Eggplant.place

243d

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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234d

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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255d

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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255d

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.

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234d

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.

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234d

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

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234d

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.

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235d

#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

Prisoner of Chillon - a painting of a man standing next to a cow. Painting by Madox Brown.

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201d

“William Shakespeare was a powerful influence on Robert Burns… I count as many as 16 references to Shakespeare’s plays in his poetry”

—Prof Gerard Carruthers on the links & commonalities between Robert Burns & William Shakespeare

https://theconversation.com/haggis-neeps-and-soliloquys-the-bonds-that-tie-robert-burns-and-shakespeare-53578/

#Scottish #literature #poetry #drama #RobertBurns #18thcentury #romanticism #Shakespeare #ShakespeareDay

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221d

A Latin harsh with Aramaicisms
poured from his lips incessantly; it made
no sense, for surely he was mad…

—Edwin Morgan, “Pilate at Fortingall”
published in CENTENARY SELECTED POEMS (Carcanet, 2020)

https://www.carcanet.co.uk/9781784109967/centenary-selected-poems/

#Scottish #literature #Easter #poem #poetry #GoodFriday

Pilate at Fortingall
by Edwin Morgan

A Latin harsh with Aramaicisms
poured from his lips incessantly; it made
no sense, for surely he was mad. The glade
of birches shamed his rags, in paroxysms
he stumbled, toga’d, furred, blear, brittle, grey.
They told us he sat here beneath the yew
even in downpours; ate dog-scraps. Crows flew
from prehistoric stone to stone all day.
“See him now.” He crawled to the cattle-trough
at dusk, jumbled the water till it sloshed
and spilled into the hoof-mush in blue strands,
slapped with useless despair each sodden cuff,
and washed his hands, and watched his hands, and washed
his hands, and watched his hands, and washed his hands.

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201d

When the sun was white and wintry and drained of energy
Macbeth met the witches under the rim of the sky…

—Iain Crichton Smith, “Macbeth and the Witches”
published in DEER ON THE HIGH HILLS (Carcanet, 2021)

https://www.carcanet.co.uk/9781800170940/deer-on-the-high-hills/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Shakespeare #ShakespeareDay #Macbeth

Macbeth and the Witches
by Iain Crichton Smith

When the sun was white and wintry and drained of energy
Macbeth met the witches under the rim of the sky.
Why did you confirm my evil, he said.

And the witches who were lighting thorns in the cold winter said,
There is a play that one plays when the summer is over
and you happened to be one of the cards in our hand,

a deformed king with a coat too large for him
and a crown that sizzled in the white wintry sky.
These things are after all not important

except to those who suffer, who are not important.
Feeling belongs to the spring and the ignorance of lovers.
Here in this wood it is a question of passing the time,

and the abstract intellect constructs dramas
with a queen and a pawn and the immortal joker
who faces two ways at the frosty January gates.

Let be, let be, it was quite a nice structure.
And truth after all can be played with under the sun
which is fading slowly towards a renaissance of leaves.

Come, join us, join us, at the unimportant edge of things
wearing your coat of blood with the hole in the breast.
This is the west. The east has innocent wings.

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226d

Life, letters & low tide in Shetland: Valda and MacDiarmid

“Valda is clearly the more practical of the two. It would become apparent that without her at the helm, they were doomed.”

Shetland offered Hugh MacDiarmid solitude, but it was his wife Valda Trevlyn Grieve who kept life steady. Dr Colin McIlroy of the National Library of Scotland examines the letters of Hugh MacDiarmid & Valda Trevlyn Grieve

https://www.nls.uk/collections/stories/literature-and-poetry/valda-grieve-and-hugh-macdiarmid/

#Scottish #literature #poetry #modernism #20thcentury #Shetland

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235d

A’ bheinn luiseanach fhailleanach
Mheallanach lìontach,
Gun choimeas dh’ a fallaing
Air thalamh na Crìosdachd…

