poetry

53d

Edinburgh Poetry Tours
Various dates in August, Edinburgh. Pay-what-you-can tickets, from £4.50

Poet Ken Cockburn presents, on & around the Royal Mile, an Edinburgh alive with literature. If you’re new to Edinburgh you’ll see some key sights, & if you know the city you’ll experience it afresh by slowing down & listening to the words of poets writing across the centuries.

https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/embro

#Scottish #literature #poetry #Edinburgh

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57d

A Stewed Rhubarb Online Poetry Reading
28 July, online. Tickets £1.50

Join Stewed Rhubarb Press for an evening of contemporary Scottish poetry with Siún Carden, Craig Aitchison & Biff Smith. Three distinctive voices, three acclaimed publications, & an hour of live readings & conversation hosted by Charlie Roy.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/a-stewed-rhubarb-online-poetry-reading-tickets-1993255644289

#Scottish #literature #poetry

Edited 57d ago

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63d

NAMING THE SNAKES
New Writing Scotland 44
Ed. by Chris Powici, Allan Radcliffe & Anna C. Frater

The best new short fiction & poetry from forty-three writers who are Scottish by birth, residence, or inclination, writing in English, Gaelic, & Scots. Available for preorder now from all good bookshops! (And the evil one too.)

https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/newwriting/nws44/

#Scottish #literature #NewWriting #shortstories #shortfiction #poetry #poems #Gaidhlig #Gaelic #Scots #Scotslanguage #writingcommunity

Book cover:

Naming
the
Snakes

New
Writing
Scotland
44

Edited by Chris Powici and Allan Radcliffe
Gaelic Editor: Anna C. Frater

The cover image shows a mix of overlapping yellow, orange, and purple fabrics, semi-transparent, on top of a drawing of a hand holding a disc which rests on top of a pillar. The head of a snake coils up from below to rest on the disc.

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63d

He picked up a pebble
and threw it into the sea.

And another, and another.
He couldn't stop.

He wasn't trying to fill the sea.
He wasn't trying to empty the beach.

He was just throwing away,
nothing else but…

—Norman MacCaig, “Small boy”
published in THE POEMS OF NORMAN MacCAIG (Birlinn, 2009)

https://birlinn.co.uk/product/the-poems-of-norman-maccaig/

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

Small boy
by Norman MacCaig

He picked up a pebble
and threw it into the sea.

And another, and another.
He couldn't stop.

He wasn't trying to fill the sea.
He wasn't trying to empty the beach.

He was just throwing away,
nothing else but.

Like a kitten playing
he was practising for the future

when there'll be so many things
he'll want to throw away

if only his fingers will unclench
and let them go.

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63d

That was when I threw the stone and then ran after;
splashing into Smallholm burn I made the colours
of a summer’s day cascade around me…

—Ron Butlin, “Histories of Desire”
published in HISTORIES OF DESIRE (Bloodaxe, 1995)

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/histories-desire/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #20thcentury

Histories of Desire
Ron Butlin

At Carsethorn, Solway Coast

That was when I threw the stone and then ran after;
splashing into Smallholm burn I made the colours
of a summer’s day cascade around me.
That was when the water stilled to rowanberries,
clouds and dark green leaves I could never reach
before. I tried to pick one up –
that was when the earth and sky first slipped
between my finders.

All histories are histories of desire, they tell me
how my life begins and ends: a stretch of water,
a stone a child sends skimming
to the other side.

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63d

“He was an advocate of the new, & that made him stand out in a Scottish modernist literary milieu where there was a kind of gruff, backwards-looking impulse”

—Greg Thomas on A HOME IN SPACE, a new collection of Edwin Morgan’s concrete, visual & sound poetry

https://list.co.uk/news/greg-thomas-on-edwin-morgan-he-nudged-scottish-literature-into-the-modern-world-48514

#Scottish #literature #poetry #concretepoetry #soundpoetry #visualpoetry #EdwinMorgan

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32d

Like meteors,
We fall
Without ever
Knowing
How beautiful
We are.

