translations.

#Scottish #literature #poetry #NormanMacCaig #translation #Italian

the many days / uno dei tanti giorni
A revised and extended bilingual edition of poems by Norman MacCaig

This new publication contains an introductory appreciation of MacCaig's poetry by his translator, Marco Fazzini, and a preface by Seamus Heaney.
Marco will be joined by a number of poets reading MacCaig's work in both their original English and new Italian translations.
Confirmed poets and readers include: Gerda Stevenson, Alan Spence, Andrew Greig and Christine De Luca.

Venue:
The Waverley Bar (upstairs),
3-6 St Mary's Street,
Edinburgh EH1 ITA
Date d time:
Sunday 7th June, 7pm - 9pm

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148d

There can be no sin committed from love – the radical ethics of Héloïse

by Prashanti Aswani, Adam D’Arpino, Abigail Tulenko

https://aeon.co/videos/there-can-be-no-sin-committed-from-love-the-radical-ethics-of-heloise?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=b64a312493-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2026_05_27_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-4ef8a26106-72664972

Books by Abelard and Heloïse at PG
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/5441
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/38039

#Books #literature #Philosophy

Transcription: Wherein are written how the scholar Peter Abelard forgot his learning and became a lover, altho the price he paid was great: and how the beautiful Heloise in desiring to acquire knowledge from Abelard learned of all lessons the greatest, from the greatest master of all, to wit, Love: and how she prized it most highly, altho it brought her both shame and sorrow.

The love letters of Abelard and Heloise

by Peter Abelard and Héloïse

Other: Ralph Fletcher Seymour

https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/40227/pg40227-images.html

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252d

What Oral Histories Reveal About Women’s Pursuit of Economic Independence

What does independence really mean for women? Through oral histories spanning generations, ‘We Do Declare’ explores how access to money, credit, and opportunity shaped women’s lives and the economic freedom that makes true independence possible.

by Rachel F. Seidman

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/blogs/smithsonian-american-womens-history-museum/2026/03/02/we-do-declare-womens-voices-on-independence/?utm_source=smithsoniandaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=editorial&lctg=93133550

Mary Wollstonecraft at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/84

#books #literature #womenhistoryMonth

Title page of the book Memoirs and Posthumous Works of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, Vol. 1

by Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin

A title page from a small 18th-century printed book on cream paper, text centred in varying type sizes: Memoirs and Posthumous Works of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. In Two Volumes. Vol. I. Below a ruled line: Dublin: Printed by Thomas Burnside, for J. Rice, 111, Grafton-Street. 1798.

https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/67847/pg67847-images.html

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252d

There’s no a muir in my ain land but’s fu’ o’ sang the day,
Wi’ the whaup, and the gowden plover, and the lintie upon the brae.
The birk in the glen is springin’, the rowan-tree in the shaw,
And every burn is rinnin’ wild wi’ the meltin’ o’ the snaw…

—Lady John Scott, “The Comin’ o’ the Spring”

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/comin-o-spring/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Scots #Scotslanguage #Spring

The Comin’ o’ the Spring
Lady John Scott

There’s no a muir in my ain land but’s fu’ o’ sang the day,
Wi’ the whaup, and the gowden plover, and the lintie upon the brae.
The birk in the glen is springin’, the rowan-tree in the shaw,
And every burn is rinnin’ wild wi’ the meltin’ o’ the snaw.

The wee white cluds in the blue lift are hurryin’ light and free,
Their shadows fleein’ on the hills, where I, too, fain wad be;
The wind frae the west is blawin’, and wi’ it seems to bear
The scent o’ the thyme and gowan thro’ a’ the caller air.

The herd doon the hillside’s linkin’. O licht his heart may be
Whose step is on the heather, his glance ower muir and lea!
On the Moss are the wild ducks gatherin’, whar the pules like diamonds lie,
And far up soar the wild geese, wi’ weird, unyirdly cry.

In mony a neuk the primrose lies hid frae stranger een,
An’ the broom on the knowes is wavin’ wi’ its cludin o’ gowd and green;
Ower the first green sprigs o’ heather, the muir-fowl faulds his wing,
And there’s nought but joy in my ain land at the comin’ o’ the Spring!

