Eggplant.place

1y

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

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201d

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

Aig an Fhaing
Anne Frater

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
’s mi a’ coimhead cach cruinn
lachanaich le cheile
timcheall air an fhaing:
a’ bruthadh nan caorach,
guthan ard ag eigheachd
’s a’ gearain, ’s a’ gaireachdainn
’s gach druim thugams’
gam ghlasadh a-mach.
Mi seasamh, ’s a’ coimhead
’s a’ feitheamh airson facal
mo ghluasad gu feum.
Mi siubhal gu slaodach
a’ cruinneachadh nan uan
’s gan ruagadh romham
a-steach gu cach;
uain a’ ruith
gu meulaich math’r.
Boinneagan uisge
mar mhillean mialan
a’ leum as an dup,
agus crathadh cinn nan adharcan
fliuch, fuar, feagalach
a’ deanamh as.
Ceum no dha eile
’s chi mi aodannan nan gair’.
Mo lamhan fhin a’ breith air cloimh,
faileadh an dup air mo chorragan,
peant a’ camharradh mo chasan,
poll dubh bog air mo bhotannan
’s mo chanan fhin nam bheul.

ALT

At the Fank
Anne Frater

Standing over by the prairie gate
with clean grass under my wellies,
cold hands in my pockets,
the smell of the sheep dip
faintly
hesitantly
coming to my nostrils
as I watch the others gathered
around the fank
and laughing with each other:
pushing the sheep,
loud voices shouting
and moaning, and laughing
and all with their backs to me
shutting me out.
I stand and watch
and wait for a word
to move me to usefulness.
Moving slowly
gathering the lambs
and driving them before me
in towards the others;
lambs running
to a mother’s bleat.
Drops of water
jump from the sheep dip
like millions of fleas
and the horns’ head-shaking,
wet, cold, fearful
running off.
Another step or two
and I can see the laughing faces.
My own hands holding wool,
the smell of sheep dip on my fingers.
Paint marking my legs,
soft black mud on my wellies
and my own language on my tongue.

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1y

My grandfather didn’t know he was a Taoist.
He had fished the river Awe for sixty years.
Life is sensed as a flowing movement,
a power like wind or water. When he cast,
it was the bank that moved, not the river…

—Lorn Macintyre, “Satori”
published in The Bridport Prize Anthology 2013 (Redcliffe Press, 2013)

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #fishing #naturepoetry #naturewriting #Zen

Satori
Lorn Macintyre

My grandfather didn’t know he was a Taoist.
He had fished the river Awe for sixty years.
Life is sensed as a flowing movement,
a power like wind or water. When he cast,
it was the bank that moved, not the river.
The osprey with the salmon in its talons
needed no metaphor to describe its beauty.
He saw the suchness of the landscape,
the great whole, perfect, sky, mountain,
as in a painting by the Zen K’un-t’an.
There is no Gaelic for the term satori,
the solution lying beyond the intellect,
that flash of delighted intuition, sensing
that a salmon is lying in the current,
while not seeing a ripple with the eye.
If I had told him: ‘you read the river
like a book, noting between the lines
what other fishermen fail to spy,’
he would have clouted me on the head,
the way Zen Masters took the big stick
to pupils who insisted on comparison.
The river needs no language, no homage.
It goes its own way, like the osprey
which will never run out of sky.

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201d

At times, in those last few months,
he would think of a word
and he had to remember the tree, or the species of frog,

the sound denoted…

—John Burnside, “The Last Man to Speak Ubykh“
published in the London Review of Books, August 2002

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v24/n16/john-burnside/the-last-man-to-speak-ubykh

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #MotherLanguageDay #UNESCO #linguistics

The Last Man to Speak Ubykh
John Burnside

The linguist Ole Stig Andersen was keen to seek out the remaining traces of a West Caucasian language called Ubykh. Having heard that there was one remaining speaker he set out to find the man and arrived in his village on 8 October 1992. The man had died a few hours earlier.

At times, in those last few months,
he would think of a word
and he had to remember the tree, or the species of frog,

the sound denoted:
the tree itself, or the frog, or the state of mind
and not the equivalent word in another language,

the speech that had taken his sons
and the mountain light;
the graves he swept and raked; the wedding songs.

