poetry

155d

There is one week to go till my new poetry collection "Dracula in the Colonies" is launched! You and your favourite friends (or even your random acquaintances) are warmly invited to the launch at Unity Books Wellington on Wednesday 1 October, starting 6pm.

Full details including a couple of lovely book endorsements: https://www.timjonesbooks.co.nz/blog/
Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/1159319136008748/

#Books #Poetry #Bookstodon @bookstodon #Aotearoa

Front cover of Tim Jones' new poetry collection "Dracula in the Colonies", showing a map of Aotearoa / New Zealand in a 19th-century style against a yellow background with the title of the collection and author name in red.

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

154d

Today's POTD ©️ me

MESSIAH

So Jesus
ministered to
the dregs of society.
In His name a religion
was raised.
Messiahs

have
been seen
and are awaited by
Christian Jewish and
Arab believers.
Millions

upon
millions of
them. Irony: The
Messiah will
go

unrecognized.

cuz

the Messiah
will be dirty, poor,
bedraggled, sometimes
even bloodied. That's

just

how it is,
ministering
at the edges to

dregs

#literature #poetry #religion

Edited 153d ago

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

149d

Faar’s Baabie Jeanie’s loon? The aal wife hersel
Stans treeshin hame the milkers at the ley park yett…

—“War: 1939–1945”, by Flora Garry (1900–2000) – born #OTD, 30 September
Published in FROM THE LINE: Scottish War Poetry 1914–1945

1/2

https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/volumes/from_the_line/

#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #poem #poetry #Scots #Scotslanguage #warpoetry #WW2

Flora Garry
War: 1939–1945

‘Faar’s Baabie Jeanie’s loon? The aal wife hersel
Stans treeshin hame the milkers at the ley park yett.
Faa caas the mornin cairt an fordals neeps an strae,
Wi waages up an risin an fee’d folk sae ull to get?
Baabie Jeanie’s Jockie, faar’s he?

An yon swack hashin chiel in Willum Sinclair’s shop?
He heeld ye oot o langour, sae joco an kin’ly wi’t.
‘Noo, lassie’ to the grunnies: ‘Weel, dearie’ to the quines,
He’s a want ahin the coonter, Willum’s sic a strunge breet.
I miss a news wi yon lad. Faar’s he?

An Droggie’s clivver dother? She could mak her fadder’s peels.
Nae hoven wyme or clocher, nae beelin, hack or strain
Bit she could ease; an fin royt nackets tummelt greetin at their play
She’d rowe up their bleedit sair bits, sen them duncin furth again.
The bairns likit Chrissie. Faar’s she?

An Cyaarnadellie’s foreman? I’ the clear Spring nichts
He trystit wi the banker’s deemie up at the market place.
Noo, she’s skycin roun the gable-eyn, her leen, i the early gloam,
Wi a muckle cwyte aboot her an a graavit ower her face.
Cyaarnadellie’s foreman, faar’s he?’

‘Speir at the waarslin tides, the desert saans, the caal starlicht.
They ken far.’

treeshin: calling; enticing
yett: gate
fordals: stores
swack: agile
hashin: hustling
heeld ye: held you
languor: boredom
joco: jovial
quines: young girls
strunge breet: surly chap
droggie: the chemist
peels: pills
hoven wyme: swollen stomach
clocher: cough
beelin: festering sore
royt nackets: boisterous children
trystit: met regularly, 'dated'
deemie: maid, general servant
skycin: scurrying
her leen: alone
cwyte: coat
graavit: scarf
speir: enquire

1 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

148d

@bookstodon
#bookstodon #poetry

•••
them who cried
in their bedroom
while the red riding wolf
putting on
their guise

looking in the mirror

"why-oh-why" — writing
into the sea of salt
of blogs

crying wolf sculpting
a collage muzzle of self
orphant annie of sorts
from the old comic strip
but then
stripping down
the quilt identity:
who is it
in the mirror
abused kid a carnivorous
shadow. and time
don't heal

if you wondered

but in the land of milk, honey
and perpetual war them taking again
a ritual horn
in their hands

closing eyes shut and blow —

the frame freezes
leaving the audience
just a promise

a subtle invitation

0 0 1 View Post & Replies See Original

148d

Today, 30 September, is International Translation Day – read THE BOTTLE IMP: Scottish literature & translation issue free online:

