Eggplant.place

200d

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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202d

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

1/3

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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212d

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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212d

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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219d

#poetry

new text up on my site: "health"

https://anarchive.mooo.com/blog/health

"... mind is the bathrooms and plumbing of a parliament of diseases and what rushes through it is the unending stream of their shit piss sweat and spittle as they debate, deliberate, yell, carp, filibuster, scuffle, none of which the lowly minds pipes is privy to, and that piped shit of the diseases, rather than the parliamentary debate it cannot hear, mind calls structure, form (a kinda platos cave of cubicle shit), which it knows all to be made of...."

Edited 219d ago

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200d

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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211d

#OTD The Irish writer and poet Thomas Moore was born in 1779. He was "widely regarded in the late Georgian era as Ireland's "national bard."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Moore

Thomas Moore at PG

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/2185

#books #poetry #literature

Painting of Thomas Moore by Thomas Lawrence.

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189d

Pink sand and sandpipers pink in the setting
sun and pink granite and the pink swirl
of green waves…

—“Camas Tuath”, by poet, playwright & novelist Tom Buchan (1931–1995) – born #OTD, 19 June

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/camas-tuath/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #20thcentury

Camas Tuath
Tom Buchan

Pink sand and sandpipers pink in the setting
sun and pink granite and the pink swirl
of green waves: no mediterranean relics
here, no ruined amphitheatres, no amphorae,

no half-submerged statuary – only the
children’s wet sand-pies and a standing
stone, a druidic lingam standing for nothing
anyone knows about nowadays, a stony

finger, green with years, specific of an idea
which was no doubt straight, strong and complex
once, but is now obliterated by the hysterical
cries of children and the birds’ pink squealing.

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211d

Into perplexity: as an itch chased round
an oxter or early man in the cave mouth
watching rain-drifts pour from beyond

his understanding…

—“The Beautiful”, by Roddy Lumsden (1966–2020) – born #OTD, 28 May. A 🎂 🧵
Published in POETRY magazine, Dec 2008

1/5

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/51938/the-beautiful

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #RoddyLumsden

The Beautiful
by Roddy Lumsden

Into perplexity: as an itch chased round
an oxter or early man in the cave mouth
watching rain-drifts pour from beyond

his understanding. Whether to admire
the mere sensation, enough, or hold out
for sweeter ornament, vessels of wonder

born with that ur-charm of symmetry;
lovely ones we ache to prize and praise,
climb into and become because they try

our day-by-day significance: some of us
ugly and most of us plain, walked past
in the drowned streets: pearls of paste,

salted butter, secondary colors. They
drift unapproached, gazed never-selves,
blunt paragons of genetic industry. We

desire them but cannot want such order.
We stand, mouths open, and cannot help
stammering our secrets, nailed to water.

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197d

Helen Craik (1751–1825), Gothic novelist & friend of Robert Burns, died 200 years ago #OTD, 11 June. Craik published 5 novels but no poetry. In 1919, excerpts of her poems appeared in a newspaper, but the source – a notebook Craik presented to a family friend – disappeared…

1/6

#Scottish #literature #18thcentury #romanticism #poetry #Gothic #WomenWriters #manuscripts

A manuscript page, headed

Poems
by
A LADY

Underneath is a paragraph in ornate copperplate handwriting (it's from Laurence Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy, by Mr Yorick, vol. II):

Dear sensibility! source inexhausted of all that’s precious in our Joys, or costly in our sorrows! thou chainest thy martyr down upon his bed of straw—and ’tis thou who lifts him up to Heaven—Eternal fountain of our feelings, ’tis here I trace thee.—

Below is a drawing of a curly-haired cherub's face, with wings made of looping pen-strokes.

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197d

Afro-Scottish Poetry Event 2025
25 July, Glasgow. Tickets £0–£10

A multicultural evening of poetry, music, & storytelling that celebrates African & Scottish identities through powerful performances. Created & curated by Chisom Okoronkwo with U Belong Glasgow

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/afro-scottish-poetry-event-2025-tickets-1396145632169

#Scottish #literature #African #poetry #storytelling #performance #identity #Glasgow

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196d

McGonagall Salon(agall)
24 June, Edinburgh & online – free

The Edinburgh Literary Salon & the International Ghost Society – Edinburgh’s newest & most easily-distracted paranormal investigation society – present an interactive journey through the life & poetic gems of William McGonagall, including a playable big screen RPG, hidden Easter eggs, & a virtual McGonagall experience

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/junes-mcgonagall-salonagall-tickets-1407703903269

#Scottish #literature #poetry #19thcentury #Victorian #Dundee #McGonagall

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171d

My childhood passes on a bicycle
Down West Coats Road, beneath our sycamore
That filters July sunlight through the slow
Sidereal quiet of the suburb…

—Robert Crawford, “Cambuslang”
published in SELECTED POEMS, (Jonathan Cape, 2011)

https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/362438/selected-poems-by-robert-crawford/9781446484227

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Cambuslang #Glasgow

Cambuslang
Robert Crawford

My childhood passes on a bicycle
Down West Coats Road, beneath our sycamore
That filters July sunlight through the slow
Sidereal quiet of the suburb

Where my father calls our garden “the croft”, and grows
Rows of potatoes, a countryman Glasgow disguised
Too long as a bank teller. A piece of broken glass
Shines on the lawn. Something always glistens

In the yards of grass that gently separate
A small boy from this same house where my parents
Live on together, smiling just beyond
The flowers-only gardens, the conservation area.

