Eggplant.place

68d

Nothing But The Poem – Imtiaz Dharker

The Scottish Poetry Library’s resident podcast host Sam Tongue takes a deep dive into two poems – “Bairn” & “Stitch” – by one of Britain’s most beloved poets, Imtiaz Dharker.

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/podcast/nothing-but-the-poem-imtiaz-dharker/

#Scottish #literature #poetry #ImtiazDharker #podcast

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

68d

Afro-Scottish Events 2026: Voices Beyond Borders
11 September, Glasgow – £0–£15

Afro-Scottish Events returns with an evening of poetry, music, culture & community celebrating the stories, sounds & experiences that connect us across borders

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/afro-scottish-events-2026-tickets-1990760184301

#Scottish #AfroScottish #literature #poetry #music #storytelling #culture

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

19d

In the lift there is nae steer
And in the schaw nae soun’:
Saftly through the cauld air
The grey smurr comes doun…

—William Soutar, “October”
Published in William Soutar: Collected Works, vol. 1 (Tippermuir Books, 2024)

https://tippermuirbooks.co.uk/product/william-soutar-collected-works-vols-1-2/

#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #poem #poetry #Scots #Scotslanguage #autumn #October

October
by William Soutar

In the lift there is nae steer
And in the schaw nae soun’:
Saftly through the cauld air
The grey smurr comes doun.

Haar gethers on the hill
Like quiet owre a sang:
The failin year has said fareweel
And yet is laith to gang.

Sae lowden’d is the dreich day
The bluid begins to speak:
Whan ye ken what it wud say
You’ll be by a’ hert-brek.

ALT

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

67d

Seven scythes leaned at the wall.
Beard upon golden beard
The last barley load
Swayed through the yard…

—George Mackay Brown, “Taxman”
Published in CARVE THE RUNES (Polygon, 2021)

https://birlinn.co.uk/product/carve-the-runes/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Orkney #farming #farminghistory #harvest #GeorgeMacKayBrown

Taxman
by George Mackay Brown

Seven scythes leaned at the wall.
Beard upon golden beard
The last barley load
Swayed through the yard.
The girls uncorked the ale.
Fiddle and feet moved together.
Then between stubble and heather
A horseman rode.

ALT

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

67d

The sky
Gives us
Constellations
When we
Can’t recognize
Ourselves.

#poetry

0 0 1 View Post & Replies See Original

48d

Yestreen I heard a birdie sing
Inbye a bonnie beech tree hedge
As if it didnae ken nor care
Autumn wis hidin in the sedge…

—Sheena Blackhall, “Autumn XI”

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/autumn-ix/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Scots #Scotslanguage #Autumn

Autumn IX
Sheena Blackhall

Yestreen I heard a birdie sing
Inbye a bonnie beech tree hedge
As if it didnae ken nor care
Autumn wis hidin in the sedge

The daith o leaves is roon the neuk
It peints them yalla, reid an broon
An doon they’ll drap like faain rain
In waesome Autumn’s dowie croon

Sic cheenges cam tae great an sma
First ae grey hair, a nippin knee
The stert o auld age: clawin cleuks
That herald yer mortality

Autumn draws near, like cat wi moose
It winna stop, nor else devaul
A jeelin in a body’s banes
A cheenge, the turn frae warm tae caul

Noo blawin in the win, dry leaves
Like Simmer’s ghaists, ethereal
This is the Sizzen o the scythe
The nichts draw in, a mournin pall

ALT

1 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

66d

Daft gowk, in macaroni dress,
Are ye come here to shaw your face,
Bowden wi’ pride o’ simmer gloss,
To cast a dash at Reikie’s cross…

—“On Seeing a Butterfly in the Street”, by Robert Fergusson (1750–1774) – born #OTD, 5 Sept. In his short life he reinvigorated #poetry in Scots. A 🎂🧵

1/10

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #18thcentury #Edinburgh #RobertFergusson

On Seeing a Butterfly in the Street
Robert Fergusson

Daft gowk, in macaroni dress,
Are ye come here to shaw your face,
Bowden wi’ pride o’ simmer gloss,
To cast a dash at Reikie’s cross;
And glowr at mony a twa-legg’d creature,
Flees, braw by art, tho’ worms by nature?

