Eggplant.place

24d

“For me the political & the personal are not separate, & so I write that way because it’s how I honestly experience the world. Combining the two is a refusal to flatten either.”

—Hannah Lavery talks to SNACK Magazine about her latest poetry collection, EVERYTHING EVERYDAY: A Year of Empty Promises

https://snackmag.co.uk/interview-hannah-lavery-explores-grief-hope-and-everything-everyday-at-the-edinburgh-international-book-festival

#Scottish #literature #poetry

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38d

Oidhche nam Bàrd – Poetry in Art & Sound
10 September, Tramway, Glasgow. £20/£12

Sàbhail an ceann-là airson Oidhche nam Bàrd – Poetry in Art & Sound, comharrachadh nàiseanta air còrr agus 1000 bliadhna de bhàrdachd Ghàidhlig.

A landmark celebration of over 1000 years of Gaelic poetry.

https://www.tramway.org/event/92566702-3c0b-4861-b502-b44e01077967/

#Scottish #literature #Gaidhlig #Gaelic #poetry

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23d

NAMING THE SNAKES: New Writing Scotland 44
Glasgow launch
8 September, Waterstones Sauchiehall St, Glasgow – £5 / £12 with book

Celebrate the latest issue of NEW WRITING SCOTLAND with a mix of readings of poetry, short fiction & non-fiction in English, Gaelic & Scots – all welcome!

https://www.waterstones.com/events/new-writing-scotland-44-launch/glasgow-sauchiehall-street

#Scottish #literature #Gaidhlig #Gaelic #Scots #Scotslanguage #poetry #shortfiction #newwriting #booklaunch #Glasgow

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37d

It gets late early out here
in the lacklustre places,
wind in the trees and the foodstalls’
ricepaper lamplight, fading and blurred with rain…

—John Burnside, “Travelling South, Scotland, August 2012”
published in BLACK MIDDENS: New Writing Scotland 31 (ASL, 2013)

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #naturewriting #naturepoetry #JohnBurnside

John Burnside
Travelling South, Scotland, August 2012

“Necessity is not the mother of invention; play is”
—Ian D. Suttie

It gets late early out here
in the lacklustre places,
wind in the trees & the foodstalls’
ricepaper lamplight, fading & blurred with rain,
the wire fence studded with fleece
& indelible traces
of polythene wrapping; marrowfat clogging the drains
on the road that runs out to the coast
then disappears.
A last bleed of gold in the west, like a Shan Shui painting,
then darkness.

The animals are gone
that hunted here:
wolves coming down from the hills, that
immaculate hunger,
rumours of bear & cat, quick
martens & raptors.
The rain is darker now,
though not so black,
oil-iridescent, streaked with the smell of lard
– it gets late early out here; though late, out here,
has a different meaning:

stars in the road
& the absence of something more
than birchwoods or song,
pallet fires, tyre-tracks,
grubbed fields clouded with grease
& palm oil, hints
of molasses and lanolin, tarpaper,
iron filings.
A narrow band of weather on the road,
then houses; though we scarcely think of them
as that.

ALT

I remember a meadow at dusk
in another rain
(and this is nostalgia now); I remember
I stood in a wind like gossamer and watched
three roe fawns and a doe
come quietly, one by one, through the silvering grasses,
wary, but curious, giving me just enough space
to feel safe,
their watchfulness reminding me of something
lost, a creaturely
awareness I could only glimpse

in passing.
That meadow is gone, and dusk
isn’t dusk any more
– or not out here –
just miles of tract and lay-by on the way
to junkyards and dead allotments,
guard dogs on tether,
biomass, factory outlets,
the half-light of ersatz dairies petering out
on rotting fields
of rape and mustardseed.

We’ve been going at this for years:
a steady delete
of anything that tells us what we are,
a long
distaste for the blood warmth and bloom
of the creaturely: local
fauna and words for colour, all the shapes
of ritual and lust
surrendered where they fell, beneath a fog
of smut and grime and counting-house
as church, the old gods

ALT

buried undead beneath the rural sprawl
that bears their names, or wandering the hills
of Lammermuir and Whitelee, waiting out
the rule of Mammon, till the land returns
– with or without us –
chainlink going down
to bindweed, drunken
thistles in a sway
of wind and goldfinch on the dead estates, fat
clusters of moss
and gentian, broken

tarmac with new shoots
of coltsfoot breaking through
like velvet, till the darkness of the leaf
unfurls into a light we could have known
but failed to see
by choosing not to find
the kingdom-at-hand:
this order;
this dialectic;
this mother of invention,
ceaseless play.

