Eggplant.place

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.

ALT

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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.

ALT

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116d

Bluidy Jack’s Prisoner
13 Nov, Edinburgh. Free, unticketed.

While writing Kidnapped & other classics such as Jekyll & Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson was suffering from the pulmonary disease he called ‘Bluidy Jack’. Join members of the Robert Louis Stevenson Club for an insight into the strange double life of a great Scottish author as they celebrate his 175th birthday

https://cultureedinburgh.com/events/bluidy-jacks-prisoner

#Scottish #literature #19thcentury #Victorian #RobertLouisStevenson

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115d

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.

ALT

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114d

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.

ALT

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116d

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

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78d

But in the climbing ecstasy of thought,
Ere consummation, ere the final peak,
Come hours like this…

—Nan Shepherd, “Summit of Coire Etchachan”
published in WANDERERS: A History of Women Walking, by Kerri Andrews

Today, 11 December, is International Mountain Day

https://www.un.org/en/observances/mountain-day

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #mountains #cairngorms #NanShepherd #climbing #20thcentury #womenwriters #naturewriting #InternationalMountainDay

Summit of Coire Etchachan
Nan Shepherd

But in the climbing ecstasy of thought,
Ere consummation, ere the final peak,
Come hours like this. Behind, the long defile,
The steep rock-path, alongside which, from under
Snow-caves, sharp-corniced, tumble the ice-cold waters.
And now, here, at the corrie’s summit, no peak,
No vision of the blue world, far, unattainable,
But this grey plateau, rock-strewn, vast, silent,
The dark loch, the toiling crags, the snow;
A mountain shut within itself, yet a world,
Immensity. So may the mind achieve,
Toiling, no vision of the infinite,
But a vast, dark and inscrutable sense
Of its own terror, its own glory and power.

ALT

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116d

Nam bhodach liath a-nis
a’ streap gu mullach a bhràighe,
chan eil mi a’ còrdadh riut, a Llywarch,
mun bhata càm is riatanach gach là…

—Uilleam Nèill, “Freagairt Do Llywarch Hen”
published in FRIENDS & KANGAROOS: New Writing Scotland 17 (ASL, 1999)

(Llywarch Hen, c.534–608 CE, was an early Welsh poet & prince of Rheged, who complained about his advancing age & dependence on his walking stick)

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Gaelic #Gaidhlig #Welsh #CelticStudies

Freagairt Do Llywarch Hen
Uilleam Nèill

Nam bhodach liath a-nis
a’ streap gu mullach a bhràighe,
chan eil mi a’ còrdadh riut, a Llywarch,
mun bhata càm is riatanach gach là.
Bha mi ro-dheiseil le cainnt, gu dearbh
aig amannan a’ feannadh amadan
ro-thric le smùid orm san taigh-òsd’.
Chan eil a’ chlann-nighean a’ toirt sùil orm
ach cò gheibh cron dhaibh, na luaidhean
is mise mar fheòil righinn an seiche liurcach.
Co-dhiù tha mi nis saor bho na geimhlean
is mo cheangal don chuthaich sin.
Ach tha am bata uinnsinn a’ fàs
na charaid dìleas dhomhsa
fhad’s a chuireas mi grèim
air a cheann càm is làidir
a chumas taic rium gu càirdeil
le bhachall dìreach daingeann
a mhaireas, is dòcha, nas fhaide na mi fhìn.
Is tha mi taingeil gur troimh a thoil fhiodha
chì mi a-rithist, theagamh
earrach uaine is samhradh,
foghar òir is donn,
mus tig mo gheamhradh dorcha deireannach.

