poetry

229d

A Kick Up the Arts podcast

Nicola Meighan visits the Alasdair Gray Archive & talks to Scottish writers Rory Watson & Alan Bissett about the wonder of words, the magic of old photographs, & the power of listening to women’s voices

https://www.akickupthearts.org/blog-3-1/rory-watson-amp-alan-bissett

#Scottish #literature #poetry #fiction #drama #podcast

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229d

“On a wet and wintry afternoon in January, with the Braan in spate, licking the edges of the lower walkways, the work brings a kind of mammalian warmth to the dark and damp”

—Greg Thomas on walking Scotland’s Corbenic Poetry Path

https://artuk.org/discover/stories/the-rhythm-of-feet-walking-scotlands-corbenic-poetry-path

#Scottish #literature #poetry #walking

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227d

I wad ha’e gi’en him my lips tae kiss,
Had I been his, had I been his…

—“Mary’s Song”, by Marion Angus (1865–1946) – born #OTD, 27 March
published in THE TINKER’S ROAD and Other Verses (1924)

“She has an authentic voice straight out of the ballad tradition, an eerie shimmer to her best poems”
—Kathleen Jamie

https://digital.nls.uk/works-by-selected-scottish-authors/archive/129188342#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=12&xywh=-880%2C-256%2C3153%2C2337

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

Mary’s Song
Marion Angus

I wad ha’e gi’en him my lips tae kiss,
Had I been his, had I been his;
Barley breid and elder wine,
Had I been his as he is mine.

The wanderin’ bee it seeks the rose;
Tae the lochan’s bosom the burnie goes;
The grey bird cries at evenin’s fa’,
“My luve, my fair one, come awa’.”

My beloved sall ha’e this he’rt tae break,
Reid, reid wine and the barley cake,
A he’rt tae break, and a mou’ tae kiss,
Tho’ he be nae mine, as I am his.

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227d

There are some stones that open in the night like flowers
Down in the red graveyard where Bessie haunts her lovers…

—Jackie Kay, “The Red Graveyard”
published in OTHER LOVERS (Bloodaxe, 1993)

Today, 28 March, is International Women in Music Day

https://www.bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/category/jackie-kay

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #music #song #singing #BessieSmith #InternationalWomenInMusicDay

The Red Graveyard
Jackie Kay

There are some stones that open in the night like flowers
Down in the red graveyard where Bessie haunts her lovers.
There are stones that shake and weep in the heart of night
Down in the red graveyard where Bessie haunts her lovers.

Why do I remember the blues?
I am five or six or seven in the back garden;
the window is wide open;
her voice is slow motion through the heavy summer air.
Jelly roll. Kitchen man. Sausage roll. Frying pan.

Inside the house where I used to be myself,
her voice claims the rooms. In the best room even,
something has changed the shape of my silence.
Why do I remember her voice and not my own mother’s?
Why do I remember the blues?

My mother’s voice. What was it like?
A flat stone for skitting. An old rock.
Long long grass. Asphalt. Wind. Hail.
Cotton. Linen. Salt. Treacle.
I think it was a peach.
I heard it down to the ribbed stone.

I am coming down the stairs in my father’s house.
I am five or six or seven. There is fat thick wallpaper
I always caress, bumping flower into flower.
She is singing. (Did they play anyone else ever?)
My father’s feet tap a shiny beat on the floor.

Christ, my father says, that’s some voice she’s got.
I pick up the record cover. And now. This is slow motion.
My hand swoops, glides, swoops again.
I pick up the cover and my fingers are all over her face.
Her black face. Her magnificent black face.
That’s some voice. His shoes dancing on the floor.

There are some stones that open in the night like flowers
Down in the red graveyard where Bessie haunts her lovers.
There are stones that shake and weep in the heart of night
Down in the red graveyard where Bessie haunts her lovers.

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227d

Smoky sky.
In autumn wind
I stroll by the quays
in the last light…

—Edwin Morgan, “Je ne regrette rien: in memory of Edith Piaf”
published in COLLECTED POEMS (Carcanet, 2012)

28 March is International Women in Music Day

https://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?product=9781857541885

#Scottish #literature #InternationalWomenInMusicDay #poem #poetry #EdithPiaf #music #singer

Edwin Morgan
Je ne regrette rien
in memory of Edith Piaf

Smoky sky.
In autumn wind
I stroll by the quays
in the last light,
my coat flaps, flaps,
wet chestnut leaves
spatter the Seine.
I glance in a window
and touch my hair, yes
I am tiny as they say,
tiny as a sparrow.
Now the lights come on.
I stand under the lamp,
turn up my collar
in a circle of rain
and wait for you.