While years of silence gathered in the heat,
he stood in his yard and whispered the name of a bird
in his mother tongue,

while memories of snow and market days,
his father’s hands, the smell of tamarind,
inklings of milk and blood on a sunlit floor

receded in the names no longer used:
the blue of childhood folded like a sheet
and tucked away.

Nothing he said was remembered; nothing he did
was fact or legend
in the village square,

yet later they would memorise the word
he spoke that morning, just before he died:
the word for death, perhaps, or meadow grass,

or swimming to the surface of his mind,
that other word they used, when he was young,
for all they knew that nobody remembered.

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1y

Well Versed Author Events: Niall Campbell
20 August, online, free

Niall Campbell reads some of his poetry, discusses his work, & answers questions as part of the Well Versed series in partnership with StAnza International Poetry Festival

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/well-versed-author-events-niall-campbell-tickets-1561423853779

#Scottish #literature #poetry

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201d

I knit one purl one
A pale rainbow of seed stitch
Keeping hope alive

#knitting #tricot #mentalhealth #haiku #poetry

A knitting work in progress in a pale multicolore seed stitch. The grey needles and three balls of yarn are visible, as well à a vessel with walnuts and a red nutcracker.

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205d

Those lumbering horses in the steady plough,
On the bare field – I wonder, why, just now,
They seemed terrible, so wild and strange,
Like magic power on the stony grange…

—Edwin Muir (1887–1959), “Horses” 🐴
published in THE GOLDEN TREASURY OF SCOTTISH VERSE, @canongatebooks 2021

https://canongate.co.uk/books/3267-the-golden-treasury-of-scottish-verse/

#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #EdwinMuir #YearoftheHorse #LunarNewYear #ChineseNewYear #poem #poetry #horse #horses #Orkney

Edwin Muir
Horses

Those lumbering horses in the steady plough,
On the bare field – I wonder, why, just now,
They seemed terrible, so wild and strange,
Like magic power on the stony grange.

Perhaps some childish hour has come again,
When I watched fearful, through the blackening rain,
Their hooves like pistons in an ancient mill
Move up and down, yet seem as standing still.

Their conquering hooves which trod the stubble down
Were ritual that turned the field to brown,
And their great hulks were seraphims of,
Or mute ecstatic monsters on the mould.

And oh the rapture, when, one furrow done,
They marched broad-breasted to the sinking sun!
The light flowed off their bossy sides in flakes;
The furrows rolled behind like struggling snakes.

But when at dusk with steaming nostrils home
They came, they seemed gigantic in the gloam,
And warm and glowing with mysterious fire
That lit their smouldering bodies in the mire.

Their eyes as brilliant and as wide as night
Gleamed with a cruel apocalyptic light,
Their manes the leaping ire of the wind
Lifted with rage invisible and blind.

Ah, now it fades! It fades! And I must pine
Again for the dread country crystalline,
Where the blank field and the still-standing tree
Were bright and fearful presences to me.

ALT

Edited 201d ago

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1y

I’ll ha’e nae hauf-way hoose, but aye be whaur
Extremes meet – it’s the only way I ken
To dodge the curst conceit o’ bein’ richt
That damns the vast majority o’ men.

—from “A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle”

A 🎂🧵 for Hugh MacDiarmid—born #OTD, 11 Aug 1892

1/8

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/hugh-macdiarmid

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Scots #Scotslanguage #modernism #20thcentury #MacDiarmid

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200d

Escape to the tailored suit,
the pan-loaf speech,
the benefits of higher education…

—“Kailyard & After” by William Neill (1922–2010), b. #OTD, 22 Feb. He wrote poetry in all three of Scotland’s languages & was an active campaigner for Scots & Gaelic

A 🎂 🧵

1/4

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

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Scots #Scotslanguage #minoritylanguage

William Neill
Kailyard and After

When I wes wee I hud tae dae ma share
mulkan the kye wi the weemin in the byre;
I mind hou I wad scoosh lang streeman jaups
that loupit in the luggie makkin froth
rise oot frae yon rich deeps.