ALT

Answer to Llywarch Hen
William Neill

A grey old man now
climbing to the braehead
I don't agree with you, Llywarch,
about the necessary walking stick each day.
I was too ready with my tongue at times, it's true,
for the flaying of fools
often with a drink taken in the inn.
The girls no longer cast an eye on me
but who would blame them, the dears
and me like tough meat in a wrinkled hide.
At any rate I am free from those gyves
and no longer chained to that madness
but the ash-stick has become
a faithful friend to me
as long as I keep hold of his strong bent head
that supports me in a friendly fashion with a straight, strong stave
that will doubtless last longer than myself.
And I am thankful that by his wooden wish
I may see again, perhaps,
green spring and summer
gold and russet autumn
before my last dark winter comes.

ALT

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116d

If a landscape ‘speaks’, can we hear it?
10 Nov, Edinburgh, & online. Tickets £6/£2

From the medieval West Highlands & Gaelic society, Prof Aonghus MacKechnie’s talk ranges through Early Modern Scotland, the exploitation of history & the ‘signage’ used by the Stewart monarchy, through to post-1660s classicism, Romanticism, “Improvement”, & militarism

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/if-a-landscape-speaks-can-we-hear-it-with-aonghus-mackechnie-tickets-1733332637579?aff=oddtdtcreator

#Scottish #history #culture #culturalstudies #placenames #Gaelic #Gaidhlig #EarlyModern #Romanticism #militarism

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114d

Fog shroud
and clouds
(when the clock
chimed late
in the heavy
November night-
time) lifting
the mystery
for a greater…

—Edwin Morgan, “Guy Fawkes Moon”
published in COLLECTED POEMS (Carcanet, 1997)

https://www.carcanet.co.uk/9781847779656/collected-poems/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #GuyFawkes #BonfireNight #November5th

Guy Fawkes Moon
Edwin Morgan

Fog shroud
and clouds
(when the clock
chimed late
in the heavy
November night-
time) lifting
the mystery
for a greater
drifted
off a whole
white full
moon pitched
above the white
thin chimney-
stalk of the
new Dawsholm
incinerator –
as if the piled
rags Glasgow
rubbish rusted
bedsprings bent
hair-rollers blood-
caked saddles of
crumpled Hondas
and sorry lunch-
box plastic
nests of cracks
and crumbs had
all become
a moon of smoke
and the real moon
a César moon
in a car-crusher
was now the Odeon
bulking greyly
with its sleeping stars
in reels by
the firework field.

And sparklers raced
between moons
and squeals –
and red rockets
mufflers matches
and up in smoke
far from school.

ALT

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113d

The mighty Mavors, jealous to behold
A Mars more mighty nor himself below,
Did once resolve his rivall to ore’throw…

—Sir Robert Ayton (1569–1638), “Upon the 5th of November”
published in JACOBEAN PARNASSUS: Scottish Poetry from the Reign of James I (ASL, 2022)

https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/volumes/jacobean-parnassus/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #17thcentury #EarlyModern #BonfireNight #GuyFawkes #Jacobean #5thNovember

Robert Ayton
Upon the 5th of November

The mighty Mavors, jealous to behold
A Mars more mighty nor himself below,
Did once resolve his rivall to ore’throw
By assassins, whome open force made bold.
But finding there that open force did fold
Under the princely valour of his foe,
Hee then determin’d to assayle him soe
As noe defence should his offence withhold.
Thus comes he downe to Plutoes pale abode,
And there for fyre and brimstone straight doth call,
Wherewith he thinks to play the thundering god,
And make the world admire his ryvall’s fall.
But sease, fond Mars, to make the world to wonder;
Ten thousand lawrells save’s our Mars from thunder.

ALT

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113d

“Ach thèid an crann a thoirt dhen fharadh”: Celebrating Thirty Years of Tuath is Tighearna (‘Tenants and Landlords’), 1995-2025

21 Nov, University of Edinburgh. Free, ticketed

This year's Canna Lecture will be delivered by Dr Martin Macgregor who will assess the impact of Donald Meek's anthology of 19th-century Gaelic verse, Tuath is Tighearna (SGTS, 1995), thirty years on from its publication.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/canna-lecture-2025-tickets-1924250979479

#Scottish #literature #Gaelic #Gaidhlig #poetry #19thcentury #Victorian

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120d

Dod! – that’s him nou – eik up the byne;
afore the hairth, his claen sark hing:
pit claes is waffin on the line;
merle on a rowan singin fine.

