Eggplant.place

78d

In to thir dirk and drublie dayis,
Quhone sabill all the hewin arrayis
With mystie vapouris, cluddis and skyis,
Nature all curage me denyis
Off sangis, ballattis, and of playis…

—William Dunbar (c.1459–1530), “Meditatioun in Wyntir”

Full text with glosses available online (poem no. 15)

https://metseditions.org/read/Kk2rqEDflvYQH57qHG5EqhWNP2p8v3y

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #winter #15thcentury #medieval #Scots #Scotslanguage

Meditatioun in Wyntir
William Dunbar (c. 1459-1530)

In to thir dirk and drublie dayis,
Quhone sabill all the hewin arrayis
With mystie vapouris, cluddis and skyis,
Nature all curage me denyis
Off sangis, ballattis, and of playis.

Quhone that the nycht dois lenthin houris,
With wind, with haill, and havy schouris,
My dule spreit dois lurk for schoir.
My hairt for langour dois forloir
For laik of Symmer with his flouris.

I walk, I turne, sleip may I nocht,
I vexit am with havie thocht.
This warld all ouir I cast about,
And ay the mair I am in dout,
The mair that I remeid have socht.

I am assayit on euerie syde.
Despair sayis ay, "In tyme provyde
And get sum thing quhairon to leif,
Or with grit trouble and mischeif
Thow sall into this court abyd."

Than Patience sayis, "Be not agast,
Hald Hoip and Treuthe within the fast,
And lat Fortoun wirk furthe hir rage,
Quhone that no rasoun may assuage
Quill that hir glas be run and past."

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And Prudence in my eir sayis ay,
"Quhy wald thow hald that will away?
Or craif that thow may have no space,
Thow tending to ane uther place,
A journay going everie day?"

And than sayis Age, "My freind, cum neir,
And be not strange, I the requeir.
Cum, brodir, by the hand me tak.
Remember thow hes compt to mak
Off all thi tyme thow spendit heir."

Syne Deid castis upe his gettis wyd
Saying, "Thir oppin sall thee abyd;
Albeid that thow wer neuer sa stout,
Undir this lyntall sall thow lowt,
Thair is nane uther way besyde."

For feir of this all day I drowp.
No gold in kist nor wine in cowp,
No ladeis bewtie, nor luiffis blys
May lat me to remember this,
How glaid that euer I dyne or sowp.

Ȝit quhone the nycht begynnis to schort
It dois my spreit sum pairt confort,
Off thocht oppressit with the schowris.
Cum lustie Symmer with thi flowris,
That I may leif in sum disport.

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121d

Poet, writer, artist, & avant-gardener Ian Hamilton Finlay (1925–2006) was born 100 years ago #OTD, 28 Oct, in Nassau, Bahamas – a fact which he would later describe as “ridiculous, not in character at all”. His father was a bootlegger, smuggling rum to the USA, & Finlay was sent, aged 6, to Larchfield, a boarding school in Helensburgh, Scotland, where WH Auden had recently joined the staff

A 🎂🧵

1/9

#Scottish #literature #poetry #visualart #gardening #sculpture #IanHamiltonFinlay

“Et In Arcadia Ego”, a stone sculpture by ian Hamilton Finlay (1976)

A slab of pale stone, showing a stylised scene in a woodland. In the foreground is what looks like a tank (i.e. a military vehicle), except it has incised lines across it suggesting that it is in fact made out of stone blocks. The scene is framed and under the frame the words

ET IN ARCADIA EGO
After Nicholas Poussin

are carved into the slab.

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117d

But gin the auld fowks’ tales are richt
An’ ghaists come hame on Hallow nicht,
O freend o’ freends! what wad I gie
To feel ye rax yer hand to me
Atween the dark an’ caun’le-licht?

—Violet Jacob, “Hallowe’en”
first published in COUNTRY LIFE, 1920

Jacob’s only son, Harry, was killed at the Somme in 1916

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Halloween #warpoem #warpoetry #WW1

Hallowe’en
Violet Jacob

The tattie-liftin’s nearly through,
They’re ploughin’ whaur the barley grew,‍‍
And aifter dark, roond ilka stack,‍‍
Ye’ll see the horsemen stand an’ crack
O Lachlan, but I mind o’ you!

