Eggplant.place

25d

WayWORD Festival 2025
1–5 October, Aberdeen

The programme for WayWORD 2025, the University of Aberdeen’s cross-arts literary festival, is now online.

#Scottish #literature #writing #creativewriting #WritingCommunity

26d

Remediating Stevenson: Reframing perspectives through graphic novels
28 August, Edinburgh University – free, ticketed

Launching 3 new graphic novels inspired by Robert Louis Stevenson’s South Sea Tales: The Bottle Imp, The Isle of Voices & The Beach of Falesá. The event is aimed at upper primary & secondary teachers with an interest in English, Literacy & Art.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/remediating-stevenson-reframing-perspectives-through-graphic-novels-tickets-1575626052939

#Scottish #literature #graphicnovels #RobertLouisStevenson #teachers

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20d

I outstrip the moon in brightness,
I outrun midsummer suns…

Edwin Morgan died #OTD, 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 (c.639–709 CE).

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#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #riddle #translation #EdwinMorgan #OldEnglish #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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25d

Stone going home again to stone;
poor helpless house, your heart is ash,
bone-shelter of this country’s bone…

—Walter Perrie, “Stone Going Home Again”
published in Stone Going Home Again: New Writing Scotland 28 (ASL, 2010)

“the job of poetry is not to explain the magical mysteries of life but to enumerate and illuminate them”
—Richie McCaffery reviews Walter Perrie’s THE AGES OF WATER (Grace Note Publications, 2020)

https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2023/11/the-ages-of-water-by-walter-perrie/

#Scottish #literature #poetry #poem

Walter Perrie
STONE GOING HOME AGAIN

Stone going home again to stone;
poor helpless house, your heart is ash,
bone-shelter of this country’s bone,
abandoned arteries, old Perthshire flesh,
stoor smothers every good Scots word.
Ghosts, who, though the roof-beam falls,
who brought you sheep and the shepherd,
speech and song, still prowl your walls.

Only the rowans they planted
keep them out. Only from haunted
sky and wood their silence to your silence calls –
now only the wild birds; starling, mavis, rook,
brown wren that through the thicket moves,
and buzzard piaow and pheasant croak,
and the untranslatable noise of doves.

ALT

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25d

The Scottish Novel – book launch & seminar
5 Sept, Edinburgh – free, ticketed

Are novelists from Scotland merely contributors to English literature, or is there a separate & distinctive tradition of the Scottish novel?

This seminar presents papers by contributors to The International Companion to the Scottish Novel (ed. Cairns Craig) with a focus on literature from the 20th & 21st centuries.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-scottish-novel-tickets-1541851020909

#Scottish #literature #novel #novels

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25d

“A poetry of self-conscious listening, of placing sound carefully. Like the plover, here I am, sitting on this stone, testing out sounds and patterns in order to record how it is to be here in this now.”

—Lesley Harrison, “Do Birds Sing?”, in the PN Review

https://www.pnreview.co.uk/archive/do-birds-sing/11958

#Scottish #literature #language #poetry #birdsong #birds

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26d

There is recent talk
of re-introducing wolves
to this demi-nation
of lambs and glaikit rams
and scraggy ewes,
(and – let’s face it –
hardly any shepherds left to care)…

—Douglas Lipton, “Wolves”
published in Such Strange Joy (inyx, 2001)

Today, 13 August, is International Wolf Day 🐺

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

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #wolf #wolves #InternationalWolfDay

Wolves
Douglas Lipton

for the new Scottish Parliament

The icy rain is spitting
on the pines and golden birches.
Hangings of black cloud
are torn apart by sunbursts
and then tugged shut again.

Behind us wait Przewalski’s Horses,
black Aurochs, Arctic Fox, Wisent, Lynx
and the other extinct of the country.
We are approaching the enclave
of the Wolves. You hold me,
Kiss me. The children are scurrying.
Our friends, too, are there
with two more scurriers
and a screamer in a papoose
and we are followed by other little packs
of back-bitten families,
out for a day of different frictions,
weather-incited.