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252d

Nuair a bha Gàidhlig aig na h-Eoin – When the Birds Spoke Gaelic
28 March, Isle of Lewis. £12

Port na h-Eala & Skylark’s Ascension are two of the many songs, stories & tunes in the Gaelic tradition featuring or inspired by birds. Join Màiri MacMillan, Alana MacInnes, Gillebrìde MacMillan, Padruig Moireasdan & Coll MacDonald for an evening of songs, stories, folklore & music inspired by birdlife

https://www.tickettailor.com/events/mairimacmillan/2103909

#Scottish #literature #song #music #folklore #Gaidhlig #Gaelic #birds

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251d

Female writers and readers have been challenging the patriarchy for more than 200 years

by Roberta Garrett

https://theconversation.com/female-writers-and-readers-have-been-challenging-the-patriarchy-for-more-than-200-years-276231

Suffrage at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/bookshelf/72

#books #literature #womenhistoryMonth

Line luplau seen in the foreground on her daughter Marie Luplau's large group portrait painting From the Early Days of the Fight for Women's Suffrage (1897).

An oil painting depicting a large indoor gathering of men and women in late 19th-century dress. A central standing figure — an older woman in a long dark dress with a white lace collar — commands attention, appearing to address or preside over the assembled group. To her left sits a younger woman at a table with papers and a glass vessel. The crowd behind and around them is densely arranged, faces rendered individually. The setting appears to be a meeting hall with gas lamps visible on the wall.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_suffrage#/media/File:Marie_Luplau_-_Fra_Kvindevalgretskampens_f%C3%B8rste_dage_(1897),.jpg

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251d

The Short But Magical Life of John Keats

Poet John Keats, in his short life, wrote some of the most beloved poems in the English language.

https://www.thecollector.com/john-keats-english-poet/

Books by Keats at PG:

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/935

#poetry #books #literature

Image of John Keats shows him sitting at a desk with an open book and his chin in his hand.

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251d

“It is not a romantic Tale that the Reader is here presented with, but a real History. Not the Adventures of a Robinson Crusoe, a Colonel Jack, or a Moll Flanders, but the Actions of the HIGHLAND ROGUE…”

Rob Roy MacGregor was baptised #OTD, 7 March, 1671. Walter Scott’s novel made the Scottish outlaw internationally famous – & created the model for today’s roguish antiheroes

@litstudies

1/5

https://theconversation.com/two-centuries-before-marvel-and-star-wars-walter-scotts-rob-roy-was-the-first-modern-anti-hero-89421

#Scottish #literature #history #historicalfiction #romanticism #WalterScott

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250d

Currently on BBC Sounds: THE STATE OF THE ART by Iain M. Banks

In 1977, the Culture starship GCU ARBITRARY discovers Earth: a primitive society on the edge of self-destruction.

When Contact agent Dervley Linter decides to go native, can Diziet Sma change his mind?

@bookstodon

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00hv1dz

#Scottish #literature #sciencefiction #scifi #IainBanks #IainMBanks #TheCulture #audiobook

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239d

Climate change to identity: The vital lessons in Metamorphoses, Ovid's 2,000-year-old poem

You might think that Ovid's Metamorphoses, an ancient compendium of the greatest Greek myths, would hold little relevance today. But its tales of desire and deceit reveal surprising parallels with contemporary concerns, from climate change and the refugee crisis to gender-based violence and identity.

by Cath Pound

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20260317-metamorphoses-ovids-2000-year-old-poem-says-a-lot-about-2026

At PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/21765

#books #literature #culture

Lycian farmers changed into frogs: Latona changes Lycian farmers into frogs, because while they were weeding a marsh, they prevented her and her children from quenching their thirst (Ovid, Metamorphoses VI 369)

Claude Du Bosc / After Jean Jouvenet - Leto verandert de boeren in kikkers, Claude DuBosc, after Jean Baptiste Jouvenet, 1714 - Rijksmuseum