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57d

Happy World Snake Day – 16 July – to all who celebrate. Here’s Edwin Morgan’s “Siesta of a Hungarian Snake”, published in COLLECTED POEMS (Carcanet, 1990) 🐍

https://www.carcanet.co.uk/9781857541885/collected-poems/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #EdwinMorgan #snakes #snake #WorldSnakeDay

Edwin Morgan
Siesta of a Hungarian Snake

s sz sz SZ sz SZ sz ZS zs ZS zs zs z

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56d

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

Another poem for World Snake Day 🐍

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

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #snake #snakes #naturewriting #naturepoetry #Quinag #Sutherland #Highlands #WorldSnakeDay

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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48d

Even when
The moon
Is a fraction
Of herself,
She still moves
The whole sea.

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3d

Though life
May try,
It cannot dull
The light in
Your eyes.
The stars
Don’t diminish
When we wish
Upon them.

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56d

A forgotten young poet gives us a rare glimpse below stairs at the 1995 Pride and Prejudice’s Netherfield Hall

by Catherine Clarke

https://theconversation.com/a-forgotten-young-poet-gives-us-a-rare-glimpse-below-stairs-at-the-1995-pride-and-prejudices-netherfield-hall-287329

More information about Mary Leapor:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Leapor

#books #poetry #literaryCriticism

Title page, Poems Upon Several Occasions (1748) by Mary Leapor (1722-1746)

The title page of "Poems Upon Several Occasions" by Mrs. Leapor (Mary Leapor) of Brackley, Northamptonshire, printed in London by J. Roberts in 1748 (MDCCXLVIII), featuring an ornamental floral engraving between the author line and imprint.

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61d

An orange sunshade wheels about her head.
The sunshade shading sun is yet a sun
mimicked by colour, halo of the red
and mild attendant of the coloured bone…

—Iain Crichton Smith, “Girl with orange sunshade”
published in DEER ON THE HIGH HILLS (Carcanet, 2021)

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

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #IainCrichtonSmith #summer

Iain Crichton Smith
Girl with orange sunshade

An orange sunshade wheels about her head.
The sunshade shading sun is yet a sun
mimicked by colour, halo of the red
and mild attendant of the coloured bone.

Yet it is mimic as if the other sun
should not attack her, being saved by this
paper not passion which she learns to spin
as if herself were Fortune, pert-faced miss.

And this cool wheel about her ordered hair
is like the art we nourish in our rooms
on little water and a jar of air.
It holds us steady from the searing flames.
We mimic fire to shield us from the fire
and shade our heads with bright and paper poems.

Edited 61d ago

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14d

Nights and days of blinding rain, Atlantic lows
sweeping across the carse
trees and hills lost in thick noonday mist.

Now this raw light
and a hard Steppe wind pouring down Glen Tye
towards the late sun…

—Chris Powici, “The Wild Summer”
published in Talking About Lobsters: New Writing Scotland 34 (ASL, 2016)

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry

Chris Powici
The Wid Summer

i.m. Angus Dunn

Nights and days of blinding rain, Atlantic lows
sweeping across the carse
trees and hills lost in thick noonday mist.

Now this raw light
and a hard Steppe wind pouring down Glen Tye
towards the late sun.

A raven lifts from a fencepost
and gives itself to the cold, marvellous air
pitching and wheeling
as if there’s no tomorrow, as if there’s
only ever hunger, longing, flight – here, now

and this, as you know, is the real poem Angus –
a lone dark bird telling the truth about the world
telling it well –
not these words

though, given time, I’ll get them as right as I can
even if there’s no raven, just skeins of autumn greylag
flowing calmly south.

Even if it’s way too late by then.

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55d

She’s goat her legs oot –
her foldin plastic chair
oan the gress at Glesga Green –
an her airms an enough
creamy dimpled bosom
tae please Renoir…

—Sheila Templeton, “Glesga Fair”
published in Songs of Other Places: New Writing Scotland 32 (ASL, 2014)

The Glasgow Fair is a holiday dating back to the 12th century CE. Happy Fair Weekend to all the Glasgow Fairies!

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Scots #Scotslanguage #Glasgow #GlasgowFair

Glesga Fair
Sheila Templeton

She’s goat her legs oot –
her foldin plastic chair
oan the gress at Glesga Green –
an her airms an enough
creamy dimpled bosom
tae please Renoir;
bra straps oan show,
frock lirkit richt up
ower her knees
sittin lik a mannie
legs weel splayed as if
tae accommodate
magnificent baws –
but it’s no that.
It’s tae mak room
mak a space
for her belly,
lovely big roon
wumman’s belly
growthie in the sun.

