Eggplant.place

218d

Miscarriage

215d

I am pulled to the river by the hook in
my teeth. Swans, herring gulls, flick
of a cormorant, a bridge in lunular arch:
write down each…

—Siobhan Mulligan, “Salmon Run”
published in The Last Good Year: New Writing Scotland 38 (ASL, 2020)

https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/newwriting/nws38/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #naturewriting

Siobhan Mulligan
SALMON RUN

I am pulled to the river by the hook in
my teeth. Swans, herring gulls, flick
of a cormorant, a bridge in lunular arch:
write down each. No vein of iron, no piston
to pump. My grandmother
would have avoided this. Her lungs
would swallow smoke as

salmon swallowed sewage, slag and
oil, steel and cistern smell, home settling
in choking gills. Years combed the water
into river again, but cycles stalled.
Rewilding required.
Now they swarm in shattered
patterns, fins glinting like
slicked stone.

Taste calls them on the currents:
the delicate peat of their hatching stream.
Generations flick past like calendar pages:
salt, smoke, citrus scent, calling me
like a dream.

ALT

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8d

Here Stewarts once in triumph reign’d,
And laws for Scotland’s weal ordain’ d;
But now unroof’d their Palace stands,
Their Sceptre’s fall’n to other hands;
Fall’n indeed, and to the Earth
Whence grovelling reptiles take their birth…

—Robert Burns, “Lines etched on a window at Wingate’s Inn, Stirling, 26 August 1787”

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #18thcentury #satire #RobertBurns #graffiti

Lines etched on a window at Wingate’s Inn, Stirling, 26 August 1787
Robert Burns

Here Stewarts once in triumph reign’d,
And laws for Scotland’s weal ordain’d;
But now unroof’d their Palace stands,
Their Sceptre’s fall’n to other hands;
Fall’n indeed, and to the Earth
Whence grovelling reptiles take their birth.
The injur’d STEWART-line are gone,
A Race outlandish fills their throne:
An idiot race, to honour lost—
Who know them best despise them most.

ALT

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239d

I had a holiday from awkwardness. Can you have sex? was solved. Most people have been or known a doubled self like us…

—Nuala Watt, “Pregnant & Squint”
from The Department of Work & Pensions Assesses a Jade Fish (Blue Diode, 2024)

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https://www.bluediode.co.uk/product-page/the-department-of-work-and-pensions-assesses-a-jade-fish-by-nuala-watt

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #disability #pregnant #pregnancy #motherhood

Nuala Watt
Pregnant and Squint

I had a holiday from awkwardness. Can you have sex? was solved. Most people have been or known a doubled self like us. Briefly my conditions were disabled.

Test to term I never had to console a passer-by spooked by my movement. People knew what to say. When are you due? Do you know what you’re having? Yes, a break.

We were disconcertingly well. Nothing Abnormal Detected said midwives’ scribbles. Just before childbirth, everyone’s disabled. For me, same old, same old. I had cohabited with fatigue for years; my balance was dreadful; I already leaked.

Suddenly I had twice the rights on buses. I could be the belly, if I liked, or the girl balanced on a semi-circle. I qualified for both the reserved seats.

I liked the quaint but truthful phrase ‘with child’.

The government forced me to list what I couldn’t do. I had to excise you from my answers. Whilst I described the most disastrous days, the falls, the fits, the faff, the time I collapsed while trying to use a tampon, my oddly capable body made your kidneys.

ALT

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214d

“Jock, when ye hae naething else to do, ye may be aye sticking in a tree; it will be growing, Jock, when ye’re sleeping.”

—The Laird of Dumbiedikes, on his death-bed, to his son (in THE HEART OF MIDLOTHIAN, by Walter Scott)

28 July is World Conservation Day. Here’s “Dumbiedikes”, by James Robertson – you can listen to him read the poem online here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0z2ZrMu__OY

#Scottish #literature #poetry #poem #Scots #Scotslanguage #WalterScott #WorldConservationDay #environment

Dumbiedikes
James Robertson

“Jock, when ye hae naething else to do, ye may be aye sticking in a tree; it will be growing, Jock, when ye’re sleeping."
—The Laird of Dumbiedikes, on his death-bed, to his son
(The Heart of Midlothian, by Sir Walter Scott)