🇩🇪 SUNSET SONG in the GDR
🇮🇹 THE BLACK ARROW on Italian TV
🏆 Scotland’s Nobel-nominated Esperanto poet
🇫🇷 Franco-Scots poetry & postcolonialism
🏗️ Transcreating concrete poetry

https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2019/12/bad-harsk-speech-and-lewit-barbar-tung/

#Scottish #literature #InternationalTranslationDay #translation #SunsetSong #GDR #Italian #Esperanto #French #postcolonial #poetry #concretepoetry

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

148d

“The use of Scots, apart from the relative ease of working up the right atmosphere, also helps (though dangerously) because of the verbal freedom it confers on a harassed translator”

—Edwin Morgan on translating Mayakovsky into Scots

1/3

https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/volumes/edwin-morgan-in-touch-with-language/

#Scottish #literature #poetry #translation #InternationalTranslationDay #Scots #Scotslanguage #Russian #EdwinMorgan #Mayakovsky

1 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

131d

My father passed with his penny letters
Through closes opening and shutting like legends
When barbarous with gulls
Hamnavoe’s morning broke…

—“Hamnavoe”, by George Mackay Brown (1921–1996) – born #OTD, 17 Oct

“I have never seen his poetry sufficiently praised.”
—Seamus Heaney

A 🎂 🧵

You can listen to George Mackay Brown read his poem “Hamnavoe” online via the Poetry Archive

1/7

https://poetryarchive.org/poem/hamnavoe/

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

Hamnavoe
George Mackay Brown

My father passed with his penny letters
Through closes opening and shutting like legends
When barbarous with gulls
Hamnavoe's morning broke

On the salt and tar steps. Herring boats,
Puffing red sails, the tillers
Of cold horizons, leaned
Down the gull-gaunt tide

And threw dark nets on sudden silver harvests.
A stallion at the sweet fountain
Dredged water, and touched
Fire from steel-kissed cobbles.

Hard on noon four bearded merchants
Past the pipe-spitting pier-head strolled,
Holy with greed, chanting
Their slow grave jargon.

A tinker keened like a tartan gull
At cuithe-hung doors. A crofter lass
Trudged through the lavish dung
In a dream of corn-stalks and milk.

In the Arctic Whaler three blue elbows fell,
Regular as waves, from beards spumy with porter,
Till the amber day ebbed out
To its black dregs.

The boats drove furrows homeward, like ploughmen
In blizzards of gulls. Gaelic fisher girls
Flashed knife and dirge
Over drifts of herring,

And boys with penny wands lured gleams
From the tangled veins of the flood. Houses went blind
Up one steep close, for a
Grief by the shrouded nets.

The kirk, in a gale of psalms, went heaving through
A tumult of roofs, freighted for heaven.
And lovers Unblessed by steeples lay under
The buttered bannock of the moon.

He quenched his lantern, leaving the last door.
Because of his gay poverty that kept
My seapink innocence
From the worm and black wind;

And because, under equality's sun,
All things wear now to a common soiling,
In the fire of images
Gladly I put my hand
To save that day for him.

Edited 131d ago

1 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

1y

English essayist, poet, playwright Joseph Addison was born #OTD in 1672.

In 1711, he co-founded "The Spectator" with Steele. Unlike their earlier venture, "The Tatler," which Steele had begun in 1709, "The Spectator" was more focused and systematic. His plays, such as "Cato, a Tragedy" (1713), also left a mark on English literature, influencing figures such as Voltaire and George Washington.

Books by Joseph Addison at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/1024

#books #literature #poetry #theatre

Portrait of Joseph Addison with flowing long hair, gazing into the distance.

Cover of The Tatler, Volume 2 by Sir Richard Steele and Joseph Addison.

Edited with Introduction & Notes
by George A. Aitken
Author of
"The Life of Richard Steele," &c.

Vol. II

New York
Hadley & Mathews
156 Fifth Avenue
London: Duckworth & Co.
1899

1 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

131d

“I remember being excited by its ingenious allegory, allusions to nuclear holocaust behind something timeless, almost heraldic. I was drawn, surely, to the unusual combination of spiritual reach and humour, as well as recognising the poet’s extraordinary gift for characterisation in miniature.”

—John Greening on discovering George Mackay Brown

https://wildcourt.co.uk/discovering-george-mackay-brown/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Orkney

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

147d

For want o luve we live on hate,
For want o Heven praise the State,
For want o richts we worship rules,
For want o gods the glibbest fules…

—Sydney Goodsir Smith, “Prolegomenon: The Deevil’s Waltz”
published in A KIST O SKINKLAN THINGS: an anthology of Scots poetry
from the first & second waves
of the Scottish Renaissance (ASL, 2017)

Happy #Scotstober!