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55d

jack an jill
went up thi hull
“tay huv a wee refreshmint”

guess whut

—published in Tom Leonard’s INTIMATE VOICES 1965–1983 (Galloping Dog Press, 1984)

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Scots #Scotslanguage #Glasgow #GlasgowFair #KeepTheHeid

jack an jill
went up thi hull
“tay huv a wee refreshmint”

guess whut

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61d

I'm only 8% into #Reading it, but already the book in the attached photo is on track to be only my second 5-star read at #TheStoryGraph for 2026. It's proving to be so much MORE than a I expected - not just a #poetry anthology, but a defence of #Urdu a primer on the language and its poetic culture. AND it has a name that make smile every time I say it:
The Hindavi word humsafar means "companion" (on a journey). In the last 20+ years I've sung it more often than I could count in the line "ना तो humsafar की तलाश है" - "I'm not looking for a humsafar".

It turns out, I was wrong. 😂
#bookstodon @bookstodon

cover of the book "Humsafar - The World of Urdu Poetry" by Hitesh Gupta Aadil

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61d

He had been for decades on her trail,
determining the drop-zones where she dived, her size and scale,
the encumbrance of her head, the length of tail…

—Donald S Murray, “How the Loch Ness Monster Stole My Husband”

Published in WITH THEIR BEST CLOTHES ON: New Writing Scotland 36 (ASL, 2018)

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #LochNessMonster

Donald S. Murray
How the Loch Ness Monster Stole My Husband

He had been for decades on her trail,
determining the drop-zones where she dived, her size and scale,
the encumbrance of her head, the length of tail,

and there were times he stepped into our bedroom
wearing her scent – a faint, unfathomable perfume –
and hummed the song he said was the mating tune

that must have drawn him one dark night
not far from Arbriachan when she swirled towards his side
and pulled him close against her – neat, spiralling and tight,

how she must have coiled against another of her kind
centuries before that. Oh, I know they’ll never find
him. It’ll be a case of out of sight, out of mind

in a different way from how my sister claims
I’m long out of mine. They’ll argue that he never came
home one night, our life on Millburn Road too tame

for him, that he preferred the thrash and thrust of another’s limbs,
a different kind of current, rhythm
than those murky depths I know he slipped within.

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67d

WayWORD Ekphrastic Poetry Prize
Deadline: 31 Aug 2026

The 2026 WayWORD Festival is asking writers across Scotland to respond to artworks featured in the University of Aberdeen’s Artworlds exhibition. Shortlisted poems will be read at a special event in October.

https://waywordfestival.com/ekphrastic-poetry-prize-2026/

#Scottih #literature #poet #poetry #art #visualart #ekphrasticpoems

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62d

With apologies to all the poetry lovers out there, but... 😂

@humor @humor@lemmy.world @aiop

#WritingMemes #Meme #Humor #Humour #Poetry
#Writers #Writing #WritingCommunity #WritersOfMastodon

Post by LilJonson

I have bad anxiety and one point I got prescribed Xanax. Without the anxiety, all of a sudden I felt like a different person. I was doing things I never did, like I started writing poetry. thats when I got off the meds because I'd rather have crippling anxiety than write poetry.

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32d

Sometimes in summertime a hangdog
weather man stands in front of shots

panning over Caribbean villas mangled
into matchwood, corpses of beached yachts,

palms ripped from sand…

—Andy Jackson, “The Naming of Hurricanes”
published in The Rooftop Busker: New Writing Scotland 33 (ASL, 2015)

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #hurricane #hurricanes

Andy Jackson
The Naming of Hurricanes

Sometimes in summertime a hangdog
weather man stands in front of shots

panning over Caribbean villas mangled
into matchwood, corpses of beached yachts,

palms ripped from sand. A time-lapsed arc
maps the march of this year’s cyclone,

wheeling to make its landfall, jerk
the world around it. Last year’s was Joan,

a hurricane with personality - in yer face,
busy, our eyes drawn to her in photographs

as she breezed in and out, visible from space,
leaving nothing standing in her path.