The douce kye skelpit roon thaim wi their tails
tae dicht the flees aff; whiles they’d cotch yir lug
a fair bit ding: ye’d sweir ablo yir braith.
An whiles the wilder yins wad try tae pit
their fit intil the luggie an caa ye oot
on tae the settles, luggie, stuil an aa …
an gin ye didna sett in ticht eneuch
there ye wad be, rubbin a sair hainch
a loch o mulk aboot ye in the grup,
the auld dug barkan an the weemin lauchan
tae see yir breeks aa smoort wi mulk an sharn.
Man, whit a contrast tae ma life-style nou …
nae dungarees, nae luggie and nae kye.

Escape to the tailored suit,
the pan-loaf speech,
the benefits of higher education,
the dull rewards of strict conformity.

O what a fall was there, my countrymen.

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200d

The Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh and the School of English, University of St Andrews are offering a Joseph Bell Writer’s residency. The residency is open to writers or researchers in fiction, non-fiction, poetry, drama, screenplay, literary and/or historical scholarship, life-writing and medical humanities.

Closing date: 12 noon, 6 March 2026

https://www.vacancies.st-andrews.ac.uk/Vacancies/W/7234/0/464724/889/joseph-bell-writer-in-residence-at-the-royal-college-of-surgeons-of-edinburgh-and-the-school-of-english-university-of-st-andrews

#Scottish #literature #writers #medicalhumanities #fiction #nonfiction #poetry #drama #screenplay #screenwriting

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1y

Now westlin winds, and slaught’ring guns
Bring Autumn’s pleasant weather;
And the moorcock springs, on whirring wings,
Amang the blooming heather…

—Robert Burns, “Song, Composed in August”
First published in POEMS, CHIEFLY IN THE SCOTTISH DIALECT (Kilmarnock, 1786)

Pages digitised by the National Library of Scotland

1/3

https://digital.nls.uk/poems-chiefly-in-the-scottish-dialect/archive/74464614#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=230&xywh=-1574%2C0%2C5647%2C4185

#Scottish #literature #poetry #song #RobertBurns #18thcentury #nature #environment

SONG
composed in August

Tune, I had a horse, I had nae mair

Now westlin winds and slaught'ring guns
Bring Autumn's pleasant weather;

ALT

And the moorcock springs on whirring wings
Amang the blooming heather:
Now waving grain, wide o'er the plain,
Delights the weary Farmer;
And the moon shines bright, when I rove at night,
To muse upon my Charmer.

The Partridge loves the fruitful fells,
The Plover loves the mountains;
The Woodcock haunts the lonely dells,
The soaring Hern the fountains:
Thro' lofty groves the Cushat roves,
The path of man to shun it;
The hazel bush o'erhangs the Thrush,
The spreading thorn the Linnet.

Thus ev'ry kind their pleasure find,
The savage and the tender;
Some social join, and leagues combine,
Some solitary wander:

ALT

Avaunt, away! the cruel sway!
Tyrannic man's dominion;
The Sportsman's joy, the murd'ring cry,
The flutt'ring, gory pinion!

But PEGGY dear, the ev'ning's clear,
Thick flies the skimming Swallow,
The sky is blue, the fields in view,
All fading-green and yellow:
Come let us stray our gladsome way,
And view the charms of Nature;
The rustling corn, the fruited thorn,
And ilka happy creature.

We'll gently walk, and sweetly talk,
Till the silent moon shine clearly;
I'll grasp thy waist, and fondly prest,
Swear how I love thee dearly:
Not vernal show'rs to budding flow'rs,
Not Autumn to the Farmer,
So dear can be, as thou to me,
My fair, my lovely Charmer!

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1y

Now, on the moors where the guns bring down
The predestinated birds,
Shrill, wavering cries pass
Like the words of an international peace;
And I would that these cries were heard in every town,
Astounding the roar of the wheel
And the lying mouth of the news…

—William Soutar (1898–1943), “The Guns”

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #20thcentury

The Guns
William Soutar

Now, on the moors where the guns bring down
The predestinated birds,
Shrill, wavering cries pass
Like the words of an international peace;
And I would that these cries were heard in every town,
Astounding the roar of the wheel
And the lying mouth of the news:
And I would that these cries might more and more increase
Until the machine stood still;
And men, despairing in the deathly queues,
Heard their own heart-beats
Shouting aloud, in the silence of the streets:
“Are we not also hand-fed in a wilderness:
What are we waiting for?”