From a crag of varnished wood
and plate-glass
we watch those almost-
wild dogs of the north
examine their territory,
tear meat and socialise.
Their puppies play,
rollicking like boulders of fur
in a river of pure air.

There is recent talk
of re-introducing wolves
to this demi-nation
of lambs and glaikit rams
and scraggy ewes,
(and – let’s face it –
hardly any shepherds left to care),
but the wolves are sure to be enclosed
or else we’d dare
to be entire again,
let forests grow,
and take our chances.

ALT

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26d

Thar na sìorraidheachd, thar a sneachda,
chì mi mo dhàin neo-dheachdte,
chì mi lorgan an spòg a’ breacadh
gile shuaimhneach an t-sneachda:
calg air bhoile, teanga fala,
gadhair chaola ’s madaidhean-allaidh…

—Somhairle MacGill-Eain, “Coin is Madaidhean-allaidh”
published in Caoir Gheal Leumraich / White Leaping Flame (Birlinn, 2023)

International Wolf Day 🐺

https://birlinn.co.uk/product/white-leaping-flame-caoir-gheal-leumraich/

#Scottish #literature #Gaidhlig #Gaelic #poem #poetry #InternationalWolfDay

Coin is Madaidhean-allaidh
Somhairle MacGill-Eain

Thar na sìorraidheachd, thar a sneachda,
chì mi mo dhàin neo-dheachdte,
chì mi lorgan an spòg a’ breacadh
gile shuaimhneach an t-sneachda:
calg air bhoile, teanga fala,
gadhair chaola ’s madaidhean-allaidh
a’ leum thar mullaichean nan gàrradh,
a’ ruith fo sgàil nan craobhan fàsail,
a’ gabhail cumhang nan caol-ghleann,
a’ sireadh caisead nan gaoth-bheann;
an langan gallanach a’ sianail
thar loman cruaidhe nan àm cianail,
an comhartaich bhiothbhuan ’na mo chluasan,
an deann-ruith a’ gabhail mo bhuadhan:
rèis nam madadh ’s nan con iargalt
luath air tòrachd an fhiadhaich
tro na coilltean gun fhiaradh,
thar mullaichean nam beann gun shiaradh;
coin chiùine caothaich na bàrdachd,
madaidhean air tòir na h-àilleachd,
àilleachd an anama ’s an aodainn,
fiadh geal thar bheann is raointean,
fiadh do bhòidhche ciùine gaolaich,
fiadhach gun sgur gun fhaochadh.

ALT

Dogs and Wolves
Sorley MacLean

Across eternity, across its snows,
I see my unwritten poems,
I see the spoor of their paws dappling
the untroubled whiteness of the snow:
bristles raging, bloody-tongued,
lean greyhounds and wolves
leaping over the tops of the dykes,
running under the shade of the trees of the wilderness,
taking the defile of narrow glens,
making for the steepness of windy mountains;
their baying yell shrieking
across the hard barenesses of the terrible times,
their everlasting barking in my ears,
their onrush seizing my mind:
career of wolves and eerie dogs
swift in pursuit of the quarry,
through the forests without veering,
over the mountain-tops without sheering;
the mild mad dogs of poetry,
wolves in chase of beauty,
beauty of soul and face,
a white deer over hills and plains,
the deer of your gentle beloved beauty,
a hunt without halt, without respite.

ALT

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24d

Walter Scott (1771–1832) was born #OnThisDay, 15 August, the son of Walter Scott, Writer to the Signet, and Anne Rutherford.

Scott is one of the most significant figures in Scottish, British, European and world literatures. In 2014, The Bottle Imp dedicated a special issue to celebrating Scott’s work.

A 🎂 🧵

@litstudies

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https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/issues/issue-16/

#Scottish #literature #WalterScott #19thcentury #Romanticism

A portrait head of Walter Scott, painted by Sir Henry Raeburn, c.1822–23, oil on canvas. Walter Scott is clean shaven, with thinning fair hair brushed across a high forehead. His grey-blue eyes look out past the viewer, at something we cannot see.

