Eggplant.place

14d

A poem by Stan Stewart: The Medicine I Carry. Written during a grief circle and ritual on the 23rd of August, 2025.
#poem #grief

https://muz4now.com/2025/the-medicine-i-carry/

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12d

In his darkroom he is finally alone
with spools of suffering set out in ordered rows.
The only light is red and softly glows,
as though this were a church and he
a priest preparing to intone a Mass.
Belfast. Beirut. Phnom Penh. All flesh is grass.

—Carol Ann Duffy, “War Photographer”
published in COLLECTED POEMS (Picador, 2019)

https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/carol-ann-duffy/collected-poems/9781447231752

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #warpoetry #photography #journalism

War Photographer
by Carol Ann Duffy

In his darkroom he is finally alone
with spools of suffering set out in ordered rows.
The only light is red and softly glows,
as though this were a church and he
a priest preparing to intone a Mass.
Belfast. Beirut. Phnom Penh. All flesh is grass.

He has a job to do. Solutions slop in trays
beneath his hands, which did not tremble then
though seem to now. Rural England. Home again
to ordinary pain which simple weather can dispel,
to fields which don’t explode beneath the feet
of running children in a nightmare heat.

Something is happening. A stranger’s features
faintly start to twist before his eyes,
a half-formed ghost. He remembers the cries
of this man’s wife, how he sought approval
without words to do what someone must
and how the blood stained into foreign dust.

A hundred agonies in black-and-white
from which his editor will pick out five or six
for Sunday’s supplement. The reader’s eyeballs prick
with tears between the bath and pre-lunch beers.
From the aeroplane he stares impassively at where
he earns his living and they do not care.

ALT

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9d

Old gods and goddesses who have lived so long
Through time and never found eternity,
Fettered by wasting wood and hollowing hill,
You should have fled our ever-dying song…

—Edwin Muir, “To the Old Gods”
📷 Ballachulish Figure, c728–524 BCE

https://www.nms.ac.uk/discover-catalogue/a-mysterious-iron-age-figure-from-ballachulish

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #archaeology #IronAge #EdwinMuir

To the Old Gods
by Edwin Muir

Old gods and goddesses who have lived so long
Through time and never found eternity,
Fettered by wasting wood and hollowing hill,

You should have fled our ever-dying song,
The mound, the well, and the green trysting tree.
They have forgotten, yet you linger still.

Goddess of caverned breast and channeled brow,
And cheeks slow hollowed by millennial tears,
Forests of autumn fading in your eyes,

Eternity marvels at your counted years
And kingdoms lost in time, and wonders how
There could be thoughts so bountiful and wise

As yours beneath the ever-breaking bough
And vast compassion curving like the skies.

ALT

An early Iron Age wooden carved figure of a woman or girl, standing in front of a wall of woven twigs and branches. The figure is blackened with age, and the wood has twisted and elongated due to the lack of proper preservation when it was discovered in a peatbog in 1880. Carved from a single block of alder, at the time of its discovery it stood 1.4 metres tall (just under 5 feet). The figure has a large, heavy head with inset quartz pebbles for eyes, large ears, a distinct nose and mouth and a round chin.

ALT

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11d

I pulled all my mother’s expectations
with me, like a child’s kite, giddy with stir
of spring…

—Lynn Valentine, “St Kilda Crossing”
from DON’T. EVEN. ASK. TOO. HOT.: New Writing Scotland 42 (ASL, 2024)

Today, 29 August, marks the 95th anniversary of the final evacuation of St Kilda. People had lived there for over 2000 years but, by the early 20th century, life had become too difficult to sustain. In 1930 the islanders petitioned for help to leave

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #StKilda

ST KILDA CROSSING
by Lynn Valentine

I pulled all my mother’s expectations
with me, like a child’s kite, giddy with stir
of spring. Because she was cancer-cracked
I turned tourist by proxy, crouched into cleits
looking for leavings of last century.

I photographed fawn smallness of Soays
felt the crash of wind-whipped stacs,
my pockets salt-filled. I leant
on those islands as my mother leant on me,
filled my lungs with their breeze
and leaping green language of sea.

I tried to hold my breath for days,
took it back to my mother, exhaled
island air on her weakened frame –
whispered broken stories of birds and rain.