Like country laird in city cleeding,
Ye’re come to town to lear’ good breeding;
To bring ilk darling toast and fashion
In vogue amang the flee creation,
That they, like buskit belles and beaux,
May crook their mou’ fu’ sour at those
Whase weird is still to creep, alas!
Unnotic’d ʼmang the humble grass;
While you, wi’ wings new buskit trim,
Can far frae yird and reptiles skim;
Newfangle grown wi’ new-got form,
You soar aboon your mither worm.

Kind Nature lent but for a day
Her wings to mak ye sprush and gay;
In her habuliments a while
Ye may your former sell beguile,
And ding awa’ the vexing thought
O’ hourly dwinin’ into nought,
By beengin’ to your foppish brithers,
Black corbies dress’d in peacock’s feathers;
Like thee they dander here and there,
Whan Simmer’s blinks are warm and fair,
And lo’e to snuff the healthy balm,
Whan E’enin’ spreads her wing sae calm;
But whan she girns and glow’rs sae dour
Frae Borean houff in angry show’r,
Like thee they scour frae street or field,
And hap them in a lyther bield;
For they were never made to dree
The adverse gloom o’ Fortune’s e’e,
Nor ever pried life’s pinin’ woes,
Nor pu’d the prickles wi’ the rose.

ALT

Poor Butterfly! thy case I mourn,
To green kail-yard and fruits return:
How could you troke the mavis’ note
For “penny pies all-pipin’ hot?”
Can lintie’s music be compar’d
Wi’ gruntles frae the City Guard?
Or can our flow’rs, at ten hour’s bell,
The gowan or the spink excel?

Now shou’d our sclates wi’ hailstanes ring,
What cabbage-fauld wad screen your wing;
Say, fluttering fairy! wert thy hap
To light beneath braw Nanny’s cap,
Wad she, proud butterfly of May!
In pity let you skaithless gae?
The furies glancing frae her een
Wad rug your wings o’ siller sheen,
That, wae for thee! far, far outvy
Her Paris artist’s finest dye;
Then a’ your bonny spraings wad fall,
And you a worm be left to crawl.

To sic mishanter rins the laird
Wha quits his ha’-house and kail-yard,
Grows politician, scours to court,
Whare he’s the laughing-stock and sport
O’ Ministers, wha jeer and jibe,
And heeze his hopes wi’ thought o’ bribe,
Till in the end they flae him bare,
Leave him to poortith, and to care.
Their fleetchin’ words owre late he sees,
He trudges hame, repines, and dies.

Sic be their fa’ wha dirk their ben
In blackest business nae their ain;
And may they scad their lips fu’ leal,
That dip their spoons in ither’s kail.

ALT

1 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

66d

RE: https://me.dm/@tuckerlieberman/117180472131650269

Please see! See see see! 👀 👀 👀
Under the lettuce bag!

The cover of ATTIS & ALEPH has been revealed! #poetry #bookrelease #reading
Cover art: Rachel A. Rosen @youseeatortoise

https://nightbeats.substack.com/p/write-on-back-to-school-edition

⬆️ ⬆️ ⬆️

0 0 1 View Post & Replies See Original

79d

Ardent on the beach at Rossnowlagh
on the last day of summer,
you ran through the shallows
throwing off shoes, and shirt and towel
like the seasons, the city’s years…

—Robin Robertson, “Donegal”
published in SAILING THE FOREST (Picador, 2014)

https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/robin-robertson/sailing-the-forest/9781447231554

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #summer #Donegal #ageing

Robin Roberston
Donegal

for Eilidh

Ardent on the beach at Rossnowlagh
on the last day of summer,
you ran through the shallows
throwing off shoes, and shirt and towel
like the seasons, the city’s years,
all caught in my arms
as I ploughed on behind you, guardian still
of dry clothes, of this little heart
not quite thirteen,
breasting the waves
and calling back to me
to join you, swimming in the Atlantic
on the last day of summer.
I saw a man in the shallows
with his hands full of clothes, full of
all the years,
and his daughter going
where he knew he could not follow.