It’s all beginning again.
Dead leaves or spring
it comes back, it begins.
How could I struggle?
When you held me, your shoulders
were a wall, I sheltered
in your shadow, it began.
They say I couldn’t count my men –
in thirty years I couldn’t count them!
But who counts years?
Count the years I was blind?
Dandled in a brothel? Taught by whores?
Count the prayers that gave me my sight at Lisieux?
Or the heartbeats of my daughter, in thousands,
when I bore her at fourteen
till she starved and died?
Count the crusts I’ve had, or those I’ve given?
The gutters I’ve sung in, or the great halls?
Count the glasses I’ve drunk? Count the beds
I’ve lain in, the lips I’ve kissed?
I can’t count the surgeons who’ve opened me –
do you think my lovers are in a book?
Do you want me to start counting tears?
Count what? The cost? What cost? I won!

No! let the men that had me go their ways.
I regret nothing, nothing. Some were kind.
But I don’t care if they were kind!
I don’t remember if it was bad.
I don’t keep the past in my pocket.

I’ve paid for it all, I’ve forgotten it all.
I’ve paid for it all, I’ve forgotten it all.
I strike a match to my memories,
they light a fire and disappear.

I warm my arms tonight
the fire begins
the stars come out
yes it begins
I am forty-five
it begins again
I hear his step
yes it begins
his broad shoulders
glisten through the rain
I can see
the dead cigarette
in his firm mouth
he throws it aside
it begins and
I regret nothing

We sway in the rain,
he crushes my mouth.
What could I regret
if a hundred times
of parting struck me
like lightning if this
lightning of love
can strike and
strike
again!

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200d

Roderick Watson: The Silver of Old Mirrors
27 April, University of Glasgow – free
Creative Conversations with Alan Riach

A poet & academic, Roderick Watson has lectured & published widely on modern Scottish literature & is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His poetry publications include True History on the Walls (1977), Into the Blue Wavelengths (2004), & The Silver of Old Mirrors (2025).

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/roderick-watson-the-silver-of-old-mirrors-creative-conversations-tickets-1987816006185

#Scottish #literature #poetry #Glasgow

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175d

I laugh
In order to
Stop the
Guttural
Scream
Rising
In my throat.

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200d

May we
Burn bright
Enough that
The stars
Wish upon us
When we
Fall.

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215d

It steppit like a stallion,
Wha’s heid hauds up a horn,
And weel the men o’ Scotland kent
It was the unicorn…

—William Soutar (1898–1943), “Birthday”

Another poem for National Unicorn Day 🦄 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

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

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #20thcentury #Scots #Scotslanguage #NationalUnicornDay #unicorn

Birthday
William Soutar

There were three men o’ Scotland
Wha rade intill the nicht
Wi’ nae mune lifted owre their crouns
Nor onie stern for licht:

Nane but the herryin’ houlet,
The broun mouse, and the taed,
Kent whan their horses clapper’d by
And whatna road they rade.

Nae man spak to his brither,
Nor ruggit at the rein;
But drave straucht on owre burn and brae
Or half the nicht was gaen.

Nae man spak to his brither,
Nor lat his hand draw in;
But drave straucht on owre ford and fell
Or nicht was nearly düne.

There cam a flaucht o’ levin
That brocht nae thunner ca’
But left ahint a lanely lowe
That wudna gang awa.

And richt afore the horsemen,
Whaur grumly nicht had been,
Stude a’ the Grampian Mountains
Wi’ the dark howes atween.

Up craigie cleuch and corrie
They rade wi’ stany soun’,
And saftly thru the lichted mirk
The switherin’ snaw cam doun.

They gaed by birk and rowan,
They gaed by pine and fir;
Aye on they gaed or nocht but snaw
And the roch whin was there.

Nae man brac’d back the bridle
Yet ilka fit stude still
As thru the flichterin’ floichan-drift
A beast cam doun the hill.

