Eggplant.place

46d

Glasgow, late September and the city I spoke of
in another country (its fierce sandstone
burning, its bombast of finials built on the heads of slaves…

—Gerrie Fellows, “Dream Cities”
published in The Body in Space (Shearsman, 2014)

A poem for World Dream Day

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/dream-cities/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Glasgow #NewZealand #dream #dreams #dreaming #WorldDreamDay

Dream Cities
by Gerrie Fellows

I
Glasgow, late September and the city I spoke of
in another country (its fierce sandstone
burning, its bombast of finials built on the heads of slaves
the monumental tower blocks of a later order
catching fire from the west as a plane comes in)
has become in two months
a dream a nostalgia

For it is litter not grandeur
a muddied disturbance in a dirty river
a sullen reflection sliced by concrete
(the monumental pillars
and glorious boulevards of a later order)

Against the vivifying light
of the south the suburban avenues
of a world of space it is rain
rain and old world pallor

and beyond it
on the high points of Aonach Mor and Ben Nevis
(so early a door closing and opening)
the first snows of the winter

II
Early November and the city I parted from
in two months has become a dream technicolour
not quite Auckland or Christchurch
but a dream place of skyscrapers and heady blossom
stern waxy magnolia silk of almond and crab apple
A dream place but Christchurch as it was then
in mid-September Jane driving me to the airport
past gardens reeking with nectar

for there Spring has continued without me

And here I wake no longer at home

ALT

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45d

April, the last full fixture of the spring:
“Feet, Scottish, feet!” – they rucked the fear of God
Into Blackheath…

—“London Scottish”, by Mick Imlah (1956–2009) – born #OTD, 26 September
published in THE LOST LEADER (Faber, 2008)

1/5

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/london-scottish/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #warpoetry #WW1 #rugby #LondonScottish #MickImlah

London Scottish
Mick Imlah

April, the last full fixture of the spring:
‘Feet, Scottish, feet!’ – they rucked the fear of God
Into Blackheath. Their club was everything:
And of the four sides playing that afternoon,
The stars, but also those from the back pitches,
All sixty volunteered for the touring squad,
And swapped their Richmond turf for Belgian ditches.
October: mad for a fight, they broke too soon
On the Ypres Salient, rushing the ridge between
‘Witshit’ and Messines. Three-quarters died.

Of that ill-balanced and fatigued fifteen
The ass selectors favoured to survive,
Just one, Brodie the prop, resumed his post.
The others sometimes drank to ‘The Forty-Five’:
Neither a humorous nor an idle toast.

ALT

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17d

My brother is skull and skeleton now
empty of mind behind the brow
in ribs and pelvis empty space
bone-naked without a face…

—William Montgomerie, “Epitaph”
For 2nd Officer James S. Montgomerie of the S.S. Carsbreck, torpedoed off Gibraltar, 24th October 1941

Published in FROM THE LINE: Scottish war Poetry 1914–1945 (ASL, 2014)

https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/volumes/from_the_line/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #warpoetry #WW2

William Montgomerie
Epitaph
For 2nd Officer James S. Montgomerie of the S.S. Carsbreck, torpedoed off Gibraltar, 24th October 1941

My brother is skull and skeleton now
empty of mind behind the brow
in ribs and pelvis empty space
bone-naked without a face

On a draughty beach drifting sand
clawed by a dry skeleton hand
sifts in the hourglass of his head
time useless to bones of the dead

ALT

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17d

In front of me a girl with bare feet,
in a beribboned dress, picks white
flowers in a field somewhere near Pompeii…

—Stewart Conn, “Springtime”
published in IN THE KIBBLE PALACE (Bloodaxe, 1987)

Pompeii was destroyed possibly #OTD, 24 Oct, 79CE

“Flora”, from Stabiae, Villa of Ariadne inv. 8834, is held in the frescos collection of the Museo Archaeologico di Napoli

https://www.museoarcheologiconapoli.it/en/portfolio-item/frescoes/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Roman #archaeology #Pompeii

Stewart Conn
Springtime

In front of me a girl with bare feet,
in a beribboned dress, picks white
flowers in a field somewhere near Pompeii.

Each day I look at her, head straight,
right hand outstretched as she delicately
plucks the stem. Was she there that night

the lava flowed, birds shrivelled in the sky
and lovers turned to ash, where they lay?
If so, what had she done to deserve it?

I wonder, will it ever be
Springtime again, the blood flow freely;
or has man blighted all hope of recovery?

We are on borrowed time, you and I
and have been from the outset.
All that is left, is to live lovingly.