I mind foo often we hae seen
Ten thoosand stars keek doon atween‍‍
The nakit branches, an’ below‍‍
Baith fairm an’ bothie hae their show,
Alowe wi’ lichts o’ Hallowe’en.

There’s bairns wi’ guizards at their tail
Clourin’ the doors wi’ runts o’ kail,‍‍
And fine ye’ll hear the skreichs an’ skirls‍‍
O’ lassies wi’ their droukit curls
Bobbin’ for aipples i’ the pail.

The bothie fire is loupin’ het,
A new heid horseman’s kist is set‍‍
Richts o’ the lum; whaur by the blaze‍‍
The auld ane stude that kept yer claes—
I canna thole to see it yet!

But gin the auld fowks’ tales are richt
An’ ghaists come hame on Hallow nicht,‍‍
O freend o’ freends! what wad I gie‍‍
To feel ye rax yer hand to me
Atween the dark an’ caun’le licht?

Awa in France, across the wave,
The wee lichts burn on ilka grave,‍‍
An’ you an’ me their lowe hae seen—‍‍
Ye’ll mebbe hae yer Hallowe’en
Yont, whaur ye’re lyin’ wi’ the lave.

There’s drink an’ daffin’, sang an’ dance
And ploys and kisses get their chance,‍‍
But Lachlan, man, the place I see‍‍
Is whaur the auld kist used to be
And the lichts o’ Hallowe’en in France!

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1y

German poet Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock was born #OTD in 1724.

He is best known for his epic poem "Der Messias" which was heavily influenced by John Milton's "Paradise Lost" but distinguished itself with its intense emotionality and religious fervor. Klopstock also wrote numerous odes and lyric poems that celebrated themes of friendship, patriotism, nature, and spirituality. Notable collections include "Odes" and "Poetische Werke".

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/6558

#books #literature #poetry

Klopstock by Johann Caspar Füssli (1750)
Johann Caspar Füssli - Das Jahrhundert der Freundschaft. Johann Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim und seine Zeitgenossen, ed. Ute Pott (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2004), p. 25.

Image of a man with white hair and a red tie in a painting.

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Titelblatt der Erstausgabe der ersten drei Gesänge des Messias (1749).

Klopstock began writing "Der Messias" in 1748. This epic poem, written in unrhymed hexameters, is a religious and lyrical masterpiece that narrates the life and mission of Jesus Christ. It was heavily influenced by John Milton's "Paradise Lost" but distinguished itself with its intense emotionality and religious fervor.

The first three cantos were published in 1748, and the poem was eventually completed in 1773. The work was groundbreaking for its time, emphasizing religious devotion and the sublime rather than the rationality and order typical of Enlightenment literature.

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120d

WRITERS!

Submissions invited to NEW WRITING SCOTLAND 44! We want poetry & prose in English, #Gaelic, & #Scots from writers who are Scottish by residence, birth, or inclination. All successful contributors are paid – deadline 31 Oct!

@writingcommunity

Submit free via Submittable 👇

https://nws.submittable.com/submit

#Scottish #literature #writing #WritingCommunity #IAmWriting #poetry #shortfiction #shortstories #Scots #Scotslanguage #Gaelic #Gaidhlig

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78d

I am a human being
and I exist

a human being
and a citizen of the world

responsible to that world
– and responsible for that world

—Tom Leonard, “Being a Human Being”
First published in PN Review 32 (2005)

Today, 10 December, is Human Rights Day

https://www.un.org/en/observances/human-rights-day

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #HumanRights #HUmanRightsDay

Being a Human Being
Tom Leonard

for Mordechai Vanunu

not to be complicit
not to accept everyone else is silent it must be alright

not to keep one’s mouth shut to hold onto one’s job
not to accept public language as cover and decoy

not to put friends and family before the rest of the world
not to say I am wrong when you know the government is wrong

not to be just a bought behaviour pattern
to accept the moment and fact of choice

I am a human being
and I exist

a human being
and a citizen of the world

responsible to that world
– and responsible for that world

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52d

Off Lindisfarne
the waves shiver like monks
at their ablutions.