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1y

That August night
the Perseid shower rained
on moor and lily-loch, on a frightened world –
on us, in a roofless shieling

with all our tat…

—Kathleen Jamie, “One of Us”
published in SELECTED POEMS (Picador, 2018)

https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/kathleen-jamie/selected-poems/9781509882953

#Scottish #literature #folklore #poem #poetry #Perseids

One of Us
by Kathleen Jamie

We are come in a stone boat,
a miracle ship that steers itself
round skerries where guillemots
and shags stand still as graves.
Our sealskin cloaks are clasped
by a fist-sized penannular brooch,
our slippers are feathery
gugas’ necks: so delicate
we carried them over the wracky shore,
past several rusted tractors. Truth:
this was a poor place, a
ragged land all worn to holes. No one,
nothing, but a distant
Telecom van, a bungalow
tied with fishing floats
for want of flowers.
That August night
the Perseid shower rained
on moor and lily-loch, on a frightened world –
on us, in a roofless shieling

ALT

with all our tat: the
golden horn of righteousness,
the justice harp; what folks expect.
We took swans’ shape
to cross the Minch, one last fling
with silly magic – at our first
mainland steps a dormobile
slewed into a passing place; cameras flashed.
So we stayed high, surprised
a forester making aeolian flutes
from plastic tubes,
he shared his pay. ‘Avoid
the A9. For God’s sake,
get some proper clothes.” We ditched
the cloaks, bought yellow
Pringle sweaters in Spean Bridge,
and house by safe house
arrived in Edinburgh. So far so
tedious: we all hold
minor government jobs, lay plans, and bide our time.

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140d

For Shakespeare’s (probable) birthday: Edwin Morgan’s “Instructions to an Actor”, from Collected Poems (Carcanet 2012)

“This single poem gets, via the heart of all theatre, to the heart of the communal in all the arts, and to the heart of form, the heart of voice and silence and to the heart of a kind of life that will never actually stop.”
—Ali Smith, in From Saturn to Glasgow: fifty favourite poems by Edwin Morgan

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #theatre #Shakespeare #ShakespeareDay

Edwin Morgan
Instructions to an Actor

Now, boy, remember this is the great scene.
You’ll stand on a pedestal behind a curtain,
the curtain will be drawn, and then you don’t move
for eighty lines; don’t move, don’t speak, don’t breathe.
I’ll stun them all out there, I’ll scare them,
make them weep, but it depends on you.
I warn you eighty lines is a long time,
but you don’t breathe, you’re dead,
you’re a dead queen, a statue,
you’re dead as stone, new-carved,
new-painted and the paint not dry
– we’ll get some red to keep your lip shining –
and you’re a mature woman, you’ve got dignity,
some beauty still in middle age, and
you’re kind and true, but you’re dead,
your husband thinks you’re dead,
the audience thinks you’re dead,
and you don’t breathe, boy, I say
you don’t even blink for eighty lines,
if you blink you’re out!
Fix your eye on something and keep watching it.

ALT

Practise when you get home. It can be done.
And you move at last – music’s the cue.
When you hear a mysterious solemn jangle
of instruments, make yourself ready.
Five lines more, you can lift a hand.
It may tingle a bit, but lift it –
slow, slow –
O this is where I hit them
right between the eyes, I’ve got them now –
I’m making the dead walk –
you move a foot, slow, steady, down,
you guard your balance in case you’re stiff,
you move, you step down, down from the pedestal,
control your skirt with one hand, the other hand
you now hold out –
O this will melt their hearts if nothing does –
to your husband who wronged you long ago
and hesitates in amazement
to believe you are alive.
Finally he embraces you, and there’s nothing
I can give you to say, boy,
but you must show that you have forgiven him.
Forgiveness, that’s the thing. It’s like a second life.
I know you can do it. – Right then, shall we try?

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195d

Moonrise, an maudlin in the mirk,
we coorie in, hoose selt, hame hawked,
oor labour thirled tae yesterday,
the morra pawned fur brick-a-brack…

—Janet Paisley, “Aw Jock Tamson’s”
published in THE GOLDEN TREASURY OF SCOTTISH VERSE, @canongatebooks 2021

https://canongate.co.uk/books/3267-the-golden-treasury-of-scottish-verse/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Scots #Scotslanguage #socialjustice #hope

Aw Jock Tamson’s
Janet Paisley

Moonrise, an maudlin in the mirk,
we coorie in, hoose selt, hame hawked,
oor labour thirled tae yesterday,
the morra pawned fur brick-a-brack.