It steppit like a stallion,
Wha’s heid hauds up a horn,
And weel the men o’ Scotland kent
It was the unicorn.

It steppit like a stallion,
Snaw-white and siller-bricht,
And on its back there was a bairn
Wha low’d in his ain licht.

And baith gaed by richt glegly
As day was at the daw;
And glisterin’ owre hicht and howe
They saftly smool’d awa.

Nae man but socht his brither
And look’t him in the e’en,
And sware that he wud gang a’ gates
To cry what he had seen.

There were three men o’ Scotland
A’ frazit and forforn;
But on the Grampian Mountains
They saw the unicorn.

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198d

To feel
Everything
So deeply
Is a curse,
Is an art.

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215d

Robert Frost at Midlife

In his poems for The Yale Review, the poet reckoned with mortality, imperfection, and the limits of form

by Kamran Javadizadeh

https://yalereview.org/article/kamran-javadizadeh-robert-frost?utm_source=Klaviyo&utm_medium=campaign&utm_id=01KNPFNHND5AN53W9YE3E0G0Z2&_kx=3MZUehzXM-41qlWAMPUiuNZadX2p0SByuNf_t0eMLB0.U5D8ER

Robert Frost at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/1091

#books #literature #poetry

"The Road Not Taken", as featured in Mountain Interval (1916).

The title page and opening poem of Mountain Interval by Robert Frost, published by Henry Holt and Company, New York, copyright and first published November 1916.

The left page shows the title page with a small decorative woodcut device — an owl motif in a square border — and identifies Frost as "Author of 'North of Boston'", his celebrated 1914 collection.

The right page presents "The Road Not Taken" in full — the poem that opens the collection and became one of the most quoted and widely misread poems in the English language.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Frost#/media/File:The_Road_Not_Taken_-_Robert_Frost.png

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198d

Poet, the flowers are open
even when we are dead…

—Iain Crichton Smith, “At the Funeral of Robert Garioch”
published in DEER ON THE HIGH HILLS (Carcanet, 2021)

Robert Garioch (1909–81), one of the greatest figures in 20th-century Scottish poetry, died #OTD, 26 April

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

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #20thcentury #elegy

Iain Crichton Smith
At the Funeral of Robert Garioch

Something about the April day
touched me
as they slid your coffin onto the trolley
in the Crematorium.

More and more often it troubles me
this wind my sails have missed
which is still around me
fluttering the bluebells.

‘The Lord’s My Shepherd’ we sang.
It was time for the burning.
The minister blessed it
dressed in his white gown,

his voice fat and voluptuous,
his enunciation pure.
You slid down into fire
in your yellow coffin.

In half-way April
the breeze was vulnerable
straying among the warble
of the first birds.

Poet, the flowers are open
even when we are dead
even when the power has gone
from our right arms.

The flowers open in flame.
The coffin slides home.
Fugitive April becomes
a tremendous summer.

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198d

Environmental Scotland IV: Garry MacKenzie & Coinneach Maclean

A recording of the latest Environmental Scotland seminar on “Ben Dorain: A Conversation with a Mountain” (Garry MacKenzie) and “The Tourist Gaze on Gaelic Scotland” (Coinneach Maclean).
Facilitated by Monika Szuba (University of Gdańsk) and Petra Johana Poncarová (University of Glasgow / Charles University, Prague)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5xXbocNE60

#Scottish #literature #environment #environmentalism #Gaidhlig #Gaelic #poetry

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199d

This week's #NewBooks at the library: A toss-up of three different titles
- Having reviewed a biography about Edgar Allan Poe, I determined that Thomas Olive Mabbott's version, originally published by Belknap Press, is probably one of the more authoritative collections of Poe's work. I managed to find a 1979 hardback original of the first volume via eBay.
- I found a very affordable second-hand version of Cambridge University Press's Meteoroids: Sources of Meteors on Earth and Beyond in their Cambridge Planetary Science series.
- One more book from my employer's January clearance sale is Muhammad H. Zaman's Biography of Resistance: The Epic Battle Between People and Pathogens, published by Harper Wave.

#Books #Bookstodon #Scicomm #Gothic #Poetry #Astronomy #Astrodon #Microbiology #Disease @bookstodon

A photo of three books standing on a small, brown, wooden table. The out-of-focus background shows black shelves full of books and part of the beech-coloured laminate floor.