Under high horizontals
of ice-cloud, the sky
scrubbed clean as a dairy.

The train darts north,
hungry as a tongue…

—Alison Fell, “January, 5”
published in LIGHTYEAR (Smokestack Books, 2005)

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/january-5/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #winter

January, 5
by Alison Fell

Off Lindisfarne
the waves shiver like monks
at their ablutions.

Under high horizontals
of ice-cloud, the sky
scrubbed clean as a dairy.

The train darts north,
hungry as a tongue.

Only the exile longs for
the words to name a country:

either live it or learn,
at a bare table,

ancestral silence, like a rumble
deep in the loch’s throat,

the forgotten song
of the curling-stone,

the snow slipping like white meat
from the bones of the mountain.

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119d

Rubbing a glistening circle
on the steamed-up window I framed
a pheasant in a field of mist…

—Edwin Morgan, “Aberdeen Train”
published in CENTENARY SELECTED POEMS (Carcanet, 2020)

https://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?product=9781784109967

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #ChineseArt #EdwinMorgan #autumn #October

Edwin Morgan
Aberdeen Train

Rubbing a glistening circle
on the steamed-up window I framed
a pheasant in a field of mist.
The sun was a great red thing somewhere low,
struggling with the milky scene. In the furrows
a piece of glass winked into life,
hypnotized the silly dandy; we
hooted past him with his head cocked,
contemplating a bottle-end,
and this was the last of October,
a Chinese moment in the Mearns.

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119d

He telt us his wife had run aff wi Super Mario.
Noo, he wis dinin on the dustbins, dwinin awa
for want o a pouer pill and a braw sheenie cherry…

—Amy Jo Philip, “Pac-Man’s Last Stand”
in DOUBLE BILL (Red Squirrel Press 2014)
🟡 🍒 👻

Happy 45th birthday to Pac-Man!

https://www.redsquirrelpress.com/product-page/double-bill-andy-jackson

#Scottish #literature #PacMan #poem #poetry #Scots #Scotslanguage #gaming #retrogaming #GoogleDoodle

Pac-Man’s Last Stand
Amy Jo Philip

We funt him dossin in a piss-scented close
oot the back o a defunct arcade,
his canary coupon dulled fae dool and stour
tae say naething o the bargain booze he swallied
fae a bottle happed in a broun paper poke.

He telt us his wife had run aff wi Super Mario.
Noo, he wis dinin on the dustbins, dwinin awa
for want o a pouer pill and a braw sheenie cherry;
in a constant, feartie, blootered dwam
o Inky, Blinky, Pinky and even Clyde closin in

for the kill. Haurdly a shaddae o his auld sel.
The worst o it wis, every time he yawned
his gub wid gant that wee tait wider till it seemed
he’d fauld in on hissel and the air aroun him growe
shairp wi they twa wirds ilka gamer dreids.

Naiturally, we taen him hame wi’s and fed him up
on spare fou stops, Morellos and tartrazine.
Man, ye shuid hae seen thon appetite!
The trouble stairted wi a toattie bite taen out
the sofa. Afore lang, the living room was a guddle

o sawdust, torn swatches and chowed wires. Im gey feart
he’ll soon hae eaten us oot o hous and hauld.
And that’s whaur youse come in. A puckle wee ghosties
dinnae fleg me, but yon yellae golach’s anither story.
The doors and windaes is aw locked. He’ll no suspect a thing.

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52d

Wordsworth Revolutionized Poetry But His Life Was Equally Interesting

"Who was William Wordsworth, and what made his poetry so revolutionary? Read about the life and works of this major Romantic poet."

https://www.thecollector.com/william-wordsworth/

Books by Wordsworth at PG:

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/2879

#books #literature #poetry

Portrait of William Wordsworth, by William Shuter, 1798.