Hoo mony trees tae prent a thoosan buiks?
Hoo mony buiks tae pulp a thoosan trees?
Hoo mony trees tae launch a thoosan boats?
Hoo mony boats tae sink a thoosan trees?
Hoo mony trees tae licht a thoosan fires?
Hoo mony fires tae smoor a thoosan trees?
Hoo mony trees tae mak a thoosan kists?
Hoo mony kists tae yird a thoosan trees?
Jock, when I’m awa, dae this for me –
howk oot a hole and in it stick a tree.
I carena gin it’s birk, beech, aik or rowan,
Sae be’t when ye’re sleepin, Jock, it’s growin.
Its canopy will spreid, its seeds will faw;
it micht be hame tae mavis, merle or craw;
speeders will hing their brigs on it, I doot,
and peerie-weerie beasties venture oot
upon the mappa mundi o its bark,
while kail-worms mak a denner o its sark.
Amang its ruits the glunchin taid will rest,
the frettin, fykie yird-moose bigg her nest,
and dentylions and puddock-stools upheeze…
In sair times, Jock, we’re sair in need o trees.
Stick in a tree, stick in a thoosan mair,
and mind o me when I’m nae langer there.
Hoo mony daiths afore the planet dees?
Tae gie the planet braith, hoo mony trees?

ALT

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211d

For anyone looking at those reposts on Burns I just shared, and curious about Scottish poetry, but not sure where to begin, may I suggest some of our new generation of younger poets such as Len Pennie, Michael Pedersen or Jeda Pearl. And of course the veterans such as the wonderful Jackie Kay, or the (sadly now late) John Burnside.

For more ideas, snippets of the works etc, try the Scottish Poetry Library https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/

#Scotland #ScottishLiteratyre #poetry #bookstodon

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214d

For years I wandered hill and moor
Half looking for the road
Winding into fairyland
Where that blacksmith kept a forge

Who’d heat red hot the dragging links
That bound me to the past…

—Kathleen Jamie, “The Tradition”
published in THE BONNIEST COMPANIE (Picador, 2015)

https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/kathleen-jamie/the-bonniest-companie/9781509801718

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry

Kathleen Jamie
The Tradition

For years I wandered hill and moor
Half looking for the road
Winding into fairyland
Where that blacksmith kept a forge

Who’d heat red hot the dragging links
That bound me to the past,
Then, with one almighty hammer-blow
Unfetter me at last.

Older now, I know nor fee
Nor anvil breaks those chains
And the wild ways we think we walk
Just bring us here again.

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211d

Robert Burns’s POEMS, CHIEFLY IN THE SCOTTISH DIALECT was published #OTD, 31 July 1786.

Copies are 3 times rarer than the Shakespeare First Folio: Patrick Scott & Allan Young are tracking the histories of surviving Kilmarnock Editions

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https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2017/11/kilmarnock-burns-book-history/

#Scottish #literature #poetry #RobertBurns #Scots #Scotslanguage #18thcentury #BookHistory #RareBooks

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238d

It’s the cocktail hour. The air is still.
Mister gets busy on the charcoal grill.
Social-kissing women, backslapping men
has failed to break the ice. But then
Missiz appears like magic from the dusk.
Cool, ten years his junior, she smells of musk
and ‘Madame Rochas’. Two small spots of anger
high on her cheekbones linger…

—Liz Lochhead, “Fourth of July Fireworks”

Published in THREE SCOTTISH POETS, @canongatebooks 1992

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #4thofJuly #FourthofJuly

Fourth of July Fireworks
by Liz Lochhead

The guests are gathered.
Boston-Irish Nancy, half in huff
says, ‘Better help yourselves,
you all know Mister’s timing well enough.’
Aside at me she mutters.
‘Millionaires can afford to let things wait.
Honest-to-God Mister would be late
for his own funeral.’ Cigarstore Indian,
I hide behind my apron, wait and drink in all I can.

(We don’t exist. They pick our trays,
Tom Collinses, Martinis and canapés.)

Oh horror, New England night,
when I fetched the ice down and that snake
looped my feet in the kitchen garden! I still shake.
‘Harmless,’ says Nancy.
I hear her hiss, ‘Some host!
That beggar’ll only get here when he’s sure he’s last.’

Fourth of July. Cape Cod. Dead on cue,
last-man Mister comes running to his barbecue.
Arms flailing like a cricketer’s across the lawn
from his ‘so English’ house with a flame red shirt on.