The scene depicts the goddess Leto — mother of Apollo and Artemis by Zeus — fleeing the wrath of Hera after giving birth. Exhausted and thirsty, she stops at a pond in Lycia to drink, but local peasants cruelly prevent her and her infant children from reaching the water, stirring up the mud to make it undrinkable. In fury, she calls upon Jupiter and transforms the peasants into frogs.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Metamorphoses_(Ovid)#/media/File:Claude_Du_Bosc_after_Jean-Baptiste_Jouvenet,_Leto_and_the_Lycian_Peasants,_1714,_Rijksmuseum_RP-P-1905-2842.jpg

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250d

Happy International Women's Day! To celebrate it, Project Gutenberg created a new bookshelf titled Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics:

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/bookshelf/706

More information about these magnificent women can be foud in PG´s March Newsletter:
https://www.gutenberg.org/newsletter/

#books #literature #womeninstem #womenhistoryMonth

Mary Somerville [Fairfax]. Lithograph after J. Phillips.

A lithograph portrait of Mary Somerville shown from the chest up, in early 19th-century dress. She has elaborately styled curly hair piled high with ringlets framing her face. She wears a ruffled white lace collar and a dress with feathered or fur trimming at the shoulders, fastened with a circular brooch. Her expression is calm and self-possessed, her gaze slightly averted.

https://www.europeana.eu/en/item/9200579/mraqxra2

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Maria Gaetana Agnesi. Line engraving by E. Conquy after M. Longhi.

A line engraving portrait ofMaria Gaetana Agnesi shown bust-length within a softly shaded oval vignette. She has powdered or light curly hair loosely styled, small drop earrings, and wears a fur-trimmed garment over a light dress with a ribbon bow at the shoulder. Her expression is composed and direct.

https://www.europeana.eu/en/item/9200579/pmfug8sg

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A portrait from the Welsh Portrait Collection at the National Library of Wales. Depicted person: Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne – English aristocrat, prolific writer, and scientist. By George Kellaway

A stipple or line engraving portrait of a woman shown from the chest up against a densely cross-hatched dark background. She has long, loosely curled hair falling to her shoulders, a small decorative crown or coronet at the top of her head, and wears a pearl necklace and a low-cut dress with a draped sash. Her expression is placid and direct. The caption below reads Margaret, D. of Newcastle. The engraver's name Kellaway sc. appears at lower right.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Portrait_of_Margaret,_D._of_Newcastle_(4670217).jpg

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239d

Tobias Smollett (1721–1771) was baptised #OTD, 19 March.

George Orwell thought him “Scotland’s best novelist”, “whose outstanding intellectual honesty may have been connected with the fact that he was not an Englishman” (TRIBUNE magazine, 22/9/1944)

1/5

https://orwell.ru/library/reviews/smollett/english/e_ts

#Scottish #literature #Smollett #18thcentury #Orwell

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250d

Typing for Love or Money
The Hidden Women’s Labor behind Modern Literary Masterpieces

https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/typing-for-love-or-money/

At PG:

"The Story of the Typewriter":

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/60794

Books by Henry James:

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/113

"Henry James at Work" by Theodora Bosanquet:

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/63377

Books by T. S. Eliot:

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/599

#womenhistoryMonth #books #literature

Lillian Sholes demonstrating a prototype typewriter invented by her father, Christopher Latham Sholes, 1872

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70d

Neuroqueering on the lawn

Hans Christian Andersen’s tantrum in Charles Dickens’s garden was a case of ‘too muchness’, emotions bursting past respectability

by Siobhan Unwin and Kathryne Ford

https://aeon.co/essays/neuroqueer-expression-and-the-limits-of-social-tolerance?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=4da2f4bfb0-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2026_09_03&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-4ef8a26106-72664972

Books by Andersen and Dickens at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/2298
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/37

#books #literature #neurodiversity

Charles Dickens reading to his daughters Mamie and Katey in the garden of Gad’s Hill; painting after Joseph Athanase Aufray, after a photo by Mason & Co, c1869. Courtesy the National Portrait Gallery.

The image shows Charles Dickens, seated outdoors in a garden setting with a chair back propped in front of him, reading with his daughters attentively gathered around him, one standing behind with her hand on his shoulder and the other seated beside him.