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195d

Goonie: Poetry Extravaganza with Michael Mullen & Friends
20 June, Lighthouse Books, Edinburgh. £0–£10.99

Exploring queerness through fierce lyrical poetry & celebrating Scotland through vernacular vignettes, GOONIE is Michael Mullen’s debut collection

https://lighthousebookshop.com/events/goonie-poetry-extravaganza-with-michael-mullen-and-friends

#Scottish #literature #poetry #queer #queerness #Scotland #Scots #Scotslanguage

A bumfled rug, dark blue, with a red, yellow, pink, white and green floral pattern. Text:

poetry launch
michael mullen
+ fellow Edwin Morgan Award Winners
friday 20th june
indie bookshop week
poetry extravaganza

Next to the text is a cover image for GOONIE, by Michael Mullen. Looking down at a carpet of the same design, we can see a pair of feet wearing black men's shoes and dark trousers, and a single foot wearing a silver slipper-style woman's shoe and a bright red stocking.

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173d

Made a little something.

#Memes #Humor #StarWars #Poetry

A picture from the Star Wars movies. A Bantha (a large, hairy creature with large curving horns) with a Tusken riding on top. Set against a desert background. A poem is on the upper left hand corner that says, “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
But Sandpeople ride single file to hide their numbers
And that has made all the difference.”

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193d

Whatever the difference is, it all began
the day we woke up face-to-face like lovers
and his four-day-old smile dawned on him again,
possessed him, till it would not fall or waver…

—Don Paterson, “Waking with Russell”
published in Selected Poems (Faber, 2012)

https://www.faber.co.uk/product/9780571281800-selected-poems/

#Scottish #literature #FathersDay #poem #poetry

Waking with Russell
by Don Paterson

Whatever the difference is, it all began
the day we woke up face-to-face like lovers
and his four-day-old smile dawned on him again,
possessed him, till it would not fall or waver;
and I pitched back not my old hard-pressed grin
but his own smile, or one I’d rediscovered.
Dear son, I was mezzo del cammin
and the true path was as lost to me as ever
when you cut in front and lit it as you ran.
See how the true gift never leaves the giver:
returned and redelivered, it rolled on
until the smile poured through us like a river.
How fine, I thought, this waking amongst men!
I kissed your mouth and pledged myself forever.

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193d

In the house where he sleeps
let my ears
be the leaves at the window.

Let the bulbs of the lamps
be my eyes
on the animal street…

—Miriam Nash, “Prayer for My Father as a Child”
published in All the Prayers in the House (Bloodaxe, 2017)

https://www.bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/product/all-the-prayers-in-the-house-1150

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #FathersDay

Prayer for My Father as a Child
by Miriam Nash

In the house where he sleeps
let my ears
be the leaves at the window.

Let the bulbs of the lamps
be my eyes
on the animal street.

Let the shadows that harbour
my unborn body
stir when harm is stirring.

I’ll sleep in the drawer
with the knives.
I’ll turn in the locks.

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205d

#OTD the poem "Casey at the Bat" was published in The San Francisco Examiner (then called The Daily Examiner) in 1888.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casey_at_the_Bat

Books about baseball at PG

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/subjects/search/?query=baseball

#poetry #sports

"Selection of studio posed photographs from the New York Public Library's Spalding Collection, a series of over 500 photographs, prints, drawings, caricatures, and printed illustrations donated in 1921 by early baseball player and sporting-goods tycoon A. G. Spalding (whose name to this day is printed across every ball used in the National League). The photographs below feature players of different teams from New York and Philadelphia and seem to be mostly taken in the 1870s and 1880s." - from the Public Doman Image Archive

Man in baseball uniform is in a batting stance about to strike the ball that is coming towards him.