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

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

Sydney Goodsir Smith
Prolegomenon
The Deevil’s Waltz

Rin an rout, rin an rout,
Mahoun gars us birl about,
He skirls his pipes, he stamps his heel
The globe’s gane gyte in a haliket reel.

There, the statesman’s silken cheats,
Here, the bairnless mither greits,
There, a tyrant turns the screw,
Here, twa luvers’ broken vows.

Enemies out, enemies in,
Truth a hure wi the pox gane blinn,
Nou luvers’ lips deny luve’s name
An get for breid a chuckie-stane,

We kenna hert, we kenna heid,
The deevil’s thirled baith quick an deid,
Jehovah snores, and Christ himsel
Lowps in the airms o Jezebel.

The sweit that rins frae his thorned brou
Is black as the staunan teats o his cou
In the waltz o tears, an daith, an lies,
Juliet’s fyled wi harlotries.

O luve itsel at Hornie’s lauch
Skeers lik a caunel i the draucht,
The dance is on, the waltz o hell,
The wund frae its fleean skirts is snell.

It whups black storm frae lochan’s calm,
Sets banshees in the house o dwaum,
Gars black bluid spate the hert o me
—An watters guid-sirs’ barley bree!

A few damned feckless fanatics
Wad halt the borneheid dance o Styx,
Their cry o truth the whirlwind reaps,
For pity’s deid, and mercy sleeps.

Orpheus alane dow sauve frae deid
His ravished Bride gin but she’d heed—
Ay, truth an luve like Albyn’s life
Hing wi a threid, kissed be a knife.

Ilk derkenin owre some huddered toun
The pipes an fiddles screich an boom,
The cauldron’s steered by Maestro Nick
Wi a sanct’s shin-bane for parritch-stick.

He lauchs his lauch, the angels greit
Wi joy as they dine on carrion meat;
Ablow, bumbazed, dumfounered cods,
We seek the starns in dubs an bogs.

Oor ingyne’s deaved, oor mous are shut,
Oor saul contract like a runkled nut,
Een cannae see the trees for the wuid
An hert is cauld for want o bluid.

For want o luve we live on hate,
For want o Heven praise the State,
For want o richts we worship rules,
For want o gods the glibbest fules.

Obey, Obey; ye maunna spier!
(Libertie’s disjaskit lear!)
While Cloutie pipes it’s crime tae think,
—It’s taxed e’en higher nor the drink!

O, rin an rout, we birl about,
Tae the rhythm o the Deil’s jack-boot,
Black as auld widdie-fruit, Mahoun
Bestrides a kenless mappamound.

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

145d

Concrete Scottish Connections: Finlay, Jandl, Gomringer, & Satie
22 Oct, Edinburgh – free

Ian Hamilton Finlay, Ernst Jandl, & Eugen Gomringer – all born in 1925 – helped shape concrete poetry, breaking linguistic barriers & reimagining the power of words

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/concrete-scottish-connections-finlay-jandl-gomringer-and-satie-tickets-1743611311369

#Scottish #literature #German #poetry #concretepoetry

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

131d

Robert Fergusson (1750–1774) died #OTD, 17 Oct, aged just 24. Notable for his poetry in both Scots & English, his works include “Auld Reikie”, “The Daft Days”, & “Hallow Fair”. His legacies are broad, from the literary & cultural to the medical.

1/5

https://robert-fergusson.glasgow.ac.uk

#Scottish #literature #poetry #18thcentury #RobertFergusson #Scots #Scotslanguage

A head and shoulders portrait in oils of Robert Fergusson by Alexander Runciman (1736–1785). Runciman has painted his friend, a young poet, lost in creative thought. His exaggerated features – huge eyes, full lips – suggest brilliance and intensity.

Edited 131d ago

1 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

1y

English novelist and poet Charlotte Smith was born #OTD in 1749.

Smith's first significant literary success came with the publication of "Elegiac Sonnets" in 1784. In addition to her poetry, Smith wrote several novels: her first novel, "Emmeline, or The Orphan of the Castle" (1788), was followed by others such as "Ethelinde" (1789), "The Old Manor House" (1793), and "Desmond" (1792).