—David Purdie, “Merle on a Rowan”

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/merle-rowan/

#Scottish #literature #Scotstober #poem #poetry #Scots #Scotslanguage

Merle on a Rowan
David Purdie

Pit claes is waffin on the line,
sinlicht’s keekin ower the bing;
merle on a rowan singin fine.

A braw souch’s blawin, aathin’s fine,
an wi the merle I stert tae sing;
pit claes is waffin on the line.

Himsel wull be hame ony time,
frae pit mirk, stour an dunt an ding;
merle on a rowan singin fine.

He’s late the day, that man o mine . . .
Ach! dinna lat ma thochts tak wing,
no wi pit claes on the line!

Bit . . . Da wis late, yon shift lang syne,
o seiren’s gowl and deid bell’s ring,
an merles on rowans singin fine . . .

Dod! – that’s him nou – eik up the byne;
afore the hairth, his claen sark hing:
pit claes is waffin on the line;
merle on a rowan singin fine.

ALT

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110d

Robert Louis Stevenson’s KIDNAPPED began life serialised in a children’s magazine, but its sophistication & depth won the lifelong admiration of Henry James.

In this episode of NOVEL APPROACHES, Clare Bucknell, Andrew O’Hagan & Tom Crewe explore RLS’s startlingly modern handling of perspective & pacing, his approach to the art of fiction, & the value of being ‘betwixt & between’.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/podcasts/close-readings/novel-approaches-kidnapped-by-robert-louis-stevenson

#Scottish #literature #19thcenyury #RobertLouisStevenson #KidLit #ChildrensLiterature

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111d

The Oxfam bookshop on Glasgow’s Byres Road moved, recently, to a new location further down the hill – but I’m very pleased that they managed to take Alasdair Gray’s mural with them! I think he did this when on a break from painting the ceiling in Òran Mór …

#Scottish #literature #Glasgow #AlasdairGray #Murals #VisualArt

A green wall. On it is a piece of another wall, cut out to encompass a mural by Alasdair Gray. On the left, a red semi-heraldic Scottish lion rampant is sitting at a table, using a laptop computer. One foot is under the table grasping a computer mouse (which resembles a real mouse, apart from the cable coming out of its nose and linking it to the laptop). A scroll of paper emerges from the laptop's screen, and the lion is using a quill pen to write on it. The scroll has handwriting on it, saying

words
wards
wurds
Scots
Scottish
Scotch
Scoatch
Caledonian

The scroll rolls out of the top of the laptop screen and across the rest of the wall, becoming a banner reading

SCOTTISH Books

ALT

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111d

Alasdair Gray’s “The Great Bear Cult” is a script for a (rejected) documentary on the movement which briefly swept Britain in the 1930s. Although mention of the Cult is still suppressed, @canongatebooks includes the script in UNLIKELY STORIES, MOSTLY