ALT

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11d

Whan du telt me hoo du thowt o ‘luck’
as nae mair as chance, de happy hubbelskju
o aentropie, I thowt onnly o de ben-end
o my grandmidder’s hoose an aa her talismans
o tat…

—Roseanne Watt, “Lukkie”

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

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Shetland #Shetlandic #Scots #Scotslanguage

Lukkie
Roseanne Watt

Whan du telt me hoo du thowt o ‘luck’
as nae mair as chance, de happy hubbelskju
o aentropie, I thowt onnly o de ben-end
o my grandmidder’s hoose an aa her talismans
o tat. Inbi, luck wis acht an lenned lik coins,
hot fae de löf. Dere wis wyes aboot it:
a sixpence fir de scratchcairds; tree skoilts
o a gingernut wid gie dee a wish; a dram
onnly ivvir gied sungaets roond de room.
Ee time, ower supper, shö telt me hoo shö won
an aamos fae a haafman; a beaded bag
fir a skurtfoo o her luck at sea. I browt him
tae de dance dat week, but someen took him
fae de cloakroom. Less. Dere’s joost some tings
dat du canna keep a haad o. Dat’s true enoff.
It seems tae me wir luck his aye been wattir
cupped by hands at prayer, in a langwich
at his mair wirds fir ill-luckit tings as fair.
Nivir leet, shö says. De lotto’s demoarn.
Can I git dee a gingernut?

ALT

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7d

Two stanzas from a song improvised by Stan Stewart after hearing about the murder and maiming of children in another mass shooting.
#poem #lyrics

https://muz4now.com/2025/our-hearts-must-change/

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7d

An lùib na droighne
anns an dris-choille
tha meas an fhoghair
toradh mo ghràidh…

—Niall O’Gallagher, “Crindreas”

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

#Scottish #literature #Gaelic #Gaidhlig #poem #poetry

Crindreas
Niall O’Gallagher

An lùib na droighne
anns an dris-choille
tha meas an fhoghair
toradh mo ghràidh

is dealt na maidne
a’ fàgail taise
a’ gleansadh air a
craiceann làn.

Tha brìgh na deirce
mìlse nas seirbhe
na gèire deilge
a’ stailceadh làimh’

ach dh’aindeoin bhioran
bu mhi a spioladh
is le mo bhilean
bhlaisinn àgh.

ALT

Bramble
Niall O’Gallagher

Translated by Deborah Moffatt

Amongst the thorns
in the thicket of brambles,
the autumn berry
is my heart’s desire,

the damp sheen
of the morning dew
gleaming bright on
its full ripe skin.

The sap of the sweet berry
is sharper than the thorn
that pierces the thin skin
of the plundering hand,

but I would pick my fill,
in spite of the pricks
that my lips might taste
the glory of the bramble.

ALT

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5d

This far north, the harvest happens late.
Rooks go clattering over the sycamores
whose shadows yawn after them, down to the river.
Uncut wheat staggers under its own weight…

—Dorothy Lawrenson, “September”
Published in Painted, spoken 22

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

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #September

September
Dorothy Lawrenson

This far north, the harvest happens late.
Rooks go clattering over the sycamores
whose shadows yawn after them, down to the river.
Uncut wheat staggers under its own weight.

Summer is leaving too, exchanging its gold
for brass and copper. It is not so strange
to feel nostalgia for the present; already
this September evening is as old

as a photograph of itself. The light, the shadows
on the field, are sepia, as if this were
some other evening in September, some other
harvest that went ungathered years ago.

ALT

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6d

The mile-high buildings flashed, flushed, greyed, went dark,
greyed, flushed, flashed, chameleons under flak
of cloud and sun…

—Edwin Morgan, “Clydegrad”
CENTENARY SELECTED POEMS, Carcanet 2020

Today, 3 September, is Skyscraper Day

1/2

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

#Scottish #literature #Glasgow #poem #poetry #ConcretePoetry #Skyscraper #SkyscraperDay

Clydegrad
Edwin Morgan

It was so fine we lingered there for hours.
The long broad streets shone strongly after rain.
Sunset blinded the tremble of the crane
we watched from, dazed the heliport-towers.
The mile-high buildings flashed, flushed, greyed, went dark,
greyed, flushed, flashed, chameleons under flak
of cloud and sun. The last far thunder-sack
ripped and spilled its grumble. Ziggurat-stark,
a power-house reflected in the lead
of the old twilight river leapt alive
lit up at every window, and a boat
of students rowed past, slid from black to red
into the blaze. But where will they arrive
with all, boat, city, earth, like them, afloat?

ALT

Book cover

EDWIN MORGAN
CENTENARY SELECTED POEMS

edited by
HAMISH WHYTE

Carcanet Classics

The cover image shows a view looking up the face of a concrete tower block, angled against a star-strewn sky – as if the skyscraper was a starship, cruising the cosmos.

ALT

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3d

He moves the way light moves: now sudden,
racing up a field as sun clears cloud…

—Sheenagh Pugh, “Him Again”
Published in A Little Touch of Cliff in the Evening: New Writing Scotland 30 (ASL, 2012)

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry

HIM AGAIN
Sheenagh Pugh

He moves the way light moves: now sudden,
racing up a field as sun clears cloud,

now unnoticed, leaching from the world
until you look up into dark.