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250d

Scotland, you have invoked her name
just once too often
in your Presbyterian living rooms.
She’s heard, yea
even unto heathenish Arabia
your vixen’s bark of poverty…

—Kathleen Jamie, “The Queen of Sheba”
first published in THE QUEEN OF SHEBA (Bloodaxe Books,1994)

A poem for International Womens’ Day

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #womenwriters #InternationalWomensDay #QueenofSheba

KATHLEEN JAMIE
The Queen of Sheba

Scotland, you have invoked her name
just once too often
in your Presbyterian living rooms.
She’s heard, yea
even unto heathenish Arabia
your vixen’s bark of poverty, come down
the family like a lang neb, a thrawn streak,
a wally dug you never liked
but can’t get shot of.

She’s had enough. She’s come.
Whit, tae this dump? Yes!
She rides first camel
of a swaying caravan
from her desert sands
to the peat and bracken
of the Pentland hills
across the fit-ba pitch
to the thin mirage
of the swings and chute; scattered with glass.

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Breathe that steamy musk
on the Curriehill Road, not mutton-shanks
boiled for broth, nor the chlorine stink
of the swimming pool where skinny girls
accuse each other of verrucas.
In her bathhouses women bear
warm pot-bellied terracotta pitchers
on their laughing hips.
All that she desires, whatever she asks
She will make the bottled dreams
of your wee lasses look like sweeties.

Spangles scarcely cover
her gorgeous breasts, hanging gardens
jewels, frankincense; more voluptuous
even than Vi-next-door, whose
high-heeled slippers
keeked from dressing gowns
like little hooves, wee tails
of pink fur stuffed in the cleavage of her toes;
more audacious even than Currie Liz
who led the gala floats
through the Wimpey scheme
in a ruby-red Lotus Elan
before the Boys’ Brigade band
and the Brownies’ borrowed coal-truck;
hair piled like candy-floss;
who lifted her hands from the neat wheel
to tinkle her fingers
at her tricks
among the Masons and the elders and the police.

The cool black skin
of the Bible couldn’t hold her,
nor the atlas green
on the kitchen table,
you stuck with thumbs
and split to fruity hemispheres –
yellow Yemen, Red Sea, Ethiopia. Stick in
with the homework and you’ll be

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cliver like yer faither.
but no too cliver,
no above yersel.

See her lead those great soft camels
widdershins round the kirk-yaird,
smiling
as she eats
avocados with apostle spoons
she’ll teach us how. But first

she wants to strip the willow
she desires the keys
to the National Library
she is beckoning
the lasses
in the awestruck crowd ...

Yes, we’d like to
clap the camels,
to smell the spice,
admire her hairy legs and
bonny wicked smile, we want to take
PhDs in Persian, be vice
to her president: we want
to help her
ask some Difficult Questions

she’s shouting for our wisest man
to test her mettle:

Scour Scotland for a Solomon!

Sure enough: from the back of the crowd
someone growls:
whae do you think y’ur?

and a thousand laughing girls and she
draw our hot breath
and shout:

THE QUEEN OF SHEBA!

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250d

Edwin Only Helped

Women Writers of the Scottish Literary Renaissance: the handmaids, midwives, mothers, mistresses, cooks, nannies, & skivvies to that literary revolution. Oh, & contributors, too. Let’s not forget about their own writing! Again…

https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2020/12/edwin-only-helped/

#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #womenwriters #InternationalWomensDay

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250d

All our lives, in every city,
out of every landscape
the waters of the Alhambra
have been murmuring to us…

—Imtiaz Dharker, “Women Bathing”
from The Terrorist At My Table (Bloodaxe Books, 2006)

A poem for International Woman’s Day

https://www.bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/product/the-terrorist-at-my-table-837

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #womenwriters #InternationalWomensDay

Women Bathing
by Imtiaz Dharker

All our lives, in every city,
out of every landscape
the waters of the Alhambra
have been murmuring to us.
From fountains, from watercourses,
from the secret pools in courtyards,
voices calling across centuries.