Books by Charlotte Smith at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/41281

#books #literature #poetry

Portrait of Charlotte Smith by George Romney.

Portrait of Charlotte Smith wearing a large, frilly bonnet, depicted with soft facial features and looking slightly to her right. The artwork uses a mix of fine detail in the face and looser strokes in the hat and background, with predominantly neutral and earthy tones.

The Young Philosopher was Smith's last novel and a piece of "outspoken radical fiction".

Charlotte Turner Smith - Eighteenth Century Collections Online
Smith, Charlotte Turner. The young philosopher. Vol. 1. London: Printed for T. Cadell, Jr. and W. Davies, 1798.

Title page of the book "The Young Philosopher: A Novel" in four volumes by Charlotte Smith, featuring an excerpt of poetry, indicating it was printed in London by T. Cadell Jun. and W. Davies in the Strand, 1798.

1 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

147d

Today, 2 October, is National Poetry Day in the UK. The theme is “play”.

“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 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)

https://poetrysociety.org.uk/projects/national-poetry-day/2025-play/

#Scottish #literature #nationalpoetryday #play #poem #poetry

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 and the foodstalls’
ricepaper lamplight, fading and blurred with rain,
the wire fence studded with fleece
and 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 and cat, quick
martens and 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
and the absence of something more
than birchwoods or song,
pallet fires, tyre-tracks,
grubbed fields clouded with grease
and 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.

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

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.

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

146d

Tha i mar bharaille de sgadan saillte:
chan eil agad ach do chròg
a stobadh ann, agus dòrlach a thoirt a-mach,
reamhar is tiugh leis a’ bhuntàta…

—Aonghas Phàdraig Caimbeul, “Bàrdachd”

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

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Gaelic #Gaidhlig #NationalPoetryDay

Bàrdachd
Aonghas Phàdraig Caimbeul

Tha i mar bharaille de sgadan saillte:
chan eil agad ach do chròg
a stobadh ann, agus dòrlach a thoirt a-mach,
reamhar is tiugh leis a’ bhuntàta.

Stob
an t-ìm na mheasg
agus tha cuirm agad: Eliot is Donnachadh Bàn,
le do làmhan rùisgte. Seachain
forca is sgian: fàg sin aig na sgoilearan.

Nuair a thig thu gu bonn a’ bharaille
sgròb na craicinn ri chèile,
dean ràth chnàimhean,
lìon lannan
‘s tilg sin thairis
dìreach mu àm reothairt.

Ma ghlacas tu adag,
thoir leat i: nuair tha an sgadan
gann, nì easgann fraighte fhèin a’ chùis
san acras.

Poetry
Translator: Angus Peter Campbell

It’s like a barrel of salt herring:
you only have to stick your paw
in, and lift a handful out,
thick and juicy with the tatties.

Pile
the butter in the middle
and you have a feast: Eliot and Duncan Bàn,
eaten with your bare fingers. Don’t use
a knife and fork: leave that to the scholars.

When you reach the bottom of the barrel
scrape the skins together,
make a raft of bones,
a net of fine filament,
and fling it over the side
just after the spring tide.

If you catch a common haddock,
take it anyway: in the absence
of a fat herring even eels
taste fine when deep-fried.

1 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

146d

Something near to true
night-darkness. The children
are playing the Plinky-Boat –
a xylophone made
from a reclaimed yoal –
built for flexibility in a coarse
sea…

—Jen Hadfield, “The Plinky-Boat”
published in BYSSUS (Picador, 2014)

https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/jen-hadfield/byssus/9781447241102

#Scottish #literature #Shetland #NationalPoetryDay #poem #poetry #play

The Plinky-Boat
Jen Hadfield

‘the present is a fine line […] a puff of air would destroy it’
—Gaspar Galaz, ‘Nostalgia de la Luz’

Something near to true
night-darkness. The children
are playing the Plinky-Boat –
a xylophone made
from a reclaimed yoal –
built for flexibility in a coarse
sea, you can tell it fledged
with ease, just blushed
from boat to instrument,
transpiring streams
of these hoarse night-
notes. For its copper pipes
are cut to breadth exactly
so the boat’s beam is
its sotto voce and two rills
of rising pitch run
into stern and stem to
the harmonic of each
hinnyspot – the point
the boards of gunwales
and stem flow together.
I don’t know what it is
about this place that things
metaflower so readily
into their present selves.