And he inhabits next door's peat stack,
waiting for winter, and the fat sheep

ready for the show, and the gap
in the window of what was a house

and is a shed, and soon will be out of use.
The berries that were once white blossom

on the brambles belong to him,
so they say, and lose all their taste

on a certain day, when he comes to harvest
what is alive, and ripe, and his own.

ALT

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1d

The glitter of water and the wake…
Heading for University in Aberdeen.
It’s an autumn morning. I am seventeen.
Above the Isle of Skye the dawn’s a flag

of red infuriate ore…

—Iain Crichton Smith, “Aberdeen University 1945–49 (1)”
in DEER ON THE HIGH HILLS, ed. by John Greening (Carcanet, 2021)

https://www.carcanet.co.uk/9781800170940/deer-on-the-high-hills/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #IainCrichtonSmith #Skye #Aberdeen

Aberdeen University 1945–49 (1)
by Iain Crichton Smith

The glitter of water and the wake…
Heading for University in Aberdeen.
It’s an autumn morning. I am seventeen.
Above the Isle of Skye the dawn’s a flag

of red infuriate ore. I see the train
for the first time ever steaming from the Kyle
beyond the screaming seagulls, in the smell
of salt and herring. There’s a tall sad crane.

The landscape, rich, harmonious, unwinds
its perfect symmetry: not the barren stone
and vague frail fences I have always known.
I hold my Homer steady in my hand.

All day we travel and at last dismount
at the busy station of that sparkling town.
A beggar with black glasses sitting down
on the hard stone holds out his cap. I count

the pennies in it. Should I freely give?
Or being more shameful than himself refrain?
His definite shadow is the day’s black stain.
How in such open weakness learn to live?

I turn away, the money in my hand,
profusely sweating, in that granite blaze.
Unknown, unlooked at, I pick up my case.
Everything’s glittering and transient.

ALT

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15h

The deid-hole’s a sma-boukit place for you.
You need tae be blawn aboot the cosmos
so’s your live matter mells wi the spaces
and you become the stour starns are made o…

—Alastair Mackie: In Memoriam Hugh MacDiarmid (1892–1978)

Christopher Murray Grieve – Hugh MacDiarmid – died #OTD, 9 September

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

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Scots #Scotslanguage #MacDiarmid #HughMacDiarmid

In Memoriam Hugh MacDiarmid (1892–1978)
Alastair Mackie

The deid-hole’s a sma-boukit place for you.
You need tae be blawn aboot the cosmos
so’s your live matter mells wi the spaces
and you become the stour starns are made o.

Sma spirit, ye couped yoursel oot like an ocean
and on it ye sailed tae your odyssey.
Your poems set their bows for the infinite.
It was a sma bit coble made o Scots.

Ahent the muckle brae-face o your brou
barmed the thochts. They were like boolders,
ram-stam, ramgunshoch, aften wilyart. Polyphemus
hurlin craigs at the galleys’ hotterin starns.

And aye the sky-line cockit its fore-finger.
For fifty years laneliness was your crony.
Your spaces were polar anes, the cauld burn
o your mind the aixle-tree that iled your world.

I think o Pascal’s infinite spaces
and Scotland a wee dot in the abyss.
You gied it a starn; the muckle hole skinkles
yet in the licht. Sic matter never dees.

The terror that I feel is for the muckle howe-hole
your last sleep leaves ahent. As if a mountain
that held up the lyft had sunk intae the mools
and suddenly the sky-line’s unfrienly.

And oor steps styter and Scotland’s again
‘the bonny broukit bairn’. Lie back in your kist
licht bearer. And may the giant back-birn
ye cairriet lie lichtly in the earth’s happin.

ALT

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9h

Currently on BBC Sounds: Ian McMillan hosts poets Liz Lochhead, Robert Crawford & Hannah Lavery at the Edinburgh Festival

Hannah Lavery performs “Edinburgh is a Story”; “My Work is Loving the World”; & “Miss Has Started Using Sunbeds”

Robert Crawford reads “Camera Obscura” & “Mons Meg”

Liz Lochhead reads a selection of poems including “Trouble Is Not My Middle Name”; “Coming To Poetry”; & “Song For A Dirty Diva”