On the left, The Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe, Volume 1: Poems, showing a hardback with a faded red dust jacket with a drawing of a black crow with wings outstretched.

In the middle, Meteoroids: Sources of Meteors on Earth and Beyond, showing a casebound hardback showing an aerial photo of a cloud-covered pine forest with a meteor streaking across the sky.

On the right, Biography of Resistance, showing a hardback with a slate-grey dust jacket with a stylised drawing of a bacterium. Numerous yellow dots are encircling a red globular structure that has many spiky arms sticking out in all directions. A circle drawn in a dashed line is all that is keeping the two apart.

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222d

Larks they were in lift-off, swallows in soaring.
Soaring metal is flight and nest together…

—Edwin Morgan, “A Home in Space”
published in CENTENARY SELECTED POEMS, @carcanet.bsky.social 2020

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

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Artemis #space #NASA

A Home in Space
Edwin Morgan

Laid-back in orbit, they found their minds.
They found their minds were very clean and clear.
Clear crystals in swarms outside were their fireflies and larks.
Larks they were in lift-off, swallows in soaring.
Soaring metal is flight and nest together.
Together they must hatch.
Hatches let the welders out.
Out went the whitesuit riggers with frames as light as air.
Air was millions under lock and key.
Key-ins had computers wild on Saturday nights.
Nights, days, months, years they lived in space.
Space shone black in their eyes.
Eyes, hands, food-tubes, screens, lenses, keys were one.
One night – or day – or month – or year – they all –
all gathered at the panel and agreed –
agreed to cut communication with –
with the earth base – and it must be said they were –
were cool and clear as they dismantled the station and –
and gave their capsule such power that –
that they launched themselves outwards –
outwards in an impeccable trajectory, that band –
that band of tranquil defiers, not to plant any –
any home with roots but to keep a –
a voyaging generation voyaging, and as far –
as far as there would ever be a home in space –
space that needs time and time that needs life.

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223d

Ayont the linn; ayont the linn,
Whaur gowdan wags the gorse,
A gowk gaed cryin’: “Come ye in:
I’ve fairins in my purse…”

—William Soutar, “The Gowk”
published in Collected Published Poetry (Tippermuir, 2024)

April Fool’s Day is Huntigowk Day in Scotland

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

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Scots #Scotslanguage #April1st

The Gowk
William Soutar

Ayont the linn; ayont the linn,
Whaur gowdan wags the gorse,
A gowk gaed cryin’: “Come ye in:
I’ve fairins in my purse.

My bield is o’ the diamond stane
Wi’ emerant atween:
My bonnie een are yours alane,
An’ rubies are my een.”

My faither brak a sauchy stick;
My mither wal’d a stane:
An’ weel l set it for the trick
Tae mak the gowk my ain.

The stane was set; the shot was shot;
The flichterin’ burd was fund:
But nocht aboot that lanely spot
O’ gowd or diamond.

It had nae siller for a croun;
Nae rubies for its een:
But a the crammasy ran doun
Whaur aince its breist had been.

I look’t; an’ there was nane tae see
The fairin I had taen:
I hung it on a roden-tree
An’ left it a’ alane.

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225d

It is big sky and its changes,
the sea all round and the waters within.
It is the way sea and sky
work off each other constantly,
like people meeting in Alfred Street,
each face coming away with a hint
of the other’s face pressed in it…

—Andrew Greig, “Orkney/This Life”
published in INTO YOU (Bloodaxe, 2001)

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/orkney-life/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Orkney

Orkney / This Life
Andrew Greig

For Catherine and Jamie

It is big sky and its changes,
the sea all round and the waters within.
It is the way sea and sky
work off each other constantly,
like people meeting in Alfred Street,
each face coming away with a hint
of the other’s face pressed in it.
It is the way a week-long gale
ends and folk emerge to hear
a single bird cry way high up.

It is the way you lean to me
and the way I lean to you, as if
we are each other’s prevailing;
how we connect along our shores,
the way we are tidal islands
joined for hours then inaccessible,
I’ll go for that, and smile when I
pick sand off myself in the shower.
The way I am an inland loch to you
when a clatter of white whoops and rises . . .