ALT

“Flora”
da Stabiae, Villa di Arianna inv. 8834
www.museoarcheologiconapoli.it

A Roman fresco from Pompeii. Painted on a green background, a young woman, wearing a loose, flowing robe of white and yellow, walks away from the viewer. In her left arm she carries a basket of flowers; her dress slips off her right shoulder as she reaches out to pluck a shoot from a tall flowering plant beside her.

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17d

Aye Robot

In 2023, Google’s AI invented a list of 12 “new collections” by Scottish poets (it invented some of the poets, too). Now Alan Riach has published 𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘚𝘦𝘢 𝘎𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘴 – the collection the AI said that he wrote three years previously

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/2026/10/aye-robot/

#Scottish #literature #poetry #AIfail

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44d

Back here, the iron line crosses future, past:
Then my father will surely be seen

Trekking the sodden, lonely land,
Weekenders, together –

—Jackie Kay, “Rannoch Loop”
published in BANTAM (Picador, 2017)

https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/jackie-kay/bantam/9781509887927

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #hiking #Rannoch #Rannochmoor #walking #JackieKay

Rannoch Loop
by Jackie Kay

Back here, the iron line crosses future, past:
Then my father will surely be seen

Trekking the sodden, lonely land,
Weekenders, together –

Or trudging through the ancient pine woods,
The musk smell of red deer,

My father, here on the moor,
Years and years after he’s gone,

Held by the land’s callused hands.
Och – big hikes across time, lochs, bogs,

September weekend or Easter, far flung,
Doon by Loch Ericht, on the west side

To the old crofter’s burnt-out croft,
Still a magnificent doss, and he’ll doss there,

(Twelve men to the wee hoose)
And rest, rest, till finally refreshed.

ALT

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38d

I want answers, but there are only the wild geese
Calling, high in the almost-dark, bearing south,
And me, stopped short, clutching a bag of groceries
On the doorstep of my not-quite home…

—Susan Mansfield, “Bearing South”
from The Rooftop Busker: New Writing Scotland 33 (ASL, 2015)

#Scottish #literature #poetry #poem #autumn #migration

Susan Mansfield
BEARING SOUTH

I want answers, but there are only the wild geese
Calling, high in the almost-dark, bearing south,
And me, stopped short, clutching a bag of groceries
On the doorstep of my not-quite home.
I feel the calm of their inner compass
And wonder if this is what we mean by certainty,
A deft arrowhead of wingbeats
In tune with the turning wind, the changing light,
A geography in their feathery breasts
Older than the names of continents.
A journey without thought of parting or arrival,
Only the press of forward motion,
The urgency and risk of it all,
A brief touch-down in stubble fields, then on,
The pulse of fellow flyers in the slipstream
And the clear voices calling in the dark:
I am here, I am alive,
I am here, I am alive.

ALT

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18d

THE GIRL WITHOUT, OR ARMA MATER - katharina ludwig

72 pp. - A5

cover: Clemen Parrocchetti, Untitled (Per Ulrike Meinhof/ For Ulrike Meinhof), 1976

“While this is very much a book on women with weapons, girls with guns, and queer militancy, ‘the girl’ is not to be considered a gendered concept, but rather a position of becoming, from which loss/absence can be transformed into refusal as a means of resistance.” - KL

€8

https://baulkpress.tumblr.com/

#poetry

cover page of The Girl Without by Katharina Ludwig. Black text on a red square, behind which is a black red and white pencil drawing of handguns, bullets, eyes and various other shapes

ALT

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17d

Every atom
Remembers
What it’s like
To burn.
You set fire
To the gathering
Dark.

#poetry

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15d

Somhairle MacGill-Eain (Sorley MacLean) – one of the greatest European poets of the 20th century – was born #OTD, 26 Oct

A 🎂🧵

Watch “Sorley MacLean’s Island” via the National Library of Scotland – Sorley MacLean in conversation with fellow writer Iain Crichton Smith

1/8

https://movingimage.nls.uk/film/3141

#Scottish #literature #Hebrides #Skye #Raasay #Gaelic #Gaidhlig #poetry #20thcentury #modernism

A closeup of two hands, playing a set of small pipes. Text overlay: SORLEY MACLEAN'S ISLAND

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16d

he was a technician
https://subspacewagon.systems/he-was-a-technician/

Algol, Part III
https://archive.org/details/algol-part-iii-by-richard-j-tilley

___
https://www.letters.directory
https://saturation.earth
https://www.subspacewagon.io
https://www.poet.garden
https://www.exeunt.me
___