ALT

1 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

65d

I love all films that start with rain:
rain, braiding a windowpane
or darkening a hung-out dress
or streaming down her upturned face;

one big thundering downpour
right through the empty script and score
before the act, before the blame,
before the lens pulls through the frame…

—Don Paterson, “Rain”
Published in RAIN (Faber, 2010)

5–6 September is National Cinema Weekend 🎥🎬🍿

https://www.faber.co.uk/product/9780571251742-rain/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #cinema #film #NationalCinemaWeekend

Don Paterson
Rain

I love all films that start with rain:
rain, braiding a windowpane
or darkening a hung-out dress
or streaming down her upturned face;

one big thundering downpour
right through the empty script and score
before the act, before the blame,
before the lens pulls through the frame

to where the woman sits alone
beside a silent telephone
or the dress lies ruined on the grass
or the girl walks off the overpass,

and all things flow out from that source
along their fatal watercourse.
However bad or overlong
such a film can do no wrong,

so when his native twang shows through
or when the boom dips into view
or when her speech starts to betray
its adaptation from a play,

I think to when we opened cold
on a starlit gutter, running gold
with the neon of a drugstore sign
and I’d read into its blazing line:

forget the ink, the milk, the blood –
all was washed clean with the flood
we rose up from the falling waters
the fallen rain’s own sons and daughters

and none of this, none of this matters.

ALT

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

65d

NAMING THE SNAKES: New Writing Scotland 44
Glasgow launch
8 September, Waterstones Sauchiehall St, Glasgow – £5 / £12 with book

Celebrate the latest issue with a mix of readings of poetry, short fiction & non-fiction in English, Gaelic & Scots – all welcome!

https://www.waterstones.com/events/new-writing-scotland-44-launch/glasgow-sauchiehall-street

#Scottish #literature #Gaidhlig #Gaelic #Scots #Scotslanguage #poetry #shortfiction #writingcommunity #Glasgow

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

24d

You Wince Like a Girl

More of Sylvia Plath’s writing is available than ever before. Can you take it?

by Kristin Grogan

https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/you-wince-like-a-girl/

#books #literature #poetry

Sylvia Plath, sitting sideways to the camera.

A black-and-white close-up portrait of Sylvia Plath with short, dark, bowl-cut hair and a straight fringe, gazing off to the left with parted lips and a pensive expression. She wears a soft, textured wool collar against a blurred background.

ALT

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

70d

#ScribesAndMakers Sep 1:

#Introduction

I am an author of #Sapphic-fueled #Mythpunk serials: #Yuri (Japanese-style lesbian romance), #UrbanFantasy, & #TimeTravel.

I have 3 complete & 2 new self-published serials (Time-Travel & Urban Fantasy)

Bijou the Time-Traveling Ghost

PIXIV Link:
AO3 Link:
In serialization

For Love of a Konbini Idol

PIXIV Link:
AO3 Link:
Three complete volumes

My Girlfriend Almost Got Me Killed (R18)

AO3 Link:
Complete

Arisu: The Girl Who Saw Ghosts

Airisu: The Crow and the Witch

First serialization now on the Fedi. Will be revised for broader release later.

I also write JP-style #Poetry: Haiku, Tanka, Renga, and Rengay.
And I am an urban photographer,

#NMFic #WritingCommunity

Three series covers:
Left: Two women looking at a giant meteor crash
Middle: Two women fleeing a ghost
Right: Two women kissing on a swing

ALT

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

62d

A Home in Space: Edwin Morgan’s Selected Concrete, Visual & Sound Poetry
17 September, University of Glasgow – free

An evening to discover & celebrate the incredible body of visual & sound poetry by Edwin Morgan, much of which is rarely seen & will now be available in this significant new volume from Reaktion Books.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/a-home-in-space-edwin-morgans-selected-concrete-visual-sound-poetry-tickets-1996801819996

#Scottish #literature #poetry #visualpoetry #concretepoetry #soundpoetry #EdwinMorgan #20thcentury

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

63d

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 (2011)

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

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #September #autumn

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

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

62d

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 #HughMacDiarmid #InMemoriam

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

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

62d

There are times when I think
of the knowledge we had as children:

the patterns we saw in number, or the spells
and recipes we had
for love and fear…

—John Burnside, “Being and Time”
published in THE LIGHT TRAP (Jonathan Cape, 2002)

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/being-and-time/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #JohnBurnside

Being and Time
John Burnside

There are times when I think
of the knowledge we had as children:

the patterns we saw in number, or the spells
and recipes we had
for love and fear;

the knowledge we kept in the bones
for wet afternoons,
the slink of tides, the absolutes of fog,

or how a lapwing’s egg can tip
the scale of the tongue;

how something was always present in the snow
that fell between our parish and the next,

a perfect thing, not what was always there,
but something we knew without knowing, as we knew

that everything was finite and alive,
cradled in warmth against the ache of space,

marsh-grass and shale, and the bloodroot we dug in the woods
that turned our fingers red, and left a stain

we kept for weeks, through snow and miles of sleep,
as if it was meant to happen, a sliver of fate
unstitching its place in the marrow, and digging in.