It is the way Scotland looks to the South,
the way we enter friends’ houses
to leave what we came with, or flick
the kettle’s switch and wait.
This is where I want to live,
close to where the heart gives out,
ruined, perfected, an empty arch against the sky
where birds fly through instead of prayers
while in Hoy Sound the ferry’s engines thrum
this life this life this life.

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228d

I am excited that my 2025 publication The Reducing Flame is one of the nominees for the 2026 Elgin Awards in the chapbook category. The awards willl be voted on by the SFPA membership and winners announced in October.
You can order The Reducing Flame at my ko-fi store in either pdf or hardcopy format. It has ten original speculative poems in it.
https://ko-fi.com/richmagahiz/shop

#specpo #horror #sciencefiction #fantasy #poetry

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222d

Black and Indigenous women poets, DM me links to your work. I’m on a poetry selection committee and I want to lift you!

Esp. Queer and disabled Black and Indigenous women. Esp. esp. trans Black and Indigenous women.

I don’t care about your resume or publication history or where you are in the world. I just want to read your words.

This is also like a year out, so don’t wait for a contact. I’ll just be adding your name/info to a proposed reading list.

#poetry #literary #writing #BlackMastodon #BlackFedi #BlackWriter #NDN #NDNlit #NDNMastodon #chicanaWriters #chicanaLiterature

Edited 222d ago

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199d

What a wonderful surprise this afternoon to see that my #haiku received an honorable mention in
The Solitary Daisy's 2026 Annual Haiku Contest 💛✨

Congratulations to all! 👏👏

#poetry #poem #writing #PoetryCommunity #WritingCommunity

https://thesolitarydaisy.ca/haiku-contest/

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221d

The cold Roman eye, hand on seal.
Vale. Take the thief away.

“You carry your own tree, Jimmy…”
Another gallowsbird behind.
One ahead, burdened, a bruised brightness…

—George Mackay Brown, “Stations of the Cross: The Good Thief”
published in CARVE THE RUNES: Selected Poems (Birlinn, 2021)

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

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

Stations of the Cross: The Good Thief
George Mackay Brown

The cold Roman eye, hand on seal.
Vale. Take the thief away.

‘You carry your own tree, Jimmy . . .’
Another gallowsbird behind.
One ahead, burdened, a bruised brightness.

I’ve carried millstones, wine-vats, a mast.
That one was a carpenter.
His knees buckle under the heavy baulk.

My mother, poor woman, is dead.
His mother is here. Poor woman. Poor woman.

Look, Simon’s come into town
With an ox to sell.
They’ve laid another yoke on Simon.

Veronica, seamstress. No napkin ever
Soaked up such blood and sweat.

I stagger but I don’t fall.
The sneak-thief plods like a mule.
The bright one, he’s down again.

Those women! Miriam, Judith, Esther
Go home, sing over your cradles.
Sing among looms and pots.

Below, cornfields and vineyards.
A third time, fallen.
He tastes golden dust.

The soldiers won’t bother, I think,
Haggling over my coat.
No scarecrow would wear a rag like that.

Silence – curses – from cross and cross.
From the mid-ark
A dove wings out into the blackest storm.

Thrust of lance into heart-root.
The soldiers are coming with mallets
To break the legs of the thieves.

The eyes of the mother
Drown all the world in pity and love.
The hammer beats on my knee.

That the hands of such a woman
Fold me gravewards.
Bear me and all men in her folds of light.

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221d

Three o’clock. The bus lurches
round into the sun. “D’s this go –”
he flops beside me – “right along Bath Street?
– Oh tha’s, tha’s all right, see I’ve
got to get some Easter eggs for the kiddies…

—Edwin Morgan, “Good Friday”
from CENTENARY SELECTED POEMS, @carcanet.bsky.social 2020