@poetry
@writingcommunity
@bookstodon

#Poetry #DisabledArtist #PoetryCommunity #Poem #WritingCommunity #literature #art #writing #books #humanities #sociology #amwriting #CreativeWriting #ableism #library #theology #ethics #bookstodon

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16d

Hoping one new person will sign up to get updates on my #noAI #poetry #manifesto that is also a 20th-century #biography and is a 🏳️‍⚧️ #trans book.

https://tuckerlieberman.wordpress.com/2026/10/25/manifesto-poetry/

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16d

He’s no artist.
His taste in clothes is more
dowdy than gaudy…

—Norman MacCaig, “Sparrow”
published in The Many Days: Selected Poems of Norman MacCaig (Polygon, 2010)

https://birlinn.co.uk/product/the-many-days/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #20thcentury #NormanMacCaig #birds #sparrows

Sparrow
by Norman MacCaig

He’s no artist.
His taste in clothes is more
dowdy than gaudy.
And his nest – that blackbird, writing
pretty scrolls on the air with the gold nib of his beak,
would call it a slum.

To stalk solitary on lawns,
to sing solitary in midnight trees,
to glide solitary over gray Atlantics –
not for him: he’d rather
a punch-up in a gutter.

He carries what learning he has
lightly – it is, in fact, based only
on the usefulness whose result
is survival. A proletarian bird.
No scholar.
But when winter soft-shoes in
and these other birds –
ballet dancers, musicians, architects –
die in the snow
and freeze to branches,
watch him happily flying
on the O-levels and A-levels
of the air.

ALT

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16d

Voices fae Victorian Dundee
7 November, Dundee Central Library. Free, ticketed.

This event will showcase Scots and Gaelic literature in Dundee Central Library’s important collections of 19th-century newspapers, books, and ballads, and live performances of work from and inspired by Dundee’s literary history.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/voices-fae-victorian-dundee-tickets-2003765267856

#Scottish #literature #poetry #song #popularliterature #19thcentury #Victorian #Dundee #Scots #Scotslanguage #Gaelic #Gaidhlig

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15d

In Gránada, in Gránada,
They dumbed the mou o a makar,
In Gránada, in Gránada,
They strak doun Garcia Lorca…

—“In Gránada, in Gránada”, by Sydney Goodsir Smith (1915–1975) – a major figure in the 20th-century Scottish renaissance, born #OTD, 26 Oct

1/4

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

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Scots #Scotslanguage #20thcentury #Lorca

Sydney Goodsir Smith
In Gránada, in Gránada
(Llanto por Federico Garcia Lorca)

In Gránada, in Gránada,
They dumbed the mou o a makar,
In Gránada, in Gránada,
They strak doun Garcia Lorca.

Ye bard o the tinks, o gipsy Spain,
Frae Gránada, frae Gránada,
Aa the gangrel folk that scorn chains—
O wae for Garcia Lorca!

At dawin fornent a sunwhite waa
In Gránada, in Gránada,
The rifles reik, O see him faa,
Daith rins at the tyrant’s order.

But they sall pey for that fell deed,
In Gránada, in Gránada,
Franco and his men o bluid,
Their fingers reid wi murder.

Mair nor juist ane enemie
Was kill yon morn in Gránada,
For daith is neer a bundarie
Til the voice o a folk was Lorca.

Ay, he was Spain, anither Burns,
In Gránada, in Gránada,
O wae for thae when the tide turns
That strak doun Garcia Lorca!

And wae for thae in ilka land,
Or Galloway or Gránada,
That thirl the libertie o man
For bards nor daith are stranger.

And aye their leid is Freedom,
In Galloway or Gránada,
Ay, greit for the tinkler’s martyrdom
And the white dumb mou o a makar.

Ay, greit for Lorca, bard o the waifs,
Saw birth and daith in Gránada,
Wae for the sang was stanched yon day
While the sand ran reid wi clangor.

But sing o the victorie was gained,
In Gránada, in Gránada ———!
For aye your bluid sall dirl throu Spain,
Federico Garcia Lorca!

ALT

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15d

WRITERS!
New Writing Scotland seeks a new co-editor for English- & Scots-language work. Applicants should be currently based in Scotland & have a strong publishing record, with a focus on poetry. Post is up to 3 years: stipend £1500 per issue.

https://asls.org.uk/new-writing-scotland-seeks-co-editor/

#Scottish #literature #editor #writing #writingcommunity #poetry

ASL is inviting applications for the role of co-editor of New Writing Scotland, from writers currently based in Scotland. Applicants should have a strong publishing record of their own, with a focus on poetry; previous editorial experience would be an advantage. The post will run for up to three years from 2027, for volumes 45, 46, and 47, publishing in 2027, 2028, and 2029 (dependent on funding).