—“Moladh Beinn Dòbhrain”, by Donnchadh Bàn Mac an t-Saoir (Duncan Ban MacIntyre, 1724–1812), one of the greatest #Gaelic poets of the #C18th – born #OTD, 20 March

A 🎂 🧵

1/5

#Scottish #literature #Gaidhlig #Gaelic #poem #poetry #18thcentury

Moladh Beinn Dòbhrain (earrann)
Donnchadh Bàn Mac an t-Saoir

4. Siubhal
A’ bheinn luiseanach fhailleanach
Mheallanach lìontach,
Gun choimeas dh’ a fallaing
Air thalamh na Crìosdachd:

’S ro-neònach tha mise,
Le bòidhchead a sliosa,
Nach ’eil còir aic’ an ciste
Air tiotal na rìoghachd;

’S i air dùbladh le gibhtibh,
’S air lùisreadh le miosaibh
Nach ’eil bitheant a’ bristeadh
Air phriseanaibh tìre.

Làn-trusgan gun deireas,
Le usgraichean coille,
Bàrr-guc air gach doire,
Gun choir’ ort r’ a ìnnseadh;

Far an uchdardach coileach,
Le shriutaichibh loinneil,
’S eoin bhuchallach bheag’ eile
Le ’n ceileiribh lìonmhor.

’S am buicean beag sgiolta,
Bu sgiobalt air grìne,
Gun sgiorradh gun tubaist,
Gun tuisleadh gun dìobradh;

Crodhanadh biorach,
Feadh coire ’ga shireadh,
Feadh fraoich agus firich,
Air mhireadh ’ga dhìreadh;
Feadh rainich is barraich
Gum b’arraideach inntinn;

Ann an ìosal gach feadain,
’S air àirde gach creagain,
Gu mireanach beiceasach
Easgannach sìnteach.

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252d

Walking in a waking dream
I watched nineteen deer
pour from ridge to glen-floor,
then each in turn leap,
leap the new-raised
peat-dark burn…

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

Today, 3 March, is World Wildlife Day.

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

#Scottish #literature #WorldWildlifeDay #poem #poetry #deer

The Hinds
Kathleen Jamie

Walking in a waking dream
I watched nineteen deer
pour from ridge to glen-floor,
then each in turn leap,
leap the new-raised
peat-dark burn. This
was the distaff side;
hinds at their ease, alive
to lands held on long lease
in their animal minds,
and filing through a breach
in a never-mended dyke,
the herd flowed up over
heather-slopes to scree
where they stopped, and turned to stare,
the foremost with a queenly air
as though to say: Aren’t we
the bonniest companie?
Come to me,
you’ll be happy, but never go home.

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252d

Today,
on our journey home,
we saw

a buzzard
making a kill
on the roadside verge…

—John Burnside, “Wild”
Published in THE THING THAT MATTERED MOST: Scottish poems for children, @scottishpoetrylibrary / B&W, 2006

Today, 3 March, is World Wildlife Day.

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

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #WorldWildlifeDay

Wild
John Burnside

Today,
on our journey home,
we saw

a buzzard
making a kill
on the roadside verge.

It glided across
our windscreen
and hunkered down

on something –
we couldn’t see
what it was – as the wings

folded around
what Lucas called
‘the prey’.

He wanted to know
if buzzards took children,
or cats;

then,
as we slowed to look,
he chose to admire

the plumage
and the fierce light
of its eye.

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252d

Tha a’ chlosach air ragachadh
mar gun robh e a’ snàmh,
spliadh is ceann air an togail,
sùil is bian
a’ deàrrsadh mar umha…

—Meg Bateman, “Dòbhran Marbh”
Published in THE GOLDEN TREASURY OF SCOTTISH VERSE, @canongate.co.uk 2021

Today, 3 March, is World Wildlife Day

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

#Scottish #literature #Gaidhlig #Gaelic #WorldWildlifeDay #poem #poetry

Dòbhran Marbh
Meg Bateman

Tha a’ chlosach air ragachadh
mar gun robh e a’ snàmh,
spliadh is ceann air an togail,
sùil is bian
a’ deàrrsadh mar umha.