It’s the cocktail hour. The air is still.
Mister gets busy on the charcoal grill.
Social-kissing women, backslapping men
has failed to break the ice. But then
Missiz appears like magic from the dusk.
Cool, ten years his junior, she smells of musk

ALT

and ‘Madame Rochas’. Two small spots of anger
high on her cheekbones linger.

When Mister says it’s done enough
the guests spread ketchup on the fatted calf.
The night hots up. Liquor flows. Listless
couples come alive. A bit apart, restless,
Missiz sways gently on her own
to Glen Miller on the gramophone.
All eyes are on the soignee cling
of this year’s leisure favourite, velvety stretch towelling
for patio-party wear. Those purples and electric pinks
‘Just far too hectic altogether,’ Nancy thinks.

(Ten years with Missiz, Nancy’s face
is quite professional, impervious.)

Ice melts in the Martini tray. Midges
drown. The whole night edges
to a thunderstorm. Maybugs big as golfballs thud
as screendoors bounce them. But, after our blood,
divebombing mosquitoes dodge the mesh and slide
in down their own thin whine.
They bite despite insecticide.

All at sea,
white and dayglo orange fins spinnaker the bay.
Music blares
from the jazzed-up clubhouse round the Cape, Cotuit way.
The whole damn town is two thirds empty after Labour Day.
These summer people
migrate to Florida, lock, stock and barrel.
Tonight their parked cars sprawl the drive and trail

ALT

behind those his-and-hers coupled custom Cadillacs
like a comet tail.

(Oh I can see it all quite clearly, feeling small
and stone-cold sober. But I do not count at all.)

Out on the lawn the sprinklers, oddly luminous,
sputter like Roman Candles, ominous
as the sudden snap of queer clear light
from one weird streak unzips the dark.
The German Shepherd guard dogs bark.
A wind gets up. These beach-house boards
are flimsier than playing cards.

(Over the bay, like flares
odd rockets go up with a shock of stars.)

Mister drags off his box of fireworks to the shore.
Missiz drains her drink and hits the floor
with someone half her age. His snake-arms slur
around her waist. Eyes glaze. Sentence endings blur.
Missiz (‘mutton dressed as lamb’)
comes in slowly as the false-calm
lead-slow sea that slicks the beach. Sinatra sings.
The tide ravels up slowly, shelving things.

Raindrops big as bullets dent the roof we all stand under,
watching Canute’s fireworks outrage the storm,
try to steal its thunder.

ALT

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213d

We needed it—and he stood there,
feet on the dry porch, saying rain,
cloud and skyful, the sound of drumming…

—Niall Campbell, “The Rainmaker”
from POETRY, July/August 2020

We probably don’t appreciate the rain here in Scotland as much as we should…

Today, 29 July, is World Rain Day 🌧️

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https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/153822/the-rainmaker

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #rain #WorldRainDay

The Rainmaker
by Niall Campbell

We needed it—and he stood there,
feet on the dry porch, saying rain,
cloud and skyful, the sound of drumming;

the bath trough in the garden listened,
white and bone dry, as he described
a bright wash across the dust fields,

the surest downpour, the flushed skin,
my soaked shirt, heavy as a bell.
Then off he went to the scorched fields,

humming, and weighing what we paid.
What did he say: prayer is moisture;
hope is a well—I didn’t care,

I wanted just the words from him—
what I couldn’t dare say—not there
beneath that sun, that blur of fire-sky.

My thoughts all thoughts of water, I
spun my head round—to hear the spill
of the word rain across the boards,

and nothing grew dark, nothing fell—
but something fell, and the ground took,
and something wild as garlic grew.

ALT

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213d

The latest issue of NORTHWORDS NOW (#46, Summer–Autumn 2025) is available free online – featuring poems, short stories, articles & book reviews, in English, Gaelic & Scots

New writing, fresh from Scotland and the wider North
Sgrìobhadh ùr à Alba agus an Àird a Tuath

https://www.northwordsnow.co.uk/Issue46

#Scottish #literature #poetry #shortstories #shortfiction #Scots #Scotslanguage #Gaelic #Gaidhlig

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211d

We who loved sincerely; we who loved sae fiercely.
The snow ne’er looked sae barrie,
Nor the winter trees sae pretty.
C’mon, c’mon my dearie – tak my hand, my fiere!