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117d

The Distributed Proofreaders' blog this month is about another Edgar Allan Poe book at PG: "The Poems of Edgar Allan Poe."

https://blog.pgdp.net/2025/11/01/nevermore/

#books #literature #poetry

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118d

Someone was playing the piano when suddenly
there they were standing in the room.
They would not sing or speak or tell their names.
Their skull faces blankly shifted round
as if they were studying us implacably…

—Iain Crichton Smith, “Halloween”
first published in the TLS (1982)

#Scottish #literature #Halloween #poem #poetry #20thcentury

Halloween
Iain Crichton Smith

Someone was playing the piano when suddenly
there they were standing in the room.
They would not sing or speak or tell their names.
Their skull faces blankly shifted round
as if they were studying us implacably.

“Yokels”, one thought. “Rustics”, thought another;
and truly they had trudged in out of the rain
with their masks, tall and white and bony-looking.
“Macbeth”, someone said, and someone “Hamlet”.
Or perhaps at least the “Elegy” by Gray.

The rain drummed on the roof and they were gone
in their muddy boots, squelching past cowering doors.
We looked at each other. It was graveyard time
as our black ties on our white shirts might say.

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118d

The wind blew as ’twad blawn its last;
The rattling showers rose on the blast;
The speedy gleams the darkness swallow’d;
Loud, deep, & lang the thunder bellow’d:
That night, a child might understand,
The Deil had business on his hand…

—Robert Burns’s “Tam o’ Shanter”, read by Hamish MacDonald; illustrations by Gary Welsh

Happy Halloween!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAqVwCa_x5o

#Scottish #literature #Halloween #poem #poetry #18thcentury #witch #witches #supernatural #folklore

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1y

In July 1816.

Lord Byron, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, Percy Bysshe Shelley & John Polidori, who have gathered at the Villa Diodati by Lake Geneva in a rainy Switzerland in this 'Year Without a Summer', tell each other tales. This spawns two classic Gothic narratives, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Polidori's The Vampyre. Byron also writes the poem Darkness.

Frankenstein
https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/41445

The Vampyre
https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/6087

Darkness
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/20158

#books #literature #poetry

Title page of first edition of Frankenstein, Volume I.
Author Mary Shelley; publisher Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor & Jones

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Title page for The Vampyre; A Tale (London: Sherwood, Neely, and Jones, 1819) by John William Polidori, 1795-1821. EC8.P7598.819va (A), Houghton Library, Harvard University

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"Darkness:, an 1816 poem by Lord Byron, first published in the 1816 The Prisoner of Chillon and Other Poems collection, page 27, published in London in 1816 by John Murray.

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118d

A boannie nicht for castin kale:
a fat mön vaegin owre Sannis,
a hale gadderie o laads an lasses…

—Christine De Luca, “Hallowe’en Hansel”
published in WAST WI DA VALKYRIES

Listen to Christine reading her poems online here

https://www.christinedeluca.co.uk/pages/wast_wi_da_valkyries

#Scottish #literature #Shetland #Halloween #poem #poetry #Scots #Scotslanguage #Shetlandic

A dark-blue postcard. In the top-left corner is a spider's web; in the bottom right there's a bubbling cauldron. The postcard has the following poem in white text:

Hallowe'en hansel
bi Christine De Luca

A boannie nicht for castin kale:
a fat mön vaegin owre Sannis,
a hale gadderie o laads an lasses.

A spree i der blöd,
laads loupit dykes
purled kale-stocks
iggit een anidder on
ripe da rigs
hunse fur hens
whit a stramash
an dan da dash
tae a porch door
lift da sneck
ball in da booty
rin like da mellishon
dunna look back.

But dee an me
pooskered wi da bassel
fell ahint ta draa breath,
taste wir first smoorikin.
But aa I can mind is da mön
gaffin at me in mi cöttikins
wis ahint a uncan barn
an dy blate hansel
anunder a kendlin o starns.

