Eggplant.place

“SANGSCHAW… gave other writers permission to push the boundaries of Scots as a language of literature, capable of expressing deep thought and not just for light comedy or mawkish whimsy”

Celebrating the 100th anniversary of Hugh MacDiarmid’s first book

https://www.thenational.scot/culture/25436484.100-year-tribute-hugh-macdiarmid-marking-crucial-work/

#Scottish #literature #poetry #Scots #Scotslanguage #20thcentury #MacDiarmid #HughMacDiarmid

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64d

The glitter of water and the wake…
Heading for University in Aberdeen.
It’s an autumn morning. I am seventeen.
Above the Isle of Skye the dawn’s a flag

of red infuriate ore…

—Iain Crichton Smith, “Aberdeen University 1945–49 (1)”
in DEER ON THE HIGH HILLS, ed. by John Greening (Carcanet, 2021)

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

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #IainCrichtonSmith #Skye #Aberdeen

Aberdeen University 1945–49 (1)
by Iain Crichton Smith

The glitter of water and the wake…
Heading for University in Aberdeen.
It’s an autumn morning. I am seventeen.
Above the Isle of Skye the dawn’s a flag

of red infuriate ore. I see the train
for the first time ever steaming from the Kyle
beyond the screaming seagulls, in the smell
of salt and herring. There’s a tall sad crane.

The landscape, rich, harmonious, unwinds
its perfect symmetry: not the barren stone
and vague frail fences I have always known.
I hold my Homer steady in my hand.

All day we travel and at last dismount
at the busy station of that sparkling town.
A beggar with black glasses sitting down
on the hard stone holds out his cap. I count

the pennies in it. Should I freely give?
Or being more shameful than himself refrain?
His definite shadow is the day’s black stain.
How in such open weakness learn to live?

I turn away, the money in my hand,
profusely sweating, in that granite blaze.
Unknown, unlooked at, I pick up my case.
Everything’s glittering and transient.

ALT

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63d

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 #MacDiarmid #HughMacDiarmid

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

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63d

Currently on BBC Sounds: Ian McMillan hosts poets Liz Lochhead, Robert Crawford & Hannah Lavery at the Edinburgh Festival

Hannah Lavery performs “Edinburgh is a Story”; “My Work is Loving the World”; & “Miss Has Started Using Sunbeds”

Robert Crawford reads “Camera Obscura” & “Mons Meg”

Liz Lochhead reads a selection of poems including “Trouble Is Not My Middle Name”; “Coming To Poetry”; & “Song For A Dirty Diva”

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002htf2

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Edinburgh

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68d

It's a double book launch!

Mandy Hager and I are launching our new books at 6pm on Wednesday 1 October at Unity Books, Wellington - my new poetry collection "Dracula in the Colonies" and her new novel "Revenge and Rabbit Holes"!

Check out the details here: https://www.timjonesbooks.co.nz/2025/09/04/youre-invited-to-a-double-book-launch-on-wednesday-1-october-dracula-in-the-colonies-by-tim-jones-and-revenge-and-rabbit-holes-by-mandy-hager/

I hope you can come along! Many thanks to The Cuba Press for publishing both books, and to Unity Books Wellington for hosting the launch.

Can't make the launch? You can pre-order Dracula in the Colonies here: https://thecubapress.nz/shop/dracula-in-the-colonies/

#books #bookstodon #nzbooks #Aotearoa #fiction #poetry

Invitation to the launch of "Dracula in the Colonies" by Tim Jones and "Revenge and Rabbit Holes" by Mandy Hager, showing the covers of both books. The launch is at Unity Books, 57 Willis St, Wellington, from 6-7.30pm on Wednesday 1 October 2025.

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53d

On leaving
you playfully punched
my left
shoulder.

The sensation
remains

But your
voice fades

The sensation
remains
But your
image fades

I
short of breath
tremble

I think
you’ve
cracked
a
rib.

—“Gone but Not Forgotten”, by Maud Sulter (1960–2008)
born #OTD, 19 Sep – a 🎂 🧵

1/9

#Scottish #literature #poem #poet #poetry #photography #MaudSulter #BPOC #Blackwriters #womenwriters #Scotland #Ghana

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52d

So I stopped my walk, climbed the gate
to help an old farmer cursing his deaf god
bringing in the last of a poor harvest…

—Jim Carruth, “Only Human”
published in A Little Touch of Cliff in the Evening: New Writing Scotland 30 (ASL, 2012)

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #farming #harvest

Jim Carruth
Only Human

So I stopped my walk, climbed the gate
to help an old farmer cursing his deaf god
bringing in the last of a poor harvest.
He must have been struggling all day
on his own to fill that small trailer.