Thieves tout the mercat, flashin cash
in credit caird tricks yince cried tick.
Gowks gawp. It’s easy money. Hauns
dip threidbare pooches skint by lees;

yin cat feeds fat, an hunners sterve.
Dunderheids, we bocht intae grief,
gied up sense fur greed, furgoat brass
barters work, its worth inventit.

A dreich rain faws oan rentit roofs.
We pey tae drain the run-aff, pey
again tae pipe it back. Nae debt
is gain. If lochs fill, mountains droon.

Yit bairns sleep an dream, fit tae bigg
a warld whaur love gies shelter, breid
daily, care redds up, prood tae bide
an fecht whaur fowk cry foul at cheats:

nae man worth mair. It’s wha we are.
Tak tent. Waukened, sleeves rowed up,
drookit, set tae work, a new stert.
Day breks, mornin sun ay rises.

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183d

Your first solo

#Poetry #BadPoetry #Climbing #Gàidhlig #PoemADay #SmallPoems

An aonar
Wen

‘Climbing’
Gun roap, dìreach cleachdadh
Ràinig thu àrd
Cha mhòr nach robh e ri fhaighinn
Agus ghabh mi an sgàineadh
Fad gàirdean bho chèile
Sleamhnachadh, faighinn seachad air agus suas
Agus an uairsin air a’ mhullach
Cùl-mheud Pòg bheag
Casan crochte
Mar a bha sinn ag òl cofaidh
Ach bha sneachd san adhar
Agus dh’fhalbh sinn air an t-slighe fhada dhachaigh

The solo
Wen

‘Climbing’
No roap, just habit
You reached high
Barely in reach
And I took the crack
An arms length apart
A slip, recovery and up
And then on the top
A hug
A small kiss
Legs dangled
As we drank our coffee
But there was snow in the air
And we set off on the long walk home

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182d

Maighdeannan-mara

#Poetry #BadPoetry #Swimming #Gàidhlig #PoemADay #SmallPoems

Mhaighdeann-mara
Wen

Gun Selkie
Chan eil geir gu leòr ann
A’ gàireachdainn, tharraing thu mi a-steach agus foidhpe
‘Tha gu leòr agad dhuinn le chèile’
Shleamhnaich sinn sìos
Ag èirigh a-mach gus ruighinn a-mach airson ceann na locha
Tlachd fhuar
Agus adhbhar airson pòg nuair a thàinig sinn a-mach
A’ fuireach a-rithist.

Mermaids
Wen

No Selkie I muttered
Not enough blubber
And laughing you pulled me in and under
‘You have enough for all both of us’
We dropped
Surfacing to strike for the end of the loch
A cold thrill
An excuse to hug when we emerge
Alive again

ALT

Painting of a mermaid combing here hair on the sea shore, A Mermaid, 1900 John William Waterhouse RA (1849 – 1917)

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173d

When I am reading
the literature of my people
I think,
We have no Homer

no poet as great as that,
at all as great as that,
in that way
in that marvellous way…

—Iain Crichton Smith, “When I am Reading”
published in NEW COLLECTED POEMS (Carcanet, 2011)

https://www.carcanet.co.uk/9781857549607/new-collected-poems/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #WorldPoetryDay

Iain Crichton Smith
When I am Reading

When I am reading
the literature of my people
I think,
We have no Homer

no poet as great as that,
at all as great as that,
in that way
in that marvellous way.

But now and again I read
about a particular girl
who died of love
in a ragged dress

or an eagle will rise
crying, I was eating
noble dead soldiers
who were lying on a battlefield.

And now and again there will sail
on the sea towards Canada
ships with salt sails,
songs that are white with pain.