Tionndaidhidh mi air falbh,
air mo nàrachadh ro mheatair de
dhòbhran fom sgrùdadh,
is am bàs air biast cho falbhach
a ghlacadh.

Air ulbhaig, làrach fhuilteach
a chuinnlean; os a cionn,
sgeilp a’ stobadh a-mach
de riasg ’s de fhraoch
far an do thuit e

An comhair a chinn dha na creagan foidhe,
far an laigh e san dubhar mar chloich eile,
a shròn air a pronnadh, gaoisid na fhiaclan,
air a chùlaibh, a shaobhaidh, ùrail, gorm,
mun cuairt air sa bhruach, dàil-chuach is seòbhrach.

Sìnidh mo làmh gu grad thuige
’s mi a’ tuigsinn gun deach a nàdar
ceàrr air an drip an earraich,
gun rachadh an dòbhran mòrail
cuideachd air iomrall.

ALT

Dead Otter
Meg Bateman

Rigor mortis curves the beast
as if swimming,
flat head and webbed foot
raised, eyes gleaming,
pelt of bronze.

I turn away, embarrassed
by a metre of otter
laid out for my scrutiny,
by death’s exposure
of so fleet a creature.

On a boulder, the bloody
stamp of its nostrils;
above, a jutting ledge
of tangled, fibrous root
where it must have fallen

headlong to the rocks where it lies in shade
with staved in snout and stillness of stone,
white fur gripped between its teeth,
with its lair behind, lush with liverwort,
and a flicker of violets and primrose in the bank.

I reach out to it, shocked
that in the urgency of spring
instinct could fail it,
shocked that it too
could lose its footing.

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252d

Flinching in my hands
this soiled and studded but good heart,
which stippling my cupped palms, breathes –

—Jen Hadfield, “Hedgehog, Hamnavoe”
published in NIGH-NO-PLACE (Bloodaxe Books, 2007)

Today, 3 March, is World Wildlife Day.

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/hedgehog-hamnavoe/

#Scottish #literature #WorldWildlifeDay #poem #poetry #hedgehogs #Shetland

Hedgehog, Hamnavoe
Jen Hadfield

Flinching in my hands
this soiled and studded but good heart,
which stippling my cupped palms, breathes –

a kidney flinching on a hot griddle,
or very small Hell’s Angel, peeled from the verge
of a sweet, slurred morning.

Drunk, I coddle it like a crystal ball,
hellbent the realistic mysteries
should amount to more than guesswork

and fleas.

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252d

The grey roots circle thee, who never knew
At any hour within thy travels lone
A human shape but mine…

—Olive Fraser, “The Adder of Quinag”
published in THE WRONG MUSIC, @canongatebooks 1989

Today, 3 March, is World Wildlife Day.

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/adder-quinag/

#Scottish #literature #WorldWildlifeDay #poem #poetry #snake

The Adder of Quinag
Olive Fraser

The grey roots circle thee, who never knew
At any hour within thy travels lone
A human shape but mine. Thou com’st to view,
Wild, unafraid, what stands beside thy stone
And gazes on thee in thy wilderness
Of fifty miles. What thinkst thou of me,
For I am of a race thou could’st not guess
Would murder all thy hapless innocency?

O mountain, take thy small heart back again
And keep him in thy care when I shall go,
Unvisited by all things but the rain,
The hurtless sunbeams, and the winds that blow
For ever in his moors. O let him hold
No intricate memory of that being who stood
Just once by his wild beauty, and did fold
Him with a blessing alien to my blood.