ALT

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24d

Let us now give thanks
for these salt-blown

wind-burned pastures
where oatgrass and timothy
shrink from the harrow of the sea…

—John Glenday, “A Westray Prayer”
published in SELECTED POEMS (Picador 2020)

https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/john-glenday/selected-poems/9781529037715

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Westray #Orkney

John Glenday
A Westray Prayer

in memoriam Mike and Barbara Heasman

Let us now give thanks
for these salt-blown

wind-burned pastures
where oatgrass and timothy
shrink from the harrow of the sea

where Scotland at long last
wearies of muttering its own name
where we may begin

to believe we have always known
what someone in his wisdom
must have meant

when he gave us everything
and told us nothing.

ALT

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37d

Commonwealth of Nations Poet Laureate Selina Tusitala Marsh & Scotland’s Makar Peter Mackay in Conversation

Selina & Peter’s wide-ranging conversation begins with Selina reading her poem “Tusitala”, & a discussion of where her middle name comes from

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/podcast/selina-tusitala-marsh-commonwealth-poet-laureate-and-peter-mackay-scottish-makar-in-conversation/

#Scottish #literature #Aotearoa #NewZealand #poetry #podcast

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36d

Duin’ àrd, tana
’s fiasag bheag air,
’s locair ’na làimh…

—“Cisteachan-Laighe” (“Coffins”)
from Creachadh na Clarsaich / Plundering the Harp (Macdonald, 1982) by Ruaraidh MacThòmais (Derick Thomson, 1921–2012) – born #OTD, 5 Aug. A 🎂 🧵

1/7

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/cisteachan-laighe/

#Scottish #literature #Gaidhlig #Gaelic #poem #poetry #20thcentury

Cisteachan-Laighe
Ruaraidh MacThòmais

Duin’ àrd, tana
’s fiasag bheag air,
’s locair ’na làimh:
gach uair theid mi seachad
air bùth-shaoirsneachd sa’ bhaile,
’s a thig gu mo chuinnlean fàileadh na min-sàibh,
thig gu mo chuimhne cuimhne an àit ud,
le na cisteachan-laighe,
na h-ùird ’s na tairgean,
na saibh ’s na sgeilbean,
is mo sheanair crom,
is sliseag bho shliseag ga locradh
bhon bhòrd thana lom.

Mus robh fhios agam dè bh’ ann bàs;
beachd, bloigh fios, boillsgeadh
den dorchadas, fathann de’n t-sàmhchair.
’S nuair a sheas mi aig uaigh,
là fuar Earraich, cha dainig smuain
thugam air na cisteachan-laighe
a rinn esan do chàch:
’sann a bha mi ’g iarraidh dhachaigh,
far am biodh còmhradh, is tea, is blàths.

Is anns an sgoil eile cuideachd,
san robh saoir na h-inntinn a’ locradh,
cha tug mi ’n aire do na cisteachan-laighe,
ged a bha iad ’nan suidhe mun cuairt orm;
cha do dh’ aithnich mi ’m brèid Beurla,
an liomh Gallda bha dol air an fhiodh,
cha do leugh mi na facail air a’ phràis,
cha do thuig mi gu robh mo chinneadh a’ dol bàs.
Gus an dainig gaoth fhuar an Earraich-sa
a locradh a’ chridhe;
gus na dh’ fhairich mi na tairgean a’ dol tromham,
’s cha shlànaich tea no còmhradh an cràdh.

ALT

Coffins
Derick Thomson

A tall thin man
with a short beard,
and a plane in his hand:
whenever I pass
a joiner’s shop in the city,
and the scent of sawdust comes to my nostrils,
memories return of that place,
with the coffins,
the hammers and nails,
saws and chisels,
and my grandfather, bent,
planing shavings
from a thin, bare plank.

Before I knew what death was;
or had any notion, a glimmering
of the darkness, a whisper of the stillness.
And when I stood at his grave,
on a cold Spring day, not a thought
came to me of the coffins
he made for others:
I merely wanted home
where there would be talk, and tea, and warmth.