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194d

Today, 28 February, is Scottish Archives Day. Here’s Edwin Morgan’s poem “Archives”, published in Centenary Selected Poems (Carcanet, 2020)

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

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #EdwinMorgan #archive #archives #ScottishArchivesDay

Archives
by Edwin Morgan

generation upon
generation upon
generation upon
generation upon
generation upon
generation upon
generation upon
generation upon
generation upon
generation upon
generation upon
generation upon
generation upon
generation upon
generation upon
generation upon
generation upon
generation upon
generation upon
generation upon
g neration up n
g nerat on up n
g nerat n up n
g nerat n p n
g erat n p n
g era n p n
g era n n
g er n n
g r n n
g n n
g n
g

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194d

Such days, when trees run downwind,
their arms stretched before them.

Such days, when the sun’s in a drawer
and the drawer locked…

—Norman MacCaig, “February – not everywhere”
from Poems on the Underground

https://poemsontheunderground.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/February-Poems-Leaflet.pdf

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #NormanMacCaig #February #motherhood

Norman MacCaig
February – not everywhere

Such days, when trees run downwind,
their arms stretched before them.

Such days, when the sun’s in a drawer
and the drawer locked.

When the meadow is dead, is a carpet,
thin and shabby, with no pattern

and at bus stops people retract into collars
their faces like fists.

– And when, in a firelit room, a mother looks
at her four seasons, at her little boy,

in the centre of everything, with still pools
of shadows and a fire throwing flowers.

ALT

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173d

The thing about poetry is you have to keep doing it.
People have to keep making it.
The old stuff is no use
Once it’s old…

—Margaret, Tait, “Now”
from Poems, Stories and Writings (Carcanet, 2023)

https://www.carcanet.co.uk/9781800173798/poems-stories-and-writings/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #WorldPoetryDay

Now
by Margaret Tait

I used to lie in wait to see the clover open
Or close,
But never saw it.
I was too impatient,
Or the movement is too subtle,
Imperceptible
And more than momentary.
My five-year-old self would tire of waiting
And when I looked again
– All closed for the night!
I missed it
Once more.

Cinematographically
I have registered the opening of escholtzia
On an early summer morning.
It gave me a sharp awareness of time passing,
Of exact qualities and values in the light,
But I didn’t see the movement
As movement.
I didn’t with my own direct perception see the petals
moving.
Later, on the film, they seemed to open swiftly,
But, at the time,
Although I stared
And felt time not so much moving as being moved in
And felt
A unity of time and place with other times and places
Yet
I didn’t see the petals moving.

ALT

I didn’t see them opening.
They were closed,
And later they were open,
And in between I noted many phases,
But I didn’t see them moving open.
My timing and my rhythm could not observe the
rhythm of their opening.

The thing about poetry is you have to keep doing it.
People have to keep making it.
The old stuff is no use
Once it’s old.
It comes out of the instant
And lasts for an instant.
Take it now
Quickly
Without water.

There!

Tomorrow they’ll be something else.

ALT

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173d

heh Casey did a tell ye a goat
a couple a poems published
widizthatmean
widayyemean
dizthatmeanyegetmoneyfurrit…

—William Letford, “It’s aboot the labour”
published in BEVEL (Carcanet, 2012)

https://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?product=9781847771926

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #WorldPoetryDay

It’s aboot the labour
by William Letford

hammers nails
hammers nails
hammers nails

heh Casey did a tell ye a goat
a couple a poems published
widizthatmean
widayyemean
dizthatmeanyegetmoneyfurrit

eh naw
aw right

hammers nails
hammers nails
hammers nails

ALT

Edited 173d ago

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173d

I found him wandering on the hill
one hot blue afternoon.
He looked as skinny as a nail,
as pale-skinned as the moon…

—Don Paterson, “The Poetry”
published in RAIN (Faber, 2009)

https://www.faber.co.uk/product/9780571255580-rain/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #WorldPoetryDay

Don Paterson
The Poetry

after Li Po

I found him wandering on the hill
one hot blue afternoon.
He looked as skinny as a nail,
as pale-skinned as the moon;

below the broad shade of his hat
his face was cut with rain.
Dear God, poor Du Fu, I thought:
It’s the poetry again.

ALT

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174d

#OTD "in 1812, the first two cantos of Lord Byron‘s poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage are published by John Murray in London. Copies sell out in five days, prompting Byron to comment: “I awoke one morning and found myself famous.”"

https://lithub.com/lit-hub-daily-march-20-2026/

"Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage" at PG:

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5131

#books #literature #poetry