I cannot make more of this than it was.
I was no passing Samaritan, saving him
minutes at most, nor a reluctant volunteer
some Simon of Cyrene shouldering
the burden of a stranger’s sodden bale.

As for him, this ageing hunch-backed man
he could not raise his head to say thanks
nor straighten his spine to walk like a saint
not even resurrect the past fortnight of rain
into one unblemished day of a risen sun.

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62d

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 #GeorgeMackayBrown #rurallife #harvest

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.

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35d

Every so often I come across a close-up photo of a Jackdaw that reminds me of this verse:

Thrice happy bird! I too have seen
Much of the vanities of men;
And sick of having seen ’em,
Would cheerfully these limbs resign
For such a pair of wings as thine,
And such a head between ’em.

#Poetry #WilliamCowper #birdsoftheworld #birds

A close-up of the head and chest of a Western Jackdaw (Coloeus monedula) by Kevinsphotos via Pixabay: https://pixabay.com/photos/jackdaw-blackbird-bird-animal-2332455/

The head of the Western Jackdaw is highly distinctive, featuring a glossy black cap on the crown and forehead that often exhibits a subtle blue or purple sheen. This dark cap sharply contrasts with the light grey or greyish-silver nape, cheeks, and sides of the neck, which often create a "hood" or "shawl" appearance. Its facial features are completed by a short, stout, black bill and, most notably, bright pale blue-grey or silvery-white irises in the adult, which stare out against the dark facial plumage, serving as a key identification marker. 2.5 Flash (Edited) 😊

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28d

#OTD in 1894 poet and essayist e. e. cummings was born.

"Cummings wrote approximately 2,900 poems. He is often regarded as one of the most important American poets of the 20th century. He is associated with modernist free-form poetry, and much of his work uses idiosyncratic syntax and lower-case spellings for poetic expression."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._E._Cummings

Books by cummings at PG:

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/2755

#poetry #literature

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61d

At times I think what makes us who we are
is neither kinship nor our given states
but something lost between the world we own
and what we dream about behind the names
on days like this

—John Burnside, “History”
Published in SELECTED POEMS (Jonathan Cape, 2006)

https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/389400/selected-poems-by-burnside-john/9780224078030

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #September11 #history #JohnBurnside

John Burnside
HISTORY

St Andrews: West Sands; September 2001

Today
as we flew the kites
– the sand spinning off in ribbons along the beach
and that gasoline smell from Leuchars gusting across
the golf links;
the tide far out
and quail-grey in the distance;
people
jogging, or stopping to watch
as the war planes cambered and turned
in the morning light –

today
– with the news in my mind, and the muffled dread
of what may come –

I knelt down in the sand
with Lucas
gathering shells
and pebbles
finding evidence of life in all this
driftwork:
snail shells; shreds of razorfish;
smudges of weed and flesh on tideworn stone.

At times I think what makes us who we are
is neither kinship nor our given states
but something lost between the world we own
and what we dream about behind the names
on days like this

ALT

our lines raised in the wind
our bodies fixed and anchored to the shore

and though we are confined by property
what tethers us to gravity and light
has most to do with distance and the shapes
we find in water
reading from the book
of silt and tides
the rose or petrol blue
of jellyfish and sea anemone
combining with a child’s
first nakedness.

Sometimes I am dizzy with the fear
of losing everything – the sea, the sky,
all living creatures, forests, estuaries:
we trade so much to know the virtual
we scarcely register the drift and tug
of other bodies
scarcely apprehend
the moment as it happens: shifts of light
and weather
and the quiet, local forms
of history: the fish lodged in the tide
beyond the sands;
the long insomnia
of ornamental carp in public parks
captive and bright
and hung in their own
slow-burning
transitive gold;
jamjars of spawn
and sticklebacks
or goldfish carried home

ALT

from fairgrounds
to the hum of radio

but this is the problem: how to be alive
in all this gazed-upon and cherished world
and do no harm

a toddler on a beach
sifting wood and dried weed from the sand
and puzzled by the pattern on a shell

his parents on the dune slacks with a kite
plugged into the sky
all nerve and line

patient; afraid; but still, through everything
attentive to the irredeemable.