And in the other school also,
where the joiners of the mind were planing,
I never noticed the coffins,
though they were sitting all round me;
I did not recognise the English braid,
the Lowland varnish being applied to the wood,
I did not read the words on the brass,
I did not understand that my race was dying.
Until the cold wind of this Spring came
to plane the heart;
until I felt the nails piercing me,
and neither tea nor talk will heal the pain.

ALT

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36d

Each night she fills, from the fabled
well of disappointment, a kettle
for her hottie…

—Kathleen Jamie, “Mrs McKellar, Her Martyrdom”
from The Edinburgh Book of Twentieth-Century Scottish Poetry (Edinburgh University Press, 2005)

https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-the-edinburgh-book-of-twentieth-century-scottish-poetry.html

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #marriage #humour

Mrs McKellar, Her Martyrdom
Kathleen Jamie

Each night she fills, from the fabled
well of disappointment, a kettle
for her hottie. Lying
in his apportioned bed:
Mr McKellar – annulled
beside his trouser press.

Who mentions, who defers to whom
on matters concerning
redecorating the living room,
milk delivery, the damp
stain spreading on the ceiling

when a word is a kind of touch?
Speaking of which, and they don't,
the garden needs attention
and the bedroom window frames,
exquisitely, the darkening hills,
a sky teased with mauve.

But he won't notice, or smell her burning
fix it! fix it!
won't look up the number
of Roofer and Son about that
slightly bewildering stain,

and she'll keep schtum.
Medieval in a dressing gown,
she'd rather display
toward an indifferent world
the means of her agony:
a broken toilet seat,

or die, lips sealed, regarding
the rotting window sills, that
wobbling shelf, which she could
as it happens, repair herself,
but won't, on principle.

ALT

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22d

Edwin Morgan died #OnThisDay, 19 August, 2010. “Riddle”, the final poem of Morgan’s final collection, 𝘋𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘮𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘖𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘕𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵𝘮𝘢𝘳𝘦𝘴 (Mariscat, 2010), is a translation of one of the 10th-century Anglo-Saxon Exeter Book riddles, itself a translation of a Latin original by the poet Aldhelm (c639–709 CE)

#Scottish #literature #EdwinMorgan #poem #poetry #translation #riddle #AngloSaxon #medieval

Riddle
by Edwin Morgan

Up beyond the universe and back
Down to the tiniest chigger in the finger –
I outstrip the moon in brightness,
I outrun midsummer suns.
I embrace the seas and other waters,
I am fresh and green as the fields I form.
I walk under hell, I flow over the heavens.
I am the land, I am the ocean.
I claim this honour, I claim its worth.
I am what I claim. What is my name?

ALT

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22d

…fabulous film-noir stills of Central Station
of freezing fog silvering the chilled, stilled parks
of the glamorous past
where drops on a rainmate are sequins
in the lamplight, in the black-and-white…

—Liz Lochhead, “Some Old Photographs”

Today, 19 August, is World Photography Day

https://www.glasgowtimes.co.uk/resources/images/8209217/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #photography #WorldPhotographyDay

Some Old Photographs
Liz Lochhead

Weather evocative as scent

the romance of dark stormclouds
in big skies over the low wide river
of long shadows and longer shafts of light

of smoke
fabulous film-noir stills of Central Station
of freezing fog silvering the chilled, stilled parks
of the glamorous past
where drops on a rainmate are sequins
in the lamplight, in the black-and-white

your young, still-lovely mother laughs, the
hem of her sundress whipped up
by a wind on a beach
somewhere doon the watter
before you were even born

all the dads in hats
are making for Central at five past five
in the snow, in the rain, in the sudden what-a-scorcher,
in the smog, their
belted dark overcoats white-spattered by the starlings

starlings swarming
in that perfect and permanent cloud
above what was
never really this photograph
but always all the passing now
and noise and stink and smoky breath of George Square
wee boays, a duchess, bunting, there’s a
big launch on the Clyde
and that boat is yet to sail

ALT

Central Station, Glasgow 1960. © Newsquest (H&T) Glasgow Herald and Times. A black-and-white photo of the stairs leading to the concourse in Glasgow’s Central Station, 1960. Figures of men and women are silhouetted against the horizontal bars of the staircase. At the top, a crowd of people wait for trains. Advert hoardings for Capstan Cigarettes and Johnnie Walker whisky hang in the steamy, smoky air above the crowd.