The instrument’s a boat,
the notes unresonant
and discs of thin light
swarm over the pipes
from the boys’ headtorches.
Perhaps we heard seals
broaching in the harbour
as they answered the girls’
handclapping game –
I doubt they moaned
in their haunted wise –
here was everything –
words lost, as I’m trying
to say, their echo, that
yodel into past and future.
The poem wouldn’t exist,
but we couldn’t stay.

1 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

1y

English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright John Dryden died #OTD in 1700.

Dryden was one of the most influential literary figures of his time and is often referred to as the "Father of English Criticism." As a poet, Dryden's works ranged from satires and political verse to heroic couplets and translations. He was also a prolific playwright, producing numerous comedies, tragedies, and heroic dramas.

Books by John Dryden at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/807

#books #literature #poetry

Description John Dryden (9 August 1631 – 12 May 1700) was an influential English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who dominated the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the period came to be known in literary circles as the Age of Dryden. Dryden was born in the village rectory of Aldwincle near Thrapston in Northamptonshire, where his maternal grandfather was Rector of All Saints. He was the eldest of fourteen children born to Erasmus Dryden and wife Mary Pickering, paternal grandson of Sir Erasmus Dryden, 1st Baronet (1553-1632) and wife Frances Wilkes, Puritan landowning gentry who supported the Puritan cause and Parliament. He was also a second cousin once removed of Jonathan Swift.

The title page of The Hind and the Panther
John Dryden - https://archive.org/details/hindandpanther00dryduoft

2 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

130d

Wanting to go,
all the leaves want to go
though they have achieved
their kingly robes.

Weary of colours,
they think of black earth,
they think of
white snow…

—Norman MacCaig, “Autumn”
published in The Poems of Norman MacCaig (Birlinn, 2009)

https://birlinn.co.uk/2022/10/21/poem-of-the-week-autumn-by-norman-maccaig/

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

Autumn
Norman MacCaig

Wanting to go,
all the leaves want to go
though they have achieved
their kingly robes.

Weary of colours,
they think of black earth,
they think of
white snow.

Stealthily, delicately
as a safebreaker
they unlock themselves
from branches.

And from their royal towers
they sift silently down
to become part of
the proletariat of mud.

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

130d

Autumn, and the nights are darkening.
The old lady tells us of her past once more.
She muses on the days she spent nursing

at ten shillings a month…

—Iain Crichton Smith, “The Old Lady”
published in NEW COLLECTED POEMS (Carcanet, 2011)

https://www.carcanet.co.uk/9781857549607/new-collected-poems/

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

The Old Lady
Iain Crichton Smith

Autumn, and the nights are darkening.
The old lady tells us of her past once more.
She muses on the days she spent nursing

at ten shillings a month. ‘And what exams!
I could understand anything in those days.
What summers we had then, what lovely autumns.’

And so I imagine her cycling to her work
among the golden leaves, down avenues,
to hospitals which were disciplined and stark

with hard-faced matrons, doctors jovial
with an authority that was never quizzed,
while grizzled Death suckled at his phial,

and autumn glowed and died, outside the ward,
and girlishly she saw it fade in red
in sky and sheet, and evening was barred
with strange sweet clouds that hung above the bed.

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

130d

“A man’s a man for a’ that” – how does he know?
Traipsing with his plough, the rural hero,
Swaggering down the lea-rigs, talking to mice…

—“James Macfarlan”, by Edwin Morgan
published in VIRTUAL & OTHER REALITIES (Carcanet, 1997)

https://www.carcanet.co.uk/9781857543476/virtual-and-other-realities/

#Scottish #literature #Scotstober #poem #poetry

James Macfarlan
by Edwin Morgan

“A man’s a man for a’ that” – how does he know?
Traipsing with his plough, the rural hero,
Swaggering down the lea-rigs, talking to mice,
Sweating his sickly verses to entice
Lassies he’d never see again, strutting
Through the salons in his best breeches, rutting
In a cloud of claret, buttonholing
Lord This, sweet-talking Doctor That, bowling
His wit down levees, bosoms, siller quaichs –
D’ye think he’s ever heard the groans and skraighs
Of city gutters, or marked the shapes that wrap
Fog and smoke about them as if they could hap
Homelessness or keep hunger at bay? What,
Not heard or seen, but has he even thought
How some, and many, and more than many, survive,
Or don’t survive, on factory floors, or thrive
Or fail to thrive by foundry fires, or try
To find the words – sparks scatter and bolts fly –
That’s feeble – to show the new age its dark face?
The Carron Ironworks – how he laughed at the place,
Made a joke of our misery, passed on
To window-scratch his diamond-trivia, and swan
Through country-house and customs-post, servile
To the very gods from which he ought to resile!
“Liberty’s a glorious feast,” you said.
Is that right? Wouldn’t the poor rather have bread?
Burns man, I’m hard on you, I’m sorry for it.
I think such poetry is dangerous, that’s all.
Poetry must pierce the filthy wall
With cries that die on country ways. The glow
Of bonhomie will not let the future grow.