ALT

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23d

The Laird o’ Cockpen, he’s proud an’ he’s great,
His mind is ta’en up wi’ the things o’ the State…

Carolina Oliphant, Lady Nairne (1766–1845) was born #OTD, 16 Aug. Oliphant wrote over 100 popular songs to traditional Scottish tunes. Although she shunned publicity & never acknowledged her authorship, along with Robert Burns she is one of the most significant figures in Scottish folksong

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#Scottish #literature #song #folksong #18thcentury #19thcentury #romanticism #womenwriters

Carolina Oliphant, Lady Nairne
“The Laird o’ Cockpen”

The Laird o’ Cockpen, he’s proud an’ he’s great,
His mind is ta’en up wi’ the things o’ the State;
He wanted a wife, his braw house to keep,
But favour wi’ wooin’ was fashious to seek.

Down by the dyke-side a lady did dwell,
At his table head he thocht she’d look well,
M’Leish’s ae dochter o’ Clavers-ha’ Lea,
A penniless lass wi’ a lang pedigree.

His wig was weel pouther’d and as gude as new,
His waistcoat was white, his coat it was blue;
He put on a ring, a sword, and cock’d hat,
And wha could refuse the Laird wi’ a’ that?

He took the grey mare, and rade cannily,
And rapp’d at the yett o’ Clavers-ha’ Lea;
‘Gae tell Mistress Jean to come speedily ben, –
She’s wanted to speak to the Laird o’ Cockpen.’

Mistress Jean she was makin’ the elderflower wine;
‘An’ what brings the Laird at sic a like time?’
She put aff her apron, and on her silk goun,
Her mutch wi’ red ribbons, and gaed awa’ doun.

An’ when she cam’ ben, he bowed fu’ low,
An’ what was his errand he soon let her know;
Amazed was the Laird when the lady said ‘Na’,
And wi’ a laigh curtsie she turned awa’.

Dumfounder’d was he, nae sigh did he gie,
He mounted his mare – he rade cannily;
An’ aften he thought, as he gaed through the glen,
She’s daft to refuse the laird o’ Cockpen.

ALT

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24d

He will outlast us, churning out his books,
advocate and historian, his prose
earning him Abbotsford with its borrowed gates,
its cheap mementos from the land he made…

—Iain Crichton Smith, “At the Scott Exhibition, Edinburgh Festival”
published in DEER ON THE HIGH HILLS (Carcanet, 2021)

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

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #WalterScott #IainCrichtonSmith #writers #writing

AT THE SCOTT EXHIBITION, EDINBURGH FESTIVAL
Iain Crichton Smith

He will outlast us, churning out his books,
advocate and historian, his prose
earning him Abbotsford with its borrowed gates,
its cheap mementos from the land he made.
Walking the room together in this merciless
galaxy of manuscripts and notes
I am exhausted by such energy.
I hold your hand for guidance. Over your brow
the green light falls from tall and narrow windows.
His style is ignorant of this tenderness,
the vulnerable angle of your body
below the Raeburn with its steady gaze.

It was all in his life, not in his books
‘Oh I am dying, take me home to Scotland
where I can breathe though that breath were my last.’
He limped through an Edinburgh being made anew.
He worked his way through debts, past a dead wife.
My dear, we love each other in our weakness
as he with white grave face diminishing through
stroke after stroke down to the unpaid room.
We know what we are but know not what we will be.
I tremble in this factory of books.
What love he must have lost to write so much.

ALT

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24d

Did Walter Scott Invent Scotland?
Dr Juliet Shields’ 2017 Gresham College Fulbright lecture

Walter Scott’s phenomenally popular novels & poems created an image of Scotland as a land of sublime scenery & heroic chivalry. Why is it Scott’s version, rather than any of the many other 19th-century literary representations of Scotland, that has endured in the popular imagination?