—Jackie Kay, “Fiere”
fron FIERE (Picador 2011)

30 July is International Friendship Day 🤝

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

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #friend #friends #friendship #InternationalFriendshipDay

Fiere
Jackie Kay

If ye went tae the tapmost hill, fiere
whaur we used tae clamb as girls,
ye’d see the snow the day, fiere,
settling on the hills.
You’d mind o’ anither day, mibbe,
we ran doon the hill in the snow,
sliding and singing oor way tae the foot,
lassies laughing thegither – how braw,
the years slipping awa; oot in the weather.

And noo we’re suddenly auld, fiere,
oor friendship’s ne’er been weary.
We’ve aye seen the wurld differently.
Whaur would I hae been weyoot my jo,
my fiere, my fiercy, my dearie O?
Oor hair micht be silver noo,
oor walk a wee bit doddery,
but we’ve had a whirl and a blast, girl,
thru the cauld blast winter, thru spring, summer.

O’er a lifetime, my fiere, my bonnie lassie,
I’d defend you – you, me; blithe and blatter,
here we gang doon the hill, nae matter,
past the bracken, bonny braes, barley,
oot by the roaring sea, still havin a blether.
We who loved sincerely; we who loved sae fiercely,
the snow ne’er looked sae barrie,
nor the winter trees sae pretty.
C’mon, c’mon my dearie – tak my hand, my fiere!

ALT

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212d

A bird’s voice chinks and tinkles
Alone in the gaunt reedbed –
Tiny silversmith
Working late in the evening…

—Norman MacCaig, “July evening”
published in THE POEMS OF NORMAN MacCAIG (Birlinn, 2009)

https://birlinn.co.uk/product/the-poems-of-norman-maccaig/

#Scottish #literature #poetry #poem #NormanMacCaig

July evening
Norman MacCaig

A bird’s voice chinks and tinkles
Alone in the gaunt reedbed –
Tiny silversmith
Working late in the evening.

I sit and listen. The rooftop
With a quill of smoke stuck in it
Wavers against the sky
In the dreamy heat of summer.

Flowers’ closing time: bee lurches
Across the hayfield, singing
And feeling its drunken way
Round the air’s invisible corners.

And grass is grace. And charlock
Is gold of its own bounty.
The broken chair by the wall
Is one with immortal landscapes.

Something has been completed
That everything is part of,
Something that will go on
Being completed forever.

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237d

July. Summer on the island
muffles in scarves.
Merino-socked, Berghaus-booted,
swap cocoon of car
for hilly slither. Pilgrim-trail
with sodden strangers,
step in time to the cadence of rain…

—Nikki Robson, “The Callanish Stones”
published in Other Worlds: An Anthology of Scottish Island Poems (Birlinn, 2022)

https://birlinn.co.uk/2022/06/20/poem-of-the-week-the-callanish-stones-by-nikki-robson/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Hebrides #Lewis #Callanish #StandingStones #tourism

The Callanish Stones
Nikki Robson

July. Summer on the island
muffles in scarves.
Merino-socked, Berghaus-booted,
swap cocoon of car
for hilly slither. Pilgrim-trail
with sodden strangers,
step in time to the cadence of rain.
White-trainered Americans patter: there isn’t a bus,
Earl, I can’t believe there isn’t a bus.
Even taped seams leak. Cold as
Lewisian gneiss, circle
the circle of Neolithic ritual.
Reach out, for Callanish grants
what Stonehenge forbids:
it feels like wet stone.
On the downhill squelch,
the final syllable’s a sneeze.
I buy a fridge magnet.

ALT

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6d

Many times, I feel that the genocide does not pass through my body and soul without leaving a mark.
Many times, I feel like I want to tear it out and uproot it from my body, but I cannot.
Because the hardship we are living in now reminds me, in detail, of all its terrible chapters.
Then suddenly, I return to the corner of the genocide, where it swallows me and I swallow it…

#gaza #genocide #palestine #poem #poetry

Edited 6d ago

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4d

Sorrow remembers us when day is done.
It sits in its old chair gently rocking
and singing tenderly in the evening…

—Iain Crichton Smith, “When Day is Done”
published in DEER ON THE HIGH HILLS (Carcanet, 2021)

https://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?product=9781800170940

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #20thcentury #IainCrichtonSmith #sorrow #grief #grieving

When Day is Done
by Iain Crichton Smith

Sorrow remembers us when day is done.
It sits in its old chair gently rocking
and singing tenderly in the evening.
It welcomes us home again after the day.
It is so old in its black silken dress,
its stick beside it carved with legends.
It tells its stories over and over again.
After a while we have to stop listening.