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

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

Good Friday
Edwin Morgan

Three o’clock. The bus lurches
round into the sun. “D’s this go –”
he flops beside me – “right along Bath Street?
– Oh tha’s, tha’s all right, see I’ve
got to get some Easter eggs for the kiddies.
I’ve had a wee drink, ye understand –
ye’ll maybe think it’s a – funny day
to be celebrating – well, no, but ye see
I wasny working, and I like to celebrate
when I’m no working – I don’t say it’s right
I’m no saying it’s right, ye understand – ye understand?
But anyway tha’s the way I look at it –
I’m no boring you, eh? – ye see today,
take today, I don’t know what today’s in aid of,
whether Christ was – crucified or was he –
rose fae the dead like, see what I mean?
You’re an educatit man, you can tell me –
– Aye, well. There ye are. It’s been seen
time and again, the working man
has nae education, he jist canny – jist
hasny got it, know what I mean,
he’s jist bliddy ignorant – Christ aye,
bliddy ignorant. Well –” The bus brakes violently,
he lunges for the stair, swings down – off,
into the sun for his Easter eggs,
on very‍‍
‍ ‍‍ ‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍ ‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍ ‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ nearly‍‍
‍ ‍‍ ‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍ ‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍ ‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍‍ ‍‍ ‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍ ‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍ ‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ steady‍‍
‍ ‍‍ ‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍ ‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍ ‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍‍ ‍‍ ‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍ ‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍ ‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍‍ ‍‍ ‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍ ‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍ ‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ legs.

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221d

Three o’clock. Yer hot cross buns ur in the oven
fur another nine minutes. The soup will be tested at some point
the mora, or maybe oan Sunday…

—Charles Lang, “Good Friday (After Edwin Morgan)”
from NOBODY REMEMBERS THE BIRDMAN: New Writing Scotland 40 (ASL, 2022)

https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/newwriting/nws40/

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

Charles Lang
Good Friday

After Edwin Morgan

Three o’clock. Yer hot cross buns ur in the oven
fur another nine minutes. The soup will be tested at some point
the mora, or maybe oan Sunday. The world is oor oyster!
There’ll be nae eggs this year fur a few reasons.

I press play oan the telly: a recordin ae Tuesday night’s Eastenders
preceded by the last minute n a hof ae Tuesday night’s news.
That feels like such a long time ago. The days aw feel the same
but everythin is movin quickly. I fast forward through the theme tune.

lan is feelin guilty fur the part he played in Dennis’s death.
Blackmail is a wonderful thing. Dotty is usin it tae take control ae the Arches.
Will Sharon ever find oot? Will Mick sell the Queen Vic?
Did Carole Baskin kill her disappeared husband n feed him tae her lucrative tigers?

These ur things ye need tae think aboot. The questions
that need tae be answered. Is it possible tae eat mer than three
cream crackers withoot a drink a watter? How many days
will it take me tae complete this 1000-piece New Yorker jigsaw?

TBC. Maybe I’ll dae it the mora, maybe I’ll dae it next week.
Tell ye wit I’ll get most ae it oot the wiy the mora, efter ma soup,
takin a break at aboot three o’clock fur a wee coffee.
The hot cross buns, by the way: outstandin.

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221d

heh jimmy
yawright ih
stull wayiz urryi
ih

heh jimmy
ma right insane yirra pape
ma right insane yirwanny us jimmy
see it nyir eyes
wanny uz

—Tom Leonard, “The Good Thief”
published in THE GOLDEN TREASURY OF SCOTTISH VERSE, @canongatebooks 2021

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

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

Tom Leonard
The Good Thief

heh jimmy
yawright ih
stull wayiz urryi
ih

heh jimmy
ma right insane yirra pape
ma right insane yirwanny us jimmy
see it nyir eyes
wanny uz

heh

heh jimmy
lookslik wirgonny miss thi gemm
gonny miss thi GEMM jimmy
nearly three a cloke thinoo

dork init
good jobe theyve gote the lights

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221d

Her face was thrawed.
She wisna aa come.

In the trams o her airms
the wummin held oot her first bairn.
It micht hae been a mercat day
and him for sale…

—Alastair Mackie, “Pietà”
from The Golden Treasury of Scottish Verse, @canongatebooks 2021

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

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

Pietà
Alastair Mackie

Her face was thrawed.
She wisna aa come.

In the trams o her airms
the wummin held oot her first bairn.
It micht hae been a mercat day
and him for sale.
Naebody stoppit tae niffer.

His life bluid cled his breast
wi a new reid semmit.
He’d hippens for deid claes.

Aifter the boombers cleck
and the sodgers traik thro the skau
there’s an auld air sterts up –
bubblin and greetin.

It’s a ballant mithers sing
on their hunkers i the stour
for a bairn deid.

They ken it by hert.

It’s the cauldest grue i the universe
yon skelloch.
It niver waukens the deid.

Edited 221d ago

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