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226d

I hear your 𝘣𝘰𝘭𝘥 𝘣𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘬𝘣𝘪𝘳𝘥, that slow singer,
alone at my desk yet walking with you
through your valleys and hills, that shining
stream bubbling notes of your music
your pure Welsh music…

—Sheila Templeton, “For R.S. Thomas”
Published in A Little Touch of Cliff in the Evening: New Writing Scotland 30 (ASL, 2012)

The Welsh poet R.S. Thomas (1913–2000) was born #OTD, 29 March

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #RSThomas

Sheila Templeton
FOR R. S. THOMAS

I hear your bold blackbird, that slow singer,
alone at my desk yet walking with you
through your valleys and hills, that shining
stream bubbling notes of your music
your pure Welsh music. And I am walking
behind my father, born in your time, but
seeded in his own north land, ploughing,
proud to stride behind his pair o horse;
high cheek-boned, hair rain-flattened
the colour of wet barley, speaking the secret
words to his beasts, turning his park
into a sea of order, yes, with your stiff clods
glinting in the wind, gulls and peesie-weeps
skirling encouragement; above him
only a dark yearning sky.
Another enduring ordinary man,
born to till and toil, to win his wars
to wrestle with his burning under those stars.

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251d

The Worm Queen Turns: Helen Adam (1909–93)
From Dundee Manse to California Coven
10 March, University of Glasgow – free

From Celtic Twilight to the Beat Generation, Adam’s career explodes literary historical periodisation & tangles its sequential logic

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/corey-gibson-the-worm-queen-turns-tickets-1701079658049

#Scottish #literature #CelticTwilight #beats #20thcentury #womenwriters #poetry

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237d

This week; the sermon is salt
and the taste of it as song. A clean, cold burn

quickens the blood…

—A.M. Havinden, “Sea Chapel”
published in Break in Case of Silence: New Writing Scotland 39 (ASL, 2021)

https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/newwriting/nws39/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry

A. M. Havinden
Sea Chapel

This week; the sermon is salt
and the taste of it as song. A clean, cold burn

quickens the blood. Unseen, underfoot,
deep notes of wrack and weed wind

ankles. We raise our voices
in bright blasphemy, in shock and defiance

a hymn of human-scale endurance,
how great and small we are;

how outrageously alone; how far
we’ve come, suddenly, from shore.

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185d

Happy #Caturday!

T.S. Eliot's 1939 collection of whimsical light poems, Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, is entirely dedicated to felines and served as the basis for the musical Cats.

#poetry #poem #kitty #cat #cats #poet #eliot #tseliot #catsOfMastodon #books #reading #literature #bookstodon @bookstodon #books #books #booksky #booktok #bookwyrm #bookstagram #feline #today #cartoon #catsOfFediverse

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201d

Book launch:

the many days / uno dei tanti giorni
A revised and extended bilingual edition of poems by Norman MacCaig

7 June, The Waverley Bar, Edinburgh

This new publication contains an introductory appreciation of MacCaig's poetry by his translator, Marco Fazzini, & a preface by Seamus Heaney.

Marco will be joined by a number of poets reading MacCaig's work in both their original English and new Italian translations.

#Scottish #literature #poetry #NormanMacCaig #translation #Italian

the many days / uno dei tanti giorni
A revised and extended bilingual edition of poems by Norman MacCaig

This new publication contains an introductory appreciation of MacCaig's poetry by his translator, Marco Fazzini, and a preface by Seamus Heaney.
Marco will be joined by a number of poets reading MacCaig's work in both their original English and new Italian translations.
Confirmed poets and readers include: Gerda Stevenson, Alan Spence, Andrew Greig and Christine De Luca.

Venue:
The Waverley Bar (upstairs),
3-6 St Mary's Street,
Edinburgh EH1 ITA
Date d time:
Sunday 7th June, 7pm - 9pm

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249d

There’s no a muir in my ain land but’s fu’ o’ sang the day,
Wi’ the whaup, and the gowden plover, and the lintie upon the brae.
The birk in the glen is springin’, the rowan-tree in the shaw,
And every burn is rinnin’ wild wi’ the meltin’ o’ the snaw…

—Lady John Scott, “The Comin’ o’ the Spring”

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/comin-o-spring/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Scots #Scotslanguage #Spring