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208d

The hill is tossing high, frail wisps of
rosy cloud to glide in steady gale
along a turquoise sky, around, above the
perpendicular and slightly askew columns,
above the triangular gap
between crown and crag…

—Tessa Ransford, “August 3rd”
published in Shadows from the Greater Hill (Ramsay Head Press, 1987)

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/august-3rd/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #naturepoem #naturewriting

August 3rd
Tessa Ransford

The hill is tossing high, frail wisps of
rosy cloud to glide in steady gale
along a turquoise sky, around, above the
perpendicular and slightly askew columns,
above the triangular gap
between crown and crag.

The moon, full at midnight,
is now high and faded
almost a lazy eyelid:
day’s eye opening
or night’s eye closing.

Birds chase and ride the wind
reeling, wheeling,
aware that in a moment
ordinary flight of day will have to be resumed.

The hawk alone is steady,
keeps position despite the gale
to pinpoint a victim

and far below
grasses tinge in flower:
harebell, yarrow, lady’s yellow bedstraw
Among the rangy thistles and fatted doves.

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208d

My schedule for Seattle #Worldcon later this month!

Come watch my panels on hopeful fiction and speculative poetry, or check out the research posters (including mine) at any time in the 4th floor Paramount Lounge. Looking forward to talking #solarpunk with other #SF fans!

#seattleworldcon #worldcon2025 #sff #digitalhumanities #climatefiction #poetry

Solarpunk Now Worldcon 2025 schedule

First, a blueprint for hope, wednesday august 13, 9am-10am. Second, the future doesn't have to suck, wednesday august 13, 1:30pm-2:30pm. Third, solarpunk fiction as a catalyst for climate action, thursday august 14, 9:30am to 10am, research presentation followed by a poster session. And finally, can speculative poetry change the world? saturday august 16, 9am-10am.

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7d

"Cold in the earth—and the deep snow piled above thee,
Far, far, removed, cold in the dreary grave!
Have I forgot, my only Love, to love thee,
Severed at last by Time's all-severing wave?"

How Wuthering Heights was shaped by Emily Brontë’s gothic poetry

Emily Brontë’s poetry is full of haunting love, grief and death.

by Claire O'Callaghan

https://theconversation.com/how-wuthering-heights-was-shaped-by-emily-brontes-gothic-poetry-275948?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20February%2019%202026%20-%203680937628&utm_content=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20February%2019%202026%20-%203680937628+CID_615a3bba18c77b3d9714f9e409741922&utm_source=campaign_monitor_uk&utm_term=How%20Wuthering%20Heights%20was%20shaped%20by%20Emily%20Bronts%20gothic%20poetry

Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1019

#books #literature #poetry

Title page of the book Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell

Authors: Charlotte Brontë
Anne Brontë
Emily Brontë

A title page from an 1846 publication on aged cream paper. At the very top, a handwritten pencil inscription reads "Brontë Charlotte" in a casual, slightly slanted hand. The printed text is centered and typeset in a spare, classical style with generous spacing between elements.
Below a small decorative wavy rule, the publication details appear at the bottom:
LONDON:
SMITH, ELDER AND CO., 65, CORNHILL.
1846.

The layout is minimal and elegant, with wide margins and abundant white space giving it a restrained, dignified character typical of mid-Victorian book design.

https://archive.org/details/poemsbycurrerell00bron/page/n4/mode/1up

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206d

Cuil-lodair, is Briseadh na h-Eaglaise,
is briseadh nan tacannan –
lamhachas-làidir dà thrian de ar comas;
’se seòltachd tha dhìth oirinn…

—“Cruaidh?” (“Steel?”), by Ruaraidh MacThòmais (Derick Thomson, 1921–2012) – born #OTD, 5 Aug. A 🎂 🧵

1/6

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

#Scottish #Gaelic #Gaidhlig #literature #poem #poetry #20thcentury

Cruaidh?
le Ruaraidh MacThòmais

Cuil-lodair, is Briseadh na h-Eaglaise,
is briseadh nan tacannan –
lamhachas-làidir dà thrian de ar comas;
‘se seòltachd tha dhìth oirinn.
Nuair a theirgeas a’ chruaidh air faobhar na speala
caith bhuat a’ chlach-liomhaidh;
chan eil agad ach iarann bog
mur eil de chruas nad innleachd na ni sgathadh.