ALT

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

61d

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…

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

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #autumn

HIM AGAIN
by 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

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

61d

NAMING THE SNAKES: New Writing Scotland 44
Edinburgh launch
15 September, Blackwell’s, South Bridge – £3 / £11 with book

Celebrate the latest issue with a mix of readings of poetry, short fiction & non-fiction in English, Gaelic & Scots – all welcome!

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/naming-the-snakes-new-writing-scotland-44-tickets-1995684361648

#Scottish #literature #Gaidhlig #Gaelic #Scots #Scotslanguage #poetry #shortfiction #shortstories #writing #writingcommunity #Edinburgh

naming-the-snakes-new-writing-scotland-44-tickets-1995684361648

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

61d

A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle
19 November, National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh. Free, ticketed

Marking the centenary of Hugh MacDiarmid’s landmark poem, “A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle” – a 2685-line work in Scots that is colloquial, lyrical, & highly literary, blending tradition with modernism & exploring both national & international themes

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/a-drunk-man-looks-at-the-thistle-tickets-1999760348033

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

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

42d

Behind us, Glencoe of the Slaughter,
Achnacone, field of dogs,
Achtriachan, where the water-bull
lurks among thin fish tickled by weed,
and the Great Herdsman of Etive
over us like a black axe…

—Alison Fell, “Rannoch Moor”
published in The Edinburgh Book of 20th-Century Scottish Poetry (Edinburgh University Press, 2005)

https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-the-edinburgh-book-of-twentieth-century-scottish-poetry.html

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Rannoch #RannochMoor #hiking #walking

Rannoch Moor
Alison Fell

Behind us, Glencoe of the Slaughter,
Achnacone, field of dogs,
Achtriachan, where the water-bull
lurks among thin fish tickled by weed,
and the Great Herdsman of Etive
over us like a black axe

To pace the moor, and mark it,
like a cat bruises the grass
for its bed,
or be claimed instead –
scars of burnt heather, dead
weariness, the sheep paths
misleading, and the bogs
pitted with white water

Slow steps mark the line
on the moor sour with struggle,
where darkness is brought to the brim,
and the bog-cotton bursts
like puffs of smoke
after a musket,
and the broken bleached roots
of the old forest
are white bones under
the petrol shimmer of methane

Slow march in the whine
of telegraph wires,
while the wind chops
at my breath,
and the peat mud sticks to my feet
like rafts

ALT

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

61d

"But beauty is set apart,
beauty is cast by the sea,
a barren rock,
beauty is set about
with wrecks of ships...."

Hymen (ed. 1921)

~H.D. was born #OTD in 1886.

Books by H. D. at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/33478

#books #literature #poetry

Photographic portrait of American writer Hilda "H.D." Doolittle (1886–1961), taken by Man Ray circa 1917. From Tendencies in Modern American Poetry by Amy Lowell. New York: The MacMillan Company, 1917, p. 233.

Shown seated, in dark clothing, downcast gaze, dark bobbed hair with bangs, against a patterned wallpaper.

ALT

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

27d

you can't break me
but you can bury me
you can hurt me
but you can't kill me
#poetry i #suppose

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

18d

On days when air was clarified by frost
and a translucent moon came close to earth
I’d hear the rhythms of pneumatic riveting hammers
in a high-tiered lecture room…

—James Aitchison, “Riveting”
Published in The Flight of the Turtle: New Writing Scotland 29 (ASL, 2011)

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Glasgow #GlasgowUniversity #Clydeside #shipyards

James Aitchison
RIVETING

On days when air was clarified by frost
and a translucent moon came close to earth
I’d hear the rhythms of pneumatic riveting hammers
in a high-tiered lecture room.

Some of the shipyard men had served their time
when white-hot iron bolts were still slammed home
by sledgehammers with half-width heads,
precision instruments in riveters’ hands.

Riveters worked a forty-eight-hour week
ten, twenty, thirty, forty, eighty feet
above the Clyde. They felt the scaffolding
sway like a ship at sea when strong winds blew.

Shipyard credentials? None. My student jobs –
summer gophering on Grangemouth building sites,
delivering Christmas mail –
were so short-term they were paid holidays.

Back in the lecture room, Alexander Scott
taught in a voice that rattled window panes,
electrified the air and woke the dead.
William Dunbar is chanting in my head.

ALT

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

46d

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)

A poem for World Dream Day

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

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #father #fathers #dream #dreams #dreaming #WorldDreamDay