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1y

English novelist and poet Charlotte Brontë died #OTD in 1855.

She is best known for her novel Jane Eyre, which she published under the gender neutral pen name Currer Bell. Along with "Jane Eyre," her other notable works include "Shirley" (1849) and "Villette" (1853). Brontë's writing is celebrated for its exploration of social issues, particularly the role of women in Victorian society.

Books by Charlotte Brontë at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/408

#books #literature #poetry

Portrait by George Richmond (1850, chalk on paper)

ALT

Cover page of The Search After Hapiness [sic]: A Tale by Charlotte Brontë

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52d

Today, 20 September, is Batman Day. You’d think there would be a signal or something but

Anyway, here’s “Batman’s Aff His Nut”, by Robert Florence

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Glasgow #comics #comicbooks #Batman #BatmanDay

Batman’s aff his nut
by Robert Florence

Have you seen the way he cuts aboot
Dressed up as a mad fuckin bat
Batterin guys
I was lit at:
“Mate, I’m worried aboot ye
I know your ma and da died
But everybody’s ma and da dies
And we’re no aw runnin aboot
Hookin muggers and
Kickin psychopaths in the baws.”
And that was when Batman went
“Aye, but do ye ever feel like it?
Do you ever look at the world and feel like it?
Like having a big mad base under your hoose?
Do you ever feel like drivin a big mad motor
that turns intae a tank?
And leatherin fuck oot of guys aw night?
Scarin the fuckin shite oot of them?”
And that’s when I was lit at:
“Aye. Fuck it. Ah dae.”
And that’s the Secret Origin of Robin
And everyone else.

ALT

Blurry photo of a man in a (partial?) Batman costume, on a wet Glasgow street – probably taken during the filming of the 2022 movie THE BATMAN, where Glasgow was a stand-in for Gotham City.

Text: She’s turned the Waynes against us…

She’s turned the Waynes against us

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51d

Call it not vain:—they do not err,
Who say, that when the Poet dies,
Mute Nature mourns her worshipper,
And celebrates his obsequies…

—from Canto V, “The Lay of the Last Minstrel” by Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832) – died #OTD, 21 September

https://www.theotherpages.org/poems/canto05.html

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #WalterScott #19thcentury #romanticism

Sir Walter Scott
The Lay of the Last Minstrel
Canto V

I.
Call it not vain;—they do not err,
Who say, that when the Poet dies,
Mute Nature mourns her worshipper,
And celebrates his obsequies:
Who say, tall cliff and cavern lone
For the departed Bard make moan;
That mountains weep in crystal rill;
That flowers in tears of balm distill;
Through his lov'd groves that breezes sigh,
And oaks, in deeper groan, reply;
And rivers teach their rushing wave
To murmur dirges round his grave

II.
Not that, in sooth, o'er mortal urn
Those things inanimate can mourn;
But that the stream, the wood, the gale
Is vocal with the plaintive wail
Of those, who, else forgotten long,
Liv'd in the poet's faithful song,
And with the poet's parting breath,
Whose memory feels a second death.
The Maid's pale shade, who wails her lot,
That love, true love, should be forgot,
From rose and hawthorn shakes the tear
Upon the gentle Minstrel's bier:
The phantom Knight, his glory fled,
Mourns o'er the field he heap'd with dead;
Mounts the wild blast that sweeps amain,
And shrieks along the battle-plain.
The Chief, whose antique crownlet long
Still sparkled in the feudal song,
Now, from the mountain's misty throne,
Sees, in the thanedom once his own,
His ashes undistinguish'd lie,
His place, his power, his memory die:
His groans the lonely caverns fill,
His tears of rage impel the rill:
All mourn the Minstrel's harp unstrung,
Their name unknown, their praise unsung.

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56d

I'm ever so proud that for the third consecutive year my work is featured in The Auroras & Blossoms PoArtMo Anthology. This year it's Volume 6. Out now,

Other artists, writers and poets whose work is featured are:
@haikushack , David Ellis, Azelle Eric, Sherri J Moye-Dombrovsky, Uswa Majeed and D.R. James.