1 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

143d

Teacher, scholar,
he had worked a true task when all alive…

—Iain Crichton Smith, “For Angus MacLeod”
Published in New Collected Poems (Carcanet, 2011)

Today, 5 October, is World Teachers Day. In this poem Iain Crichton Smith, himself a teacher, celebrates the life of a former Headmaster of Oban High School

1/4

https://www.unesco.org/en/days/teachers

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #WorldTeachersDay #teaching #teachers #education #school #schools

Iain Crichton Smith
For Angus MacLeod
Headmaster, and Editor of Gaelic Poems

Today they laid him in the earth’s cold colour,
a man from Lewis with his seventy-five
years struck from his head. Teacher, scholar,
he had worked a true task when all alive,

building a school, elucidating texts.
The Gaelic shone quite clearly in his bones.
A casket filled with ashes had been mixed
with filtered sunlight and the small stones.

A useful life with pupils and with poems:
sufficient honours (his humour asked no more)
he takes his place in many minds and rooms.
Without their knowing it, his patient care

instructs far hands to turn a new lever,
a voice to speak in a mild-mannered tone.
The deeds we do reverberate forever.
Inveterate justice weighs the flesh and bone.

His best editions are some men and women
who scrutinise each action like a word.
The truest work is learning to be human
definitive texts the poorest can afford.

1 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

142d

Love is all you need: Remembering The Kingis Quair

Alan Riach discusses The Kingis Quair – a poem attributed to King James I of Scots (1394–1437), & described by C.S. Lewis as “the first modern book of love”

https://www.thenational.scot/news/17372009.love-is-all-you-need-remembering-the-kings-quair/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #lovepoetry #medieval #Scots #Scotslanguage #15thcentury #Scotstober

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

141d

Well Versed Author Event: Imtiaz Dharker
15 Oct, online – free

A poetry reading & audience Q&A with Imtiaz Dharker, part of Open Book’s Well Versed series in partnership with StAnza International Poetry Festival

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/well-versed-author-event-imtiaz-dharker-tickets-1729406705009

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

142d

BANNED BOOKS WEEK
5–11 October 2025

Tom Leonard’s 1984 poetry collection INTIMATE VOICES was banned in Scotland’s Central Region school libraries. The Education Committee said

“There are some harmful words in it … Sometimes the naked truth has to be clothed”

But Leonard had anticipated this sort of reaction…

1/3

#Scottish #literature #BannedBooksWeek #censorship #poem #poetry #TomLeonard

A pale green book cover. In the middle is a white rectangle. A large red stamp displays the book title: TOM LEONARD: INTIMATE VOICES: 1965–1983. Above the stamp is a poem, set as if typed on a typewriter:

in the beginning was the word
in thi beginning was thi wurd
in thi beginnin was thi wurd
in thi biginnin was thi wurd
n thi biginnin wuz thi wurd
nthi biginnin wuz thi wurd
nthi biginnin wuzthi wurd
nthibiginnin wuzthiwurd
nthibiginninwuzthiwurd
in the beginning was the sound

1 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

1y

English writer of children's stories Juliana Horatia Ewing died #OTD in 1885.

Ewing's writing career began in the late 1860s, and she quickly gained recognition for her charming and insightful stories that often featured children and their adventures. Some of Ewing's most popular works include "Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances" (1869), "Six to Sixteen: A Story for Girls" (1875), and "Jackanapes" (1884).

Books by Juliana Horatia Ewing at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/1803

#books #literature #poetry

Juliana Horatia Ewing

Portrait of a woman sitting sideways, with her hair in a bun at the back of her head, wearing a black dress with lace on the sleeves and on her sill, with a pendant around her neck and apparently writing something in her notebook.

Illustration: THREE LITTLE NEST BIRDS.

Title: Verses for Children, and Songs for Music

Author: Juliana Horatia Ewing

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

Previous Page Next Page