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116d

Rising in November in these days of dusk
I am one life older, watching now as the walls
green over, the stones break into bud;
if this is ebb-tide turned to flood it means that
nightfall might begin again at dawn.
And so it does…

—Robin Robertson, “Crossing the Archipelago”
published in SAILING THE FOREST (Picador, 2014)

https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/robin-robertson/sailing-the-forest/9781447231554

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #November

Crossing the Archipelago
Robin Robertson

Rising in November in these days of dusk
I am one life older, watching now as the walls
green over, the stones break into bud;
if this is ebb-tide turned to flood it means that
nightfall might begin again at dawn.
And so it does. The sea at Djurgården is a mirror
of lost light. I watch snowflakes fall on water,
transparent as tissue, melting back to nothing,
the black water’s endless echo of the night.
A diminished life turns turtle and the day breaks
like a spell; to double back on this, through
ash and silver birch, to that extinguished past, a world
that’s over, will wreck me. Hopeless to return
now: my future lit by bridges, and their burning.

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114d

Mind that night in November, the pair of us
bursting from Mareel like late-comers
to the cinema-dark of the evening.
How we nearly missed it, the other show
that night: the aurora, the dancers, unspooling
their reels of green across the sky…

—Roseanne Watt, “Mareel”
published in MODER DY (Polygon, 2019)

https://birlinn.co.uk/product/moder-dy/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Shetland #November #auroraborealis

Mareel
by Roseanne Watt

Mind that night in November, the pair of us
bursting from Mareel like late-comers
to the cinema-dark of the evening.
How we nearly missed it, the other show
that night: the aurora, the dancers, unspooling
their reels of green across the sky, despite
a bone-bright moon in the south. Mind
how the waves in Hay’s Dock lit up with this
borrowed phosphorescence, and we skirled
at the spectacle of it all; a sky of light, a sea of sky,
and behind us, the noost of Mareel,
its north-pointed prow.

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117d

The postman just delivered my contributor's copy of The Storms Issue 5 & it is GORGEOUS! @StormShelter & @rhonagreene, you've outdone yourselves!

And, additional thanks to Dublin UNESCO City of Literature and Fingal Arts for their support of this issue

https://eatthestorms.com/the-storm-shop/

#poetry #prose #VisualArt #art #PoetryCommunity #WritingCommunity

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113d

Roch the wind in the clear day’s dawin
Blaws the cloods heelster-gowdie ow’r the bay,
But there’s mair nor a roch wind blawin
Through the great glen o’ the warld the day…

—Hamish Henderson, “The Freedom Come-All-Ye”
Published in The Golden Treasury of Scottish Verse, @canongatebooks

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

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #song #HamishHenderson #20thcentury #change #hope

The Freedom Come-All-Ye
Hamish Henderson

Roch the wind in the clear day’s dawin
Blaws the cloods heelster-gowdie ow’r the bay,
But there’s mair nor a roch wind blawin
Through the great glen o’ the warld the day.
It’s a thocht that will gar oor rottans
– A’ they rogues that gang gallus, fresh and gay –
Tak the road, and seek ither loanins
For their ill ploys, tae sport and play

Nae mair will the bonnie callants
Mairch tae war when oor braggarts crousely craw,
Nor wee weans frae pit-heid and clachan
Mourn the ships sailin’ doon the Broomielaw.
Broken faimlies in lands we’ve herriet,
Will curse Scotland the Brave nae mair, nae mair;
Black and white, ane til ither mairriet,
Mak the vile barracks o’ their maisters bare.

So come all ye at hame wi’ Freedom,
Never heed whit the hoodies croak for doom.
In your hoose a’ the bairns o’ Adam
Can find breid, barley-bree and painted room.
When MacLean meets wi’s freens in Springburn
A’ the roses and geans will turn tae bloom,
And a black boy frae yont Nyanga
Dings the fell gallows o’ the burghers doon.

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115d

Push the Boat Out 2025
20–23 Nov, Edinburgh

This year’s Push the Boat Out festival sets sail from 20–23 November with a bold mix of poetry, performance, music & art in a sparkling celebration of words in all their forms, with over 120 artists on board!

https://pushtheboatout.org/programme/

#Scottish #literature #poetry #festival #Edinburgh