The other women are bathing
in the moonlight.

‘Come,’ they say, ‘Come out of the day’s heat,
out of shaded rooms, let’s escape and slip away,
let the veils fall, one by one.
Slide into the pools that lie like mirrors of the sky,
and let the moon wash over our bodies.’

Bodies lush, generously-hipped.
Bodies like pomegranates,
bursting with promises.

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237d

Radcliffe Acquires a Black Feminist’s Archive

An architect of Black women’s studies, Barbara Smith introduced the concepts of “identity politics” and “intersectionality.”

by Lydialyle Gibson

https://www.harvardmagazine.com/museums-collections/barbara-smith-papers-harvard-radcliffe-institute?utm_source=email&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_term=weekly&utm_content=one-of-harvards-oldest-structures-is-hiding-behind-a-beer-garden&utm_campaign=032026

Black fiction & Feminism at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=black+fiction
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=feminism

#books #literature #womenhistoryMonth

Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote about feminism for the Atlanta Constitution, 10 December 1916, page 4.

Articles about feminism by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and a photo of her as printed in the Atlanta Constitution, December 10, 1916

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism#/media/File:Articles_by_and_photo_of_Charlotte_Perkins_Gilman_in_1916.jpg

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250d

I didna speak
whan it bleetert doon.
Ma man wis gey taen up wi’ getting us
sortit, an’ it wis fell lang afore we had
the bastes in an’ the fowl settled…

—Eunice Buchanan, “Wife to Noah”
published in MARKINGS 30 (2010)

A poem for International Women’s Day

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/wife-noah/

#Scottish #literature #InternationalWomensDay #poem #poetry #Scots #Scotslanguage

Wife to Noah
Eunice Buchanan

I didna speak
whan it bleetert doon.
Ma man wis gey taen up wi’ getting us
sortit, an’ it wis fell lang afore we had
the bastes in an’ the fowl settled.

I didna speak
whan the watters spewed
ower ma rigs o’ corn an’ doon the street
intae ma hoose amangst ma rugs
an’ the bonny things I had fae ma mither.

I didna speak
whan I heard ma frien
Becca battrin at the howe o’ wir boat,
her bairn in her airms, yowlin like een
o’ the damned o’Hell. We had linkit
doon the years fae bairnie tae wife.
Ma bonny hinnie, weel-hertit Becca.
I clappit ma haunds tae ma lugs
an’ flung ma airms aboot ma laddies,
but still I didna speak

I didna speak
whan the lift grew black an’ blacker
an’ there wis naither muin nor sun an’ the cries
that had been aa aboot us wir smoored.
Nae soond on that black sea but the doonfa, the dreep,
the plowt, the pish-oot o’ grey watter on grey watter.

I canna speak
o’ the things on the watter
as the days drave on – swollen an’ blae,
wi the sea-maws skirlin an’ pickin, skirlin an’ pickin.
Syne whan the well-heid dried an’ the watters sank,
the laund, oor bonny laund, slaich an’ slairy
wi’ black glaur,
an’ oorsels alane.

But whan I gang the low road on the hinmaist day
an’ I climb the steps for my tryst wi’ God
I will look the Almichty in the face –
an’ I will hae ma say.

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239d

The Real Count of Monte Cristo Was Alexandre Dumas’ Father, a Trailblazing Black General

Ahead of the March 22 premiere of a new TV adaptation, learn about the life of Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, the French Army officer who inspired the beloved novel

by Joel Sams

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-real-count-of-monte-cristo-was-alexandre-dumas-father-a-trailblazing-black-general-180988347/

The Count of Monte Cristo at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1184

#books #literature

Painting of general-in-chief Thomas-Alexandre Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie (1762-1806), he played a pivotal role in the French Revolutionary Wars. By
Olivier Pichat

Pichat captures Alexandre Dumas grand-père rearing black horse, drawn sabre, tricolour cockade in his bicorne hat, and cannon smoke billowing behind fortress walls.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Thomas_Alexandre_Dumas_-_Olivier_Pichat.jpg