ALT

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27d

heavy #poetry

Edited 27d ago

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19d

Tom Leonard
“Jist ti Let Yi No”
(from the American of Carlos Williams)

ahv drank
thi speshlz
that wurrin
thi frij

n thit
yiwurr probbli
hodn back
furthi pahrti

awright
they wur great
thaht stroang
thaht cawld

Audio on Penn Sound:

https://media.sas.upenn.edu/pennsound/authors/Leonard/Tom-Leonard_Jist-ti-Let-Yi-No.mp3

#Scottish #literature #language #Glasgow #Glaswegian #poem #poetry #TomLeonard #WilliamCarlosWilliams

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27d

I need to see the rewritten version of this poem 😂

@reading @bookstodon @books @humor @humor@lemmy.world @aiop @joinin

#ReadingMemes #Meme #Poetry #Humor #Humour #Funny #Geek
#Reading #Readers #ReadingCommunity #AmReading
#Novel #Books #Fiction #Bookstodon

A drawn picture of Edgar Allen Poe and his Raven.
Caption: The Passive Agressive Raven
Speech bubble from the Raven saying, 'Nevermind.'

ALT

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19d

efturryd geenuz iz speel
iboot whut wuz right
nwhut wuz rang
boot this nthat
nthi nix thing
a sayzti the bloke
nwhut izzit yi caw
yir joab jimmy…

—Tom Leonard, “liason coordinator”
from GHOSTIE MEN (Galloping Dog Press, 1980)

Tom Leonard (1944–2018) was born #OTD, 22 August

https://www.tomleonard.co.uk/online-poetry-and-prose/liasoncoordinator.html

#Scottish #literature #language #Glasgow #Glaswegian #poem #poetry #TomLeonard

efturryd geenuz iz speel
iboot whut wuz right
nwhut wuz rang
boot this nthat
nthi nix thing

a sayzti the bloke
nwhut izzit yi caw
yir joab jimmy

am a liason co-ordinator
hi sayz oh good ah sayz
a liason co-ordinator

jist whut this erria needs
whut way aw thi unimploymint
inaw thi bevvyin
nthi boayz runnin amock
nthi hoossyz fawnty bits
nthi wummin n tranquilisers
it last thiv sent uz
a liason co-ordinator

sumdy wia digree
in fuck knows whut
get peyd fur no known
whut thi fuck ti day way it

ALT

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19d

this is thi
six a clock
news thi
man said n
thi reason
a talk wia
BBC accent
iz coz yi
widny wahnt
mi ti talk
aboot thi
trooth wia
voice lik
wanna yoo
scruff. if
a toktaboot
thi trooth
lik wanna yoo
scruff yi
widny thingk
it wuz troo.
jist wanna yoo
scruff tokn…

—Tom Leonard, “The Six O’Clock News”

#Scottish #literature #language #Glasgow #Glaswegian #poem #poetry #TomLeonard

The Six O’Clock News
Tom Leonard

this is thi
six a clock
news thi
man said n
thi reason
a talk wia
BBC accent
iz coz yi
widny wahnt
mi ti talk
aboot thi
trooth wia
voice lik
wanna yoo
scruff. if
a toktaboot
thi trooth
lik wanna yoo
scruff yi
widny thingk
it wuz troo.
jist wanna yoo
scruff tokn.
thirza right
way ti spell
ana right way
to tok it. this
is me tokn yir
right way a
spellin. this
is ma trooth.
yooz doant no
thi trooth
yirsellz cawz
yi canny talk
right. this is
the six a clock
nyooz. belt up.

ALT

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19d

And their judges spoke with one dialect,
but the condemned spoke with many voices.

And the prisons were full of many voices,
but never the dialect of the judges.

And the judges said:
“No-one is above the Law.”