All info:

https://mastodon.world/@haikushack/115214820088311067

@abpositiveart @bookstodon @bookstodon.com

#writing #writingcommunity #poetry #poetrycommunity #haiku #art #artist #writer #writers

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27d

Allan Ramsay (1684–1758) – poet, playwright, founder of modern Scots writing, & with a claim to be the father of Romanticism – was born #OTD, 15 Oct
A 🎂 🧵

1/6

🖼️ Allan Ramsay, 1684–1758, by William Aikman – Scottish National Portrait Gallery
(This portrait was owned by Sir John Clerk of Penicuik, who wrote on the back of the canvas: “Here painted on this canvas clout by Aikman’s hand is Ramsay’s snout”)

https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/3526

#Scottish #literature #drama #poetry #18thcentury #Romanticism

Portrait of Allan Ramsay (1684–1758), by William Aikman. Oil on canvas. Ramsay is clean-shaven, and looks out at the viewer with a half-smile. He wears a collarless dark green velvet coat, unbuttoned, and has an orange silk cloth wound about his head like an improvised turban.

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50d

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 IX”
via the Sottish Poetry Library

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

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Scots #Scotslanguage #autumn

Autumn IX
by 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

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56d

Tripwire Poetics Journal 22 is out now.

https://tripwirejournal.com/2025/09/11/tripwire-22-available-now/

It contains some of my translations of French poet Christophe Tarkos and a zany critical essay on him, about bread, money, shit and language, using James C. Scott and David Graeber, etc.

#poetry

all sales proceeds go to The Sameer Project: https://linktr.ee/thesameerproject

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51d

May this
Suffering
Become
So much
Kindling
For the
Fire inside
Us all,
That we may
One day
Outshine
The dark.

#poetry

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53d

Okay, so it is official now. My poem 'Kiss' won fourth prize, and my poem 'Soap' won a Judge's choice award in the Ontario Poetry Society Ultrashort poetry competition. Very happy with this.

Max 8 lines of max 8 words each.

A book of the winning poems will soon be available here.

https://theontariopoetrysociety.ca/Ultra-Short-Poem-Competition-2025-Winners-List.html

#poetry #competition #poems #Smallpoems

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49d

Leave, leave your well-loved nest,
Late swallow, and fly away.
Here is no rest
For hollowing heart and wearying wing…

—Edwin Muir, “The Late Swallow”
first published in One Foot in Eden (Faber, 1956)

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/late-swallow/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #20thcentury #EdwinMuir #autumn

The Late Swallow
by Edwin Muir

Leave, leave your well-loved nest,
Late swallow, and fly away.
Here is no rest
For hollowing heart and wearying wing.
Your comrades all have flown
To seek their southern paradise
Across the great earth’s downward sloping side,
And you are alone.
Why should you cling
Still to the swiftly ageing narrowing day?
Prepare;
Shake your pinions long untried
That now must bear you there where you would be
Through all the heavens of ice;
Till falling down the homing air
You light and perch upon the radiant tree.

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49d

You that through all the dying summer
Came every morning to our breakfast table,
A lonely bachelor mummer,
And fed on the marmalade
So deeply, all your strength was scarcely able
To prise you from the sweet pit you had made…

—Edwin Muir, “The Late Wasp”
from One Foot in Eden (Faber, 1956)

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #20thcentury #EdwinMuir #autumn

The Late Wasp
by Edwin Muir

You that through all the dying summer
Came every morning to our breakfast table,
A lonely bachelor mummer,
And fed on the marmalade
So deeply, all your strength was scarcely able
To prise you from the sweet pit you had made, –
You and the earth have now grown older,
And your blue thoroughfares have felt a change;
They have grown colder;
And it is strange
How the familiar avenues of the air
Crumble now, crumble; the good air will not hold,
All cracked and perished with the cold;
And down you dive through nothing and through despair.

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49d

…and then katie who is very quiet most of the time
says no that wasn’t in the past because it’s happening
today it’s happening now she saw it on her phone
and that we’re all going to die tomorrow or the day after
and both rebeccas stand up waving their hands shouting
we’re not are we sir we’re not are we we’re not going to die
tomorrow are we sir…

—Mark Russell, “Drama”
in With Their Best Clothes On: New Writing Scotland 36

https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/newwriting/nws36/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #rapture