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193d

Dheigheadh sinn a dh’iasgach,
mi fhèin is m’ athair,
is lìonadh sinn an eathar le
peilichean de rionnach, liutha,
is dheigheadh sinn timcheall a’ bhaile
gu gach nàbaidh gus am biodh na peilichean falamh…

—Iain MacRath, “Dheigheadh sinn a dh’iasgach”
published in Don’t. Even. Ask. Too. Hot.: New Writing Scotland 42 (ASL, 2024)

https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/newwriting/nws42/

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

Iain MacRath
Dheigheadh sinn a dh’iasgach

Dheigheadh sinn a dh’iasgach,
mi fhèin is m’ athair,
is lìonadh sinn an eathar le
peilichean de rionnach, liutha,
is dheigheadh sinn timcheall a’ bhaile
gu gach nàbaidh gus am biodh na peilichean falamh.
Chunnaic mi m’ athair an raoir,
ged a chaochail e o chionn fichead bliadhna.
Chunnaic mi air na naidheachdan e
seacaid-teasairginn timcheall air
is an eathar làn,
làn de dhaoine.

ALT

Iain MacRae
We’d go fishing

We’d go fishing,
me and my father,
and we’d fill the dinghy
with pails of mackerel, lythe,
and we’d go round the village
to each neighbour till each pail was empty.
I saw my father last night,
though he died some twenty years ago.
I saw him on the news
a safety jacket around him
and the dinghy full,
full of people.

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193d

Lying asleep walking
Last night I met my father
Who seemed pleased to see me.
He wanted to speak. I saw
His mouth saying something
But the dream had no sound…

—W.S. Graham, “To Alexander Graham”
published in Collected Poems 1942–1977 (Faber, 1979)

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48732/to-alexander-graham

#Scottish #literautre #poem #poetry #FathersDay

To Alexander Graham
by W. S. Graham

Lying asleep walking
Last night I met my father
Who seemed pleased to see me.
He wanted to speak. I saw
His mouth saying something
But the dream had no sound.

We were surrounded by
Laid-up paddle steamers
In The Old Quay in Greenock.
I smelt the tar and the ropes.

It seemed that I was standing
Beside the big iron cannon
The tugs used to tie up to
When I was a boy. I turned
To see Dad standing just
Across the causeway under
That one lamp they keep on.

He recognised me immediately.
I could see that. He was
The handsome, same age
With his good brows as when
He would take me on Sundays
Saying we’ll go for a walk.

Dad, what am I doing here?
What is it I am doing now?
Are you proud of me?
Going away, I knew
You wanted to tell me something.

You stopped and almost turned back
To say something. My father,
I try to be the best
In you you give me always.

Lying asleep turning
Round in the quay-lit dark
It was my father standing
As real as life. I smelt
The quay’s tar and the ropes.

I think he wanted to speak.
But the dream had no sound.
I think I must have loved him.

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170d

‘What will things be like in 2099, for poets, for the country, for everyone? I won’t be there, but my words might be and now, literally, on the pavement, I stand by them: “Be brave. By the weird-song in the dark you’ll find your way.”’

Kathleen Jamie at Holyrood, in the London Review of Books

https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/june/at-the-canongate-wall

#Scottish #literature #poetry #Holyrood

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170d

Something to die for

To die: to give up life for
to die for means to live for
would we want to die for what
we would not live for?

—“Saving the Planet” by Tessa Ransford (1938–2015) – poet, activist, & founding director of the Scottish Poetry Library – born #OTD, 8 July

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/saving-planet/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #environment #ecology

Saving the Planet
Tessa Ransford

Something to die for

To die: to give up life for
to die for means to live for
would we want to die for what
we would not live for?

We cannot die for ourselves since death is the end of us
we cannot live for ourselves since that is absurdity
we die for what we can give and abandon generously

Here is what we die for:
our family name and honour
our children and children’s children
the principle of beauty in truth
a working mind and heart
humans who live with the planet
who thrive on thrift
who love to share and build
more life, life to die for.

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169d

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

https://www.hachette.co.uk/titles/none/selected-poems-1954-1992/9781848549395/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Orkney #GeorgeMackayBrown

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.

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143d

But, John, have you seen the world, said he,
Trains and tramcars and sixty-seaters,
Cities in lands across the sea –
Giotto’s tower and the dome of St Peter’s?

—Robert Rendell, “Angle of Vision”
from The Edinburgh Book of Twentieth-Century Scottish Poetry (Edinbrugh University Press, 2005)

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #20thcentury

Angle of Vision
Robert Rendall

But, John, have you seen the world, said he,
Trains and tramcars and sixty-seaters,
Cities in lands across the sea –
Giotto’s tower and the dome of St Peter’s?

No, but I’ve seen the arc of the earth,
From the Birsay shore, like the edge of a planet,
And the lifeboat plunge through the Pentland Firth
To a cosmic tide with the men that man it.

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169d

"Listen to the white worldappallingly weary from its immense effortthe crack of its joints rebelling under the hardness of the starslisten to the proclaimed victories which trumpet their defeatslisten to their grandiose alibis (stumbling so lamely)"

— John Berger, Aimé Césaire, Anna Bostock: Return to My Native Land, p. 47

#AiméCésaire #Poetry #Bookstodon @bookstodon@a.gup.pe

John Berger, Aimé Césaire, Anna Bostock: Return to My Native Land (2023, Penguin Books, Limited)

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