Is caith bhuat briathran mìne
oir chan fhada bhios briathran agad;
tha Tuatha Dè Danann fon talamh,
tha Tìr nan Og anns an Fhraing,
‘s nuair a ruigeas tu Tìr a’ Gheallaidh,
mura bi thu air t’ aire,
coinnichidh Sasannach riut is plion air,
a dh’ innse dhut gun tug Dia, bràthair athar, còir dha anns an fhearann.

ALT

Steel?
Translator: Derick Thomson

Culloden, the Disruption,
and the breaking up of the tack-farms –
two-thirds of our power is violence;
it is cunning we need.
When the tempered steel near the edge of the scythe-blade is worn
throw away the whetstone;
you have nothing left but soft iron
unless your intellect has a steel edge that will cut clean.

And throw away soft words,
for soon you will have no words left;
the Tuatha Dè Danann are underground,
the Land of the Ever-young is in France,
and when you reach the Promised Land,
unless you are on your toes,
a bland Englishman will meet you,
and say to you that God, his uncle, has given him a title to the land.

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3d

It’s not the crack you expect.
It’s more a soft whump,
then an elegant leaving, like
a grand piano dropped
from a silent-movie window…

—Karen Ashe, “The Sound of an Iceberg Calving”
in SOUND OF AN ICEBERG: New Writing Scotland 37 (ASL, 2019)

https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/newwriting/nws37/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #globalwarming #environment

Karen Ashe
The Sound of an Iceberg Calving

It’s not the crack you expect.
It’s more a soft whump,
then an elegant leaving, like
a grand piano dropped
from a silent-movie window,
a slow-motion school bus
over a soap-opera cliff,
Falling Man falling
forever on prime-time news
then the kettle clicks to a rapid boil
as a small finger presses a button,
the screen flickers and blurs,
and the iceberg is replaced
by slimming ads and payday loans,
super-fast fibre-optic wifi,
high-speed trains, and the tea
bleeds into the water and milk
delivered unseen in early hours
from cows in distant misty pastures
stays fresh for nine days
in fat plastic bottles
that go in the recycling
and the baby shudders inside
half a month from completion
and the buy-now-pay-later sofa
is wobbly in the leg already
and the interest-free 42-inch telly is frozen
on an ad for wonga.com
and the dunked biscuit dissolves
in the tea in the time it takes
to change channels
and in some faraway dark cold country
of slavering bears and wandering herdsmen
the iceberg
is still
calving.

ALT

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205d

In the Enola Gay
five minutes before impact
he whistles a dry tune

Later he will say
that the whole blooming sky
went up like an apricot ice…

—Alison Fell, “August 6, 1945”
published in The New British Poetry, 1968–88 (Paladin, 1988)

Hiroshima was hit by an atomic bomb on this day, 6 August, 1945

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Hiroshima #HiroshimaDay #atomicbomb #EnolaGay

August 6, 1945
Alison Fell

In the Enola Gay
five minutes before impact
he whistles a dry tune

Later he will say
that the whole blooming sky
went up like an apricot ice.
Later he will laugh and tremble
at such a surrender, for the eye
of his belly saw Marilyn’s skirts
fly over her head for ever

On the river bank,
bees drizzle over
hot white rhododendrons

Later she will walk
the dust, a scarlet girl
with her whole stripped skin
at her heel, stuck like an old
shoe sole or mermaid’s tail

Later she will lie down
in the flecked black ash
where the people are become
as lizards or salamanders
and, blinded, she will complain
Mother you are late. So late

Later in dreams he will look
down shrieking and see

ladybirds
ladybirds

ALT

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204d

It gets late early out here
in the lacklustre places,
wind in the trees and the foodstalls’
ricepaper lamplight, fading and blurred with rain…

—John Burnside, “Travelling South, Scotland, August 2012”
published in BLACK MIDDENS: New Writing Scotland 31 (ASL, 2013)

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #JohnBurnside

John Burnside
Travelling South, Scotland, August 2012

“Necessity is not the mother of invention; play is”
—Ian D. Suttie

It gets late early out here
in the lacklustre places,
wind in the trees & the foodstalls’
ricepaper lamplight, fading & blurred with rain,
the wire fence studded with fleece
& indelible traces
of polythene wrapping; marrowfat clogging the drains
on the road that runs out to the coast
then disappears.
A last bleed of gold in the west, like a Shan Shui painting,
then darkness.