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002htf2

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Edinburgh

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1y

«birthday»

mine was good

i had thai with my daughter
and her guy
who she's still with
and still madly in love with
and her job sucks
and she hates it
but she's making it happen

and I'm so happy,
and that's the best gift
I could have asked for

but she gave me weed too

#poetry #poetrycommunity #poem

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1y

读过 Who Was Langston Hughes?
https://neodb.social/book/4Bpl1exm8i4ixNxeOk9YY6
这本好玩，学到不少新概念，爵士诗歌、哈林文艺复兴，年轻时被共产主义（作为美国种族隔离的替代）吸引去过苏联和中国，晚年逐渐远离且去政治化。这本是 Gregory Copeland 的插画。
#biography #children #jazz poetry #poem #传记

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1y

读过 Who Was Langston Hughes? 🌕🌕🌕🌕🌑
这本好玩，学到不少新概念，爵士诗歌、哈林文艺复兴，年轻时被共产主义（作为美国种族隔离的替代）吸引去过苏联和中国，晚年逐渐远离且去政治化。这本是 Gregory Copeland 的插画。

#biography #children #jazz poetry #poem #传记

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1y

"The World Is On Fire" is a spontaneously composed, unedited poem by Stan Stewart. Because it is improvised, you know it's from his heart.
#improv #poem #world #fire

https://muz4now.com/2024/the-world-is-on-fire-an-improv-poem/

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1y

Sniff
Baking
Cookie smell
Grandma's cooking
Unmistakable -
Rich tantalising scents
Resistance impossible
Heaven - a moment on that tray
Fingers poised, waiting for approval
Once we have seized the day, all that's left - crumbs!

#Cookie #MastoPrompt #Etheree #Poem #Poetry #MicroPoems #WritingCommunity #PoetryCommunity

Toffee and Chocolate chip cookies cooling on a wire rack

ALT

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1y

Hpy Bdy

I am not here.
Not really. And not as you
read these imaginary words
resisting the urge to flee
the page crowded white
words filling every pixel .
Coffee unhelpful in
the face of great opposit
-ions bouncing every where
but where I wish
To be, I must choose

#poem #poetry #poetrycommunity

Site of the poem’s composition, being a cafe overlooking Circular Quay, a shadowed table in the foreground holding a coffee cup and an empty small plate, and in the background the rising buildings of Sydney CBD.

ALT

Edited 1y ago

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362d

*//
《台灯下的蜘蛛》

在一个夜晚，我发现它
悬浮于我的笔记本上方
一只灰黑色的蜘蛛，无所适从
它在我的书桌上迷路了多久？
很快，我的发现再次惊扰它
不得不向着更黑暗处流浪
在二十平米的房间绕行一周后
它会试着接受，
与一个人类同居的事实

2024 年 8 月 15 日
#诗 #poem #poetry #2gpoetband

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362d

*//
《无人罚站的午后》

在午后的雷声中想起往事
也许并没有那道雷
只是记忆中的闪回
光线穿过，两扇窗帘汇合处
就像大汗淋漓梦中惊醒
或者，什么也没有梦到
只是想起往事
想起还小的时候
站在房檐下无人罚站的午后

2024 年 8 月 15 日
#诗 #poem #poetry #2gpoetband

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343d

*//

我給你的愛以數量取勝
寫一百封情書
郵費又上漲了呢
我很著急
一筐筐蘋果正在運送而來的路上
到你手上就熟透了吧
或許我還是應該
採摘青澀的那些
不成熟的愛數以萬計

不成熟的愛數以萬計
但我相信
再青澀的都會在你手中漸漸成熟
我的耐心要比路程更長
比宇宙終始更長
當他們把咖啡果實叫做咖啡櫻桃
驚愕之餘，也感到釋懷
請把我也種在山林裡
我會和陽光，和成熟消耗的時間和解

⋯⋯
love letter

#诗 #poem #poetry #2gpoetband

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350d

*//
《伞的坟墓》

风穴，是城市受到的诅咒
是伞的坟墓，晴天雨天
连同它庇护下的一株野草
也被连根拔起，翻腾
我们卷进夏季的尾声

2024 年 8 月 25 日
#诗 #poem #poetry #2gpoetband

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282d

‘Something or Other’

Patience in a nutshell:
I have none
And everything’s electric
Sizzling with ambition
Lost in seconds passing
Drags away my soul
Each breath a tiny whisper
Heaving life into the night
Scattered dreams a haunting
Train-wreck crashing through
My desiccated brainwaves
Superheated with emojis
Vapourware a hunted bunyip
Seeking hard the pathway forward
Shards of glass all flaming hot,
Yet beyond that hell a fountain

#poem #poetry #poetrycommunity

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91d

"Give me a little less
with every dawn."

Marjorie Lotfi performs John Burnside's "Prayer" in a film directed by Savannah Acquah, from a new series from the ‪Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation & the Writers’ Mosaic

https://www.brinkerhoffpoetry.org/poems/prayer

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #JohnBurnside

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