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249d

Her hair is cut into that perfect slant –
An innovation circa ’64 by Vidal Sassoon.
She’s wearing C&A’s best effort at Quant
Ending just below the knicker-line, daisy-strewn…

—Liz Lochhead, “Photograph, Art Student, Female, Working Class, 1966”
Published in FUGITIVE COLOURS (Birlinn, 2016)

A poem for International Women’s Day

https://birlinn.co.uk/product/fugitive-colours/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #InternationalWomensDay

Photograph, Art Student, Female, Working Class
Liz Lochhead

Her hair is cut into that perfect slant –
An innovation circa ‘64 by Vidal Sassoon.
She’s wearing C&A’s best effort at Quant
Ending just below the knicker-line, daisy-strewn.
Keeping herself in tights could blow her grant
Entirely, so each precious pair is soon
Spattered with nail varnish dots that stop each run.
She’s a girl, eighteen – just wants to have fun.

She’s not ‘a chick’. Not yet. Besides, by then
She’ll find the term ‘offensive’. ‘Dollybird’ to quote
Her favourite mags, is what she aspires to when
Her head’s still full of Honey and Petticoat.
It’s almost the last year that, quite this blithely, men
Up ladders or on building sites wolf-whistle to note
The approval they’re sure she will appreciate.
Why not? She did it for their benefit, looks great.

Nor does she object. Wouldn’t think she has the right.
Though when that lech of a lecturer comments on her tits
To a male classmate, openly, she might
Feel – quick as a run in nylon – that it’s
Not what ought to happen, is not polite,
She’ll burn, but smile, have no word that fits
The insult, can’t subject it to language’s prism.
In sixty-six there’s plenty sex, but not ‘sexism’.

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Soon: The Female Eunuch and enough
Will be enough. Thanks to newfound feminism and Greer,
Women’ll have the words for all this stuff,
What already rankles, but confuses her, will seem clear
And she’ll (consciously) be no one’s ‘bit of fluff’
Or ‘skirt’ or ‘crumpet’. She’ll know the rule is ‘gay’ not ‘queer’,
‘Ms’ not ‘Miss’ or ‘Mrs’ – she’ll happily obey it
And, sure as the Pill in her pocket, that’s how she’ll say it.

This photo’s saying nothing, is black and white, opaque.
A frozen moment, not a memory.
The boyfriend with the Pentax took it for the sake
Of taking it, a shot among many others, randomly,
To see how it would develop. Didn’t imagine it’d make
An image so typical it’d capture time so perfectly.
How does she feel? Hey, girl, did it feel strange
To be waiting for the a-changing times to change?

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249d

in the room/in the street/on the stair/where some men make free
in plain sight or in secret as if we were sweetmeat…

—Pippa Little, “Spartaca”
published in #MeToo: A women’s poetry anthology (Fair Acre Press, 2018)

A poem for International Women’s Day

https://fairacrepress.co.uk/shop/metoo-rallying-against-sexual-assault-and-harassment-a-womens-poetry-anthology/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #InternationalWomensDay #MeToo

Spartaca
by Pippa Little

in the room/in the street/on the stair/where some men make free
in plain sight or in secret as if we were sweetmeat/to dip
fingers in and then forget – it is the being alone
afterwards that numbs and maims, utterly
alone in the silence of it/where shame creeps in/
stuns dead/but now we rise, all women
fondled and hurt and licked in acid jokery and in hate,
pets, sweethearts, loves, darlings, humourless bitches –
we stand together, each one a Spartaca
no longer silent or alone: each voice stronger,
massing, alive, a wild murmuration
of me too/me too/me too

Spartacus was a rebel slave hunted down by the Romans to be crucified. Asked to identify himself by soldiers, everyone in the crowd around him stepped forward and said ‘I am Spartacus’.

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“Scottishness is as much myth as it is history, which means that we must guard it carefully, retell it beautifully &, more than anything else, love it wisely”

John Burnside (1955–2024) was born #OTD, 19 March. His career as an author & poet spanned nearly 40 years

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https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2024/07/in-search-of-a-homeland

#Scottish #literature #poetry #novels #JohnBurnside #Scottishness #ScottishIdentity