—Tom Leonard, “And the judges said”
from Situations Theoretical & Contemporary (1986)

#Scottish #literature #language #poem #poetry #TomLeonard

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19d

I like seeing nurse frieda knitting
as I like watching my wife knitting
as I liked watching my mother knitting
though she was more of a dabber
(plain and purl, plain and purl)…

—Tom Leonard, “in hospital”
published in access to the silence: poems and posters 1984–2000 (etruscan, 2004)

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

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #TomLeonard

in hospital
Tom Leonard

I like seeing nurse frieda knitting
as I like watching my wife knitting
as I liked watching my mother knitting
though she was more of a dabber
(plain and purl, plain and purl)

it’s not
“women being in their place”
or knitting the chains that keep them down

just

the future, knitting the future
the present peaceful, quiet
as if

the same woman knitting
for a thousand years

ALT

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19d

yi mist yirsell so yi did
we aw skiptwirr ferz njumptaffit thi lights
YIZIR AW PINE THEY FERZ THIMORRA
o it wizza scream
thaht big shite wiz dayniz nut…

—Tom Leonard, “A Scream”
from Six Glasgow Poems (1967)

https://www.tomleonard.co.uk/online-poetry-and-prose.html

#Scottish #literature #language #Glasgow #Glaswegian #poem #poetry #TomLeonard

A Scream
Tom Leonard

yi mist yirsell so yi did
we aw skiptwirr ferz njumptaffit thi lights
YIZIR AW PINE THEY FERZ THIMORRA
o it wizza scream
thaht big shite wiz dayniz nut

tellnyi jean
we wirraw shoutn backit im
rrose shoutit shi widny puhllit furra penshin
o yi shooda seeniz face
hi didny no wherrty look

thing iz tay
thirz nay skool thimorra
thi daft kunt wullny even getiz bluddy ferz

ALT

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19d

right inuff
ma language is disgraceful
ma maw tellt mi
ma teacher tellt mi
thi doactir tellt mi
thi priest tellt mi…

—Tom Leonard, “right inuff”
published in GHOSTIE MEN (Galloping Dog Press, 1980)

#Scottish #literature #language #Glasgow #Glaswegian #poem #poetry #TomLeonard

“right enuff”
by Tom Leonard

right inuff
ma language is disgraceful
ma maw tellt mi
ma teacher tellt mi
thi doactir tellt mi
thi priest tellt mi

ma boss tellt mi
ma landlady in carrington street tellt mi
thi lassie ah tried tay get aff way in 1969 tellt mi
sum wee smout thit thoat ah hudny read chomsky tellt mi
a calvinist communist thit thoat ah wuz revisionist tellt mi
po-faced literati grimly kerryin thi burden a thi past tellt mi
po-faced literati grimly kerryin thi burden a thi future tellt mi
ma wife tellt mi jist-tay-get-inty-this-poem tellt mi
ma wainz came hame fray school an tellt mi
jist aboot ivry book ah oapnd tellt mi
even thi introduction tay thi Scottish National Dictionary tellt mi

ach well
all livin language is sacred
fuck the lohta thim.

ALT

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18d

I visit the places
It hurts,
But no longer feel
Obligated to stay.

#poetry

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17d

From the calm and stillness of a Scottish morning,
as life becomes uncertain and strange
we send you a waking breath…

—“Our Waking Breath: A Poem-letter from Scotland to Ukraine”, curated by Kathleen Jamie in 2022

Today, 24 August, is the Independence Day of Ukraine
🇺🇦🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StrAumuwZj8

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Ukraine #IndependenceDayofUkraine

watch?v=StrAumuwZj8

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17d

Rated Tongues Untied 10/10

Edited 17d ago

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16d

Grief is
The most
Honest love
Letter we could
Ever write.

#poetry

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16d

Oidhche nam Bàrd – Poetry in Art & Sound
10 September, Tramway, Glasgow – £20/£12

A landmark celebration of over 1000 years of Gaelic poetry, weaving together Gaelic voices of the past & the words of our greatest living poets, presented through live performance, music, & visual projection. Welcoming Gaelic speakers & non-Gaelic speakers alike, all poems read will be accompanied by on-screen English translations.

https://www.glasgowlife.org.uk/event/1/oidhche-nam-brd-poetry-in-art-and-sound

#Scottish #literature #Gaidhlig #Gaelic #poetry #Glasgow

oidhche-nam-brd-poetry-in-art-and-sound

Edited 16d ago

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15d

Call for Applications: Crossing Tongues Poetry Residency

Edinburgh UNESCO City of Literature invites a Scottish poet writing in English, Scots &/or Scottish Gaelic to undertake a 7-day residency in Nigeria, alongside the Hausa International Book & Arts Festival, December 2026

Applications open until 30 September

https://cityofliterature.com/opportunities/call-for-applications-crossing-tongues-poetry-residency/

#Scottish #literature #poetry #Nigeria #Scots #Scotslanguage #Gaidhlig #Gaelic #residency

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