The animals are gone
that hunted here:
wolves coming down from the hills, that
immaculate hunger,
rumours of bear & cat, quick
martens & raptors.
The rain is darker now,
though not so black,
oil-iridescent, streaked with the smell of lard
– it gets late early out here; though late, out here,
has a different meaning:

stars in the road
& the absence of something more
than birchwoods or song,
pallet fires, tyre-tracks,
grubbed fields clouded with grease
& palm oil, hints
of molasses and lanolin, tarpaper,
iron filings.
A narrow band of weather on the road,
then houses; though we scarcely think of them
as that.

ALT

I remember a meadow at dusk
in another rain
(and this is nostalgia now); I remember
I stood in a wind like gossamer and watched
three roe fawns and a doe
come quietly, one by one, through the silvering grasses,
wary, but curious, giving me just enough space
to feel safe,
their watchfulness reminding me of something
lost, a creaturely
awareness I could only glimpse

in passing.
That meadow is gone, and dusk
isn’t dusk any more
– or not out here –
just miles of tract and lay-by on the way
to junkyards and dead allotments,
guard dogs on tether,
biomass, factory outlets,
the half-light of ersatz dairies petering out
on rotting fields
of rape and mustardseed.

We’ve been going at this for years:
a steady delete
of anything that tells us what we are,
a long
distaste for the blood warmth and bloom
of the creaturely: local
fauna and words for colour, all the shapes
of ritual and lust
surrendered where they fell, beneath a fog
of smut and grime and counting-house
as church, the old gods

ALT

buried undead beneath the rural sprawl
that bears their names, or wandering the hills
of Lammermuir and Whitelee, waiting out
the rule of Mammon, till the land returns
– with or without us –
chainlink going down
to bindweed, drunken
thistles in a sway
of wind and goldfinch on the dead estates, fat
clusters of moss
and gentian, broken

tarmac with new shoots
of coltsfoot breaking through
like velvet, till the darkness of the leaf
unfurls into a light we could have known
but failed to see
by choosing not to find
the kingdom-at-hand:
this order;
this dialectic;
this mother of invention,
ceaseless play.

ALT

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202d

The Dust of Her Bones: An Interview with Inés Bellina, Alejandra C. Quintana Arocho, and Anne Freeland on Gabriela Mistral’s Queerness

by Alton Melvar M Dapanas

https://www.asymptotejournal.com/blog/2025/08/07/the-dust-of-her-bones-an-interview-with-ines-bellina-alejandra-c-quintana-arocho-and-anne-freeland-on-gabriela-mistrals-queerness/?utm_source=Klaviyo&utm_medium=campaign&utm_id=01K24P5V404FDAM95TV63BRB8F&_kx=3MZUehzXM-41qlWAMPUiuNZadX2p0SByuNf_t0eMLB0.U5D8ER

#Books #Translation #Poetry

Gabriela Mistral en 1922.

Desconocido - http://www.memoriachilena.gob.cl/602/w3-article-69686.html

Gabriela Mistral appears captured in a composed and dignified pose a head-and-shoulders view. She has short, straight hair and is wearing a jacket with a white blouse underneath with a sort of bow tie.

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriela_Mistral#/media/Archivo:Gabriela_Mistral_(1922).jpg

ALT

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6d

Nam sheasamh thall aig geat a’ phreiridh,
feur glan fom bhotannan,
lamhan fuar nam phocaidean,
faileadh an dup
gu fann
gu neo-chinnteach
a’ nochdadh mu mo chuinnlean…

—Anne Frater, “Aig an Fhaing”

Today, 21 February, is UNESCO International Mother Language Day

https://www.unesco.org/en/days/mother-language

#Scottish #literature #Gaidhlig #Gaelic #poem #poetry #language #minoritylanguage #MotherLanguageDay #UNESCO