I wonder who compiles the list of names;
whose mother, daughter, lover, wife

brings to mind such desolation. The Janes
and Brendas all suggest ordinary life

might yet return once the summer storm
has blown itself into a half-remembered breeze.

Here, so far from paradise, the house is warm,
but colder winds are forecast from the east,

and suddenly the sky is full of clouds. A chill
simmers round my feet, and I think it’s best

we do not name this storm. Already it has filled
the room, blown your final letter off my desk.

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52d

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…

—Edwin Morgan, “A Home in Space”
from CENTENARY SELECTED POEMS (Carcanet, 2020)

#OTD, 20 July, 1969, Neil Armstrong & Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon

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

#Scottish #literature #MoonLanding #MoonLandingDay #poem #poetry #scifi #sciencefiction #scifipoem #spaceflight

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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52d

Is there a whim-inspired fool,
Owre fast for thought, owre hot for rule,
Owre blate to seek, owre proud to snool,
Let him draw near…

Robert Burns (1759–96) died #OTD, 21 July, aged 37. “A Bard’s Epitaph” is the final poem in the 1786 Kilmarnock Edition of Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect

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#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Scots #Scotslanguage #RobertBurns #18thcentury #romanticism

A Bard’s Epitaph
Robert Burns

Is there a whim-inspired fool,
Owre fast for thought, owre hot for rule,
Owre blate to seek, owre proud to snool,
Let him draw near;
And owre this grassy heap sing dool,
And drap a tear.

Is there a bard of rustic song,
Who, noteless, steals the crowds among,
That weekly this area throng,
O, pass not by!
But, with a frater-feeling strong,
Here, heave a sigh.

Is there a man, whose judgment clear
Can others teach the course to steer,
Yet runs, himself, life’s mad career,
Wild as the wave,
Here pause—and, thro’ the starting tear,
Survey this grave.

The poor inhabitant below
Was quick to learn the wise to know,
And keenly felt the friendly glow,
And softer flame;
But thoughtless follies laid him low,
And stain’d his name!

Reader, attend! whether thy soul
Soars fancy’s flights beyond the pole,
Or darkling grubs this earthly hole,
In low pursuit:
Know, prudent, cautious, self-control
Is wisdom’s root.

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51d

Scotland’s a sense of change, an endless
becoming for which there was never a kind
of wholeness or ultimate category.
Scotland’s an attitude of mind.

—“Speaking of Scotland” by Maurice Lindsay (1918–2009) – born #OTD, 21 July
Published in COLLECTED POEMS 1940–1990 (AUP 1990)

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#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #20thcentury #Scotland #ScottishIdentity

Speaking of Scotland
Maurice Lindsay

What do you mean when you speak of Scotland?
The grey defeats that are dead and gone
behind the legends each generation
savours afresh, yet can’t live on?

Lowland farms with their broad acres
peopling crops? The colder earth
of the North East? Or Highland mountains
shouldering up their rocky dearth?

Inheritance of guilt that our country
has never stood where we feel she should?
A nagging threat of unfinished struggle
somehow forever lost in the blood?

Scotland’s a sense of change, an endless
becoming for which there was never a kind
of wholeness or ultimate category.
Scotland’s an attitude of mind.

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50d

And we left our beds in the dark
And we drove a cart to the hill
And we buried the jar of ale in the bog
And our small blades glittered in the dayspring
And we tore dark squares, thick pages
From the Book of Fire…

—George Mackay Brown, “Peat Cutting”
published in Selected Poems: 1954–1992 (John Murray, 1996)

#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #Orkney #GeorgeMackayBrown #poem #poetry

George Mackay Brown
Peat Cutting

And we left our beds in the dark
And we drove a cart to the hill
And we buried the jar of ale in the bog
And our small blades glittered in the dayspring
And we tore dark squares, thick pages
From the Book of Fire
And we spread them wet on the heather
And horseflies, poisonous hooks,
Stuck in our arms
And we laid off our coats
And our blades sank deep into water
And the lord of the bog, the kestrel
Paced round the sun
And at noon we leaned on our tuskars
– The cold unburied jar
Touched, like a girl, a circle of burning mouths
And the boy found a wild bees’ comb
And his mouth was a sudden brightness
And the kestrel fell
And a lark flashed a needle across the west
And we spread a thousand peats
Between one summer star
And the black chaos of fire at the earth’s centre.

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