@litstudies

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxBpDfV6SHE

#Scottish #literature #19thcentury #Victorian #WalterScott #CulturalStudies

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23d

“I didn’t really think through what a lighthouse keeper actually did. I was attracted by the romantic notion of sitting on a rock, writing haikus & dashing off the occasional watercolour.”
—Peter Hill in the London Review of Books

16 & 17 August is the International Lighthouse and Lightship Weekend

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v18/n11/peter-hill/diary

#Scottish #literature #lighthouse #lighthouses #lightship #lightships #ILLW

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21d

“McGonagall was contributing to a pre-existing poetic culture that hovered between the satirical & the serious, & that caused difficulties for editors faced with deciding which was which”

Why bad poetry was good business in Victorian Dundee

Today, 18 August, is Bad Poetry Day

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https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2013/11/mcgonagall-poute-and-the-bad-poets-of-victorian-dundee/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #19thcentury #Victorian #McGonagall #BadPoetry #BadPoetryDay

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21d

The last person to play this rare boxwood flute was likely its owner, James Glencairn Burns, son of Robert Burns. Claire Mann is currently the only musician with permission to play it, & the flute – & Claire – will go on tour as part of a wider fundraising campaign called Saving The Home of Auld Lang Syne which will be launched later this year.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c62wly2qydno

#Scottish #literature #music #RobertBurns #flute #19thcentury #musichistory

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21d

We have seen thee, queen of cheese,
Lying quietly at your ease…

James McIntyre (1828–1906) was born in Forres, & later emigrated to Canada. He wrote poetry, much of it about cheese. His “Ode on the Mammoth Cheese Weight Over 7,000 Pounds“ was about a huge cheese produced in Ingersoll in 1866 & sent to various international exhibitions.

Published in Poems of James McIntyre (Ingersoll, 1889)

#Scottish #literature #Canada #Canadian #cheese #poem #poetry #19thcentury #Victorian #BadPoetryDay

James McIntyre
ODE ON THE MAMMOTH CHEESE.

Weight over seven thousand pounds

We have seen thee, queen of cheese,
Lying quietly at your ease,
Gently fanned by evening breeze,
Thy fair form no flies dare seize.

All gaily dressed soon you'll go
To the great Provincial show,
To be admired by many a beau
In the city of Toronto.

Cows numerous as a swarm of bees,
Or as the leaves upon the trees,
It did require to make thee please,
And stand unrivalled, queen of cheese.

ALT

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20d

…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”
from A HANDSEL: New & Collected Poems (Birlinn, 2023)

Today, 19 August, is World Photography Day

https://birlinn.co.uk/product/a-handsel/

#Scottish #literature #poetry #poem #Glasgow #photography #photos #WorldPhotographyDay #LizLochhead

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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22d

I send to you, commissioners,
A paper that may please ye, sirs
(For troth they say it might be worse‍‍
An’ I believe’t)…

—Robert Louis Stevenson, “To the Commissioners of Northern Lights”, which Stevenson sent to them along with his design for “a new form of intermittent light”

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#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Scots #ScotsLanguage #RobertLouisStevenson #19thcentury #Victorian #lighthouse #lighthouses #engineering #InternationalLighthouseWeekend

To the Commissioners of Northern Lights
Robert Louis Stevenson

I send to you, commissioners,
A paper that may please ye, sirs
(For troth they say it might be worse‍‍
An’ I believe’t)
And on your business lay my curse‍‍
Before I leav’t.

I thocht I’d serve wi’ you, sirs, yince,
But I’ve thocht better of it since;
The matter I will nowise mince,‍‍
But tell ye true:
I’ll service wi’ some ither prince,‍‍
An’ no wi’ you.

I’ve no been very deep, ye’ll think,
Cam’ delicately to the brink
An’ when the water gart me shrink‍‍
Straucht took the rue,
An’ didna stoop my fill to drink—‍‍
I own it true.

I kent on cape and isle, a light
Burnt fair an’ clearly ilka night;
But at the service I took fright,‍‍
As sune’s I saw,
An’ being still a neophite‍‍
Gaed straucht awa’.

Anither course I now begin,
The weeg I’Il cairry for my Sin,
The court my voice shall echo in,‍‍
An’—wha can tell?—
Some ither day I may be yin‍‍
O’ you mysel’.

ALT

Edited 22d ago

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22d

WRITERS!

Submissions are 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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18d

“I was baptised by the explosion of Scottish writing that burst forth in the nineties. I remember the glory of seeing your own people on the page, how it made me feel worthy, and really, really powerful.”