Our editors jointly select approximately 50 pieces – poetry and prose – from the English- and Scots-language submissions we receive each year. The submissions are anonymised, and we provide editors with paper copies to read. As an editor, we’d ask you to attend launches in Edinburgh and Glasgow (travelling expenses would be paid). Editors receive an annual £1500 stipend and full editorial credit.

We encourage applications from all backgrounds and particularly welcome applications from people who are under-represented within the sector, including from BPOC applicants (Black people and People of Colour), disabled people, LGBTQIA+ applicants and those from a low socioeconomic background.

Please send a CV and a one-page application letter, outlining your qualifications for the position, to admin@asls.org.uk by 6 p.m. on Sunday 8 November 2026.

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14d

James Macpherson, of “Ossian” fame – poems derived partly from songs & legends in Gaelic oral tradition – was born #OTD, 27 October, 1736. The “Ossian” poems were a global sensation, & are foundational texts of European romanticism & of modern fantasy literature

A 🎂🧵

1/11

🖼️: Ingres, Le Songe d’Ossian

#Scottish #literature #Macpherson #Gaidhlig #Gaelic #poetry #Ossian #18thcentury #romanticism #fantasy #epic

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13d

Poet, writer, artist, & avant-gardener Ian Hamilton Finlay (1925–2006) was born #OTD, 28 Oct, in Nassau, Bahamas – a fact which he would later describe as “ridiculous, not in character at all”. His father was a bootlegger, smuggling rum to the USA, & Finlay was sent, aged 6, to Larchfield, a boarding school in Helensburgh, Scotland, where WH Auden had recently joined the staff

A 🎂🧵

1/7

#Scottish #literature #poetry #visualart #gardening #sculpture #IanHamiltonFinlay

“Et In Argadia Ego”, a stone sculpture by ian Hamilton Finlay (1976)

A slab of pale stone, showing a stylised scene in a woodland. In the foreground is what looks like a tank (i.e. a military vehicle), except it has incised lines across it suggesting that it is in fact made out of stone blocks. The scene is framed and under the frame the words

ET IN ARCADIA EGO
After Nicholas Poussin

are carved into the slab.

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13d

If you aren't sure whether ATTIS & ALEPH (2026) is the right poetry book for you...
https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/tucker-lieberman/attis-aleph/pre-launch

...I invite you to check out ENKIDU IS DEAD AND NOT DEAD / ENKIDU ESTÁ MUERTO Y NO LO ESTÁ (2021). Those poems can be read free online.
https://tuckerlieberman.wordpress.com/enkidu/

#poetry #ghosts #myth

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11d

Rubbing a glistening circle
on the steamed-up window I framed
a pheasant in a field of mist…

—Edwin Morgan, “Aberdeen Train”
published in CENTENARY SELECTED POEMS (Carcanet, 2020)

https://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?product=9781784109967

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #autumn #October #Aberdeen #EdwinMorgan

Edwin Morgan
Aberdeen Train

Rubbing a glistening circle
on the steamed-up window I framed
a pheasant in a field of mist.
The sun was a great red thing somewhere low,
struggling with the milky scene. In the furrows
a piece of glass winked into life,
hypnotized the silly dandy; we
hooted past him with his head cocked,
contemplating a bottle-end,
and this was the last of October,
a Chinese moment in the Mearns.

ALT

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11d

Book launch
Celebrating Women’s Poetry from Ireland, Scotland & Wales 1400–1800
11 Nov, Edinburgh. Free

Celebrate a new & expansive anthology of women's poetry Ireland, Scotland, & Wales, 1400–1800, with talks from the authors, collections displays, & performances

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/celebrating-womens-poetry-from-ireland-scotland-wales-1400-1800-tickets-1993831612024

#Scottish #Irish #Welsh #literature #poetry #womenwriters #anthology #booklaunch

celebrating-womens-poetry-from-ireland-scotland-wales-1400-1800-tickets-1993831612024

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36d

There are many traditions across the globe of using metaphorical poetic language to describe or boast about yourself. Here's a griot-style autobiographical #Poem about me. #Poetry #Oratory
"I am the oak that mocks the gale, born from the dust beside the grinding stone, rooted deep within the clearing of the ancient fortress wall.
My left limb danced a halting measure on the road, yet my swift feet swallowed the red earth, leaving trails of thunder before the sun had learned my name. (1/5)