Five years after winning the Booker for Shuggie Bain, Douglas Stuart reflects on the pressures of being a prize winner, the queer canon, the politics of dialect, & how the arts have become less accessible for working-class people

https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/features/douglas-stuart-i-dont-think-working-class-people-can-afford-to-write

#Scottish #literature #workingclass

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19d

Rǫgnvaldr Kali Kolsson (c. 1100–1158), Earl of Orkney, died #OTD, 20 August.

Rǫgnvaldr was a skilled poet (& after his death – slightly surprisingly – canonised as St Ronald of Orkney – f.d. 20 August). Ian Crockatt has translated many of his poems; this one is from CRIMSONING THE EAGLE’S CLAW: The Viking Poems of Rǫgnvaldr Kali Kolsson (Arc Publications, 2014)

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https://www.arcpublications.co.uk/books/rognvaldr-kali-kolsson-crimsoning-the-eagles-claw-the-viking-poems-of-rgnvaldr-kali-kolsson-earl-of-orkney-518

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Orkney #medieval #Viking #Norse

He laments his wife's illness, seeks comfort in shaping words

Akr verðk opt fyr sjúkri
eyfitja þó sitja
– rjð es mér in mæra
menbrik – Njǫrun síka;
heiðis fylgjask hauðri
(hauk tínik svá) mínu,
(setrs leitandi sútar
slœgr á hverju dœgri).

I brood at her bedside
– I've brought lace, necklaces,
bone combs – who lies, limbs and
lips feverish – wishing
back our glad hours hawking
low-sled water-meadows.
I shape grave words – heart-deep,
honed, brief – to imprison grief.

ALT

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19d

The Scottish Novel – book launch & seminar
5 Sept, Edinburgh – free, ticketed

This seminar presents papers by contributors to The International Companion to the Scottish Novel (ed. Cairns Craig) with a focus on literature from the 20th & 21st centuries

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-scottish-novel-tickets-1541851020909

#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #novels

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18d

Ian Hamilton Finlay’s revolutionary instincts

“This is a centenary for an agoraphobic poet once notorious for maintaining a small militia of supporters who vandalised the office of the Evening Standard’s art critic Brian Sewell; an artist who employed the help of collaborator Jessie McGuffie to ‘defend’ his project by punching the literary editor of the Scotsman in 1962.”

@litstudies

https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/culture/art/70812/ian-hamilton-finlays-revolutionary-instincts

#Scottish #literature #poetry #concretepoetry #20thcentury #IanHamiltonFinlay

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18d

Ardent on the beach at Rossnowlagh
on the last day of summer,
you ran through the shallows
throwing off shoes, and shirt and towel
like the seasons, the city’s years…

—Robin Robertson, “Donegal”
published in SWITHERING (Picador, 2006)

Listen to Robin Roberston read “Donegal” on the Poetry Archive:

https://poetryarchive.org/poem/donegal/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry

Robin Roberston
Donegal

for Ellie

Ardent on the beach at Rossnowlagh
on the last day of summer,
you ran through the shallows
throwing off shoes, and shirt and towel
like the seasons, the city’s years,
all caught in my arms
as I ploughed on behind you, guardian still
of dry clothes, of this little heart
not quite thirteen,
breasting the waves
and calling back to me
to join you, swimming in the Atlantic
on the last day of summer.
I saw a man in the shallows
with his hands full of clothes, full of
all the years,
and his daughter going
where he knew he could not follow.

ALT

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18d

Amang the Friends of Early Days
9 September, Dumfries – tickets £6.13

Celebrating the joint residency at Robert Burns Ellisland Museum of Scots Makar Peter Mackay & former Jamaican Poet Laureate Lorna Goodison. They will reflect on how the local landscape shaped Burns’ writing in Scots, & explore how nature influences their own work – in Gaelic, & in the fusion of English & Jamaican Creole

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/amang-the-friends-of-early-days-tickets-1611560794719

#Scottish #Jamaican #literature #poetry #Gaelic #Gaidhlig #Creole #Robertburns

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