Today, 7 November, is Hug A Bear Day 🧸

@bookstodon

https://canongate.co.uk/books/100-unlikely-stories-mostly/

#Scottish #literature #AlasdairGray #HugABearDay

THE GREAT BEAR CULT
In 1975 there came straight to Glasgow from a Berlin gig Pete Brown the poet, Pete Brown the friend of Horowitz, Pete Brown the songwriter and sometimes pop-song singer. And I dined with him at the home of Barbara and Lindley Nelson. As usual Pete was with a new girlfriend who received most of his conversation, but first he showed the Nelsons and myself a souvenir of Berlin, and that was what we discussed. It was a street photograph of Pete arm in arm with a bear. Berlin takes its name from a bear, so commercial cameramen prowl the streets with a suitably dressed partner. But though the bear in the picture was a disguised man he appeared so naturally calm, so benignly strong, that beside him Pete (who in isolation is as calm, benign and shaggy as a sapient man can be) looked comparatively shifty and agley. We were also intrigued to find the image in the photograph oddly familiar though Barbara, Lindley and myself had never seen another like it. Did it recall dim memories of our infancy in the thirties when the British bear cult was still a political force? As we discussed what we knew of the cult I realized that the time had come for a television programme on it, one which mingled public archive material (photographs, films and sound recordings) with dramatic re-enactments of what took place in private. In 1975 the British Broadcasting Corporation was celebrating the fiftieth year of its charter, archive material was being daily

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113d

Nan Shepherd & her friends
21 Nov, Aberdeen – free, ticketed

Nan Shepherd has often been imagined as a solitary walker & writer. In this talk, Dr Timothy Baker looks at the importance of female friendship in Nan Shepherd’s writing & life, placing her as part of a much larger network of Aberdonian women writers & thinkers

https://aberdeencity.spydus.co.uk/cgi-bin/spydus.exe/ENQ/WPAC/EVSESENQ?SETLVL=&RNI=16811409

#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #womenwriters #NanShepherd #Aberdeen

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112d

Walking in a waking dream
I watched nineteen deer
pour from ridge to glen-floor,
then each in turn leap,
leap the new-raised
peat-dark burn…

—Kathleen Jamie, “The Hinds”
from THE BONNIEST COMPANIE (Picador, 2015)

https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/kathleen-jamie/the-bonniest-companie/9781509801718

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #naturepoetry #deer

The Hinds
Kathleen Jamie

Walking in a waking dream
I watched nineteen deer
pour from ridge to glen-floor,
then each in turn leap,
leap the new-raised
peat-dark burn. This
was the distaff side;
hinds at their ease, alive
to lands held on long lease
in their animal minds,
and filing through a breach
in a never-mended dyke,
the herd flowed up over
heather-slopes to scree
where they stopped, and turned to stare,
the foremost with a queenly air
as though to say: Aren’t we
the bonniest companie?
Come to me,
you’ll be happy, but never go home.

ALT

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112d

Poetic Gems for Topaz: Verses for the Bicentenary of McGonagall
19 Nov, Dundee. Free, ticketed

The Wyvern Poets will share their verses written to celebrate the life, works & legacy of William Topaz McGonagall. The Wyvern Poets acknowledge McGonagall’s enduring impact, which has spread far beyond the city he called home.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/poetic-gems-for-topaz-verses-for-the-bicentenary-of-mcgonagall-tickets-1920903677609

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

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113d

Frankenstein pop-up display
7 Nov, National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh. Free.

A special one-day pop-up display exploring the enduring legacy of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Discover the novel’s lasting influence on works by Scottish writers such as Muriel Spark, Alasdair Gray, Janice Galloway & Liz Lochhead

https://www.nls.uk/whats-on/frankenstein-pop-up/

#Scottish #literature #Frankenstein #MaryShelley #Edinburgh

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112d

Velvetine Verses: Scotland’s Young Makars Poetry Evening
11 Dec, Scottish Poetry Library, Edinburgh. Free, ticketed

An evening of poetry and music showcasing poets from four years of the Scottish Poetry Library’s Next Generation Young Makars mentoring scheme. Curated by Ria Smart.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/velvetine-verses-scotlands-young-makars-poetry-evening-tickets-1780093410309

#Scottish #literature #poetry #Edinburgh

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111d

“The understated power of this writing is extraordinary. Something of that sense of human vision seeing beyond the time of its own life’s duration, surely appealed to T. S. Eliot, who published The Silver Darlings and more of Gunn’s novels”
—Prof Alan Riach re-examines Gunn’s legacy

Neil M. Gunn (1891–1973), one of the most important writers of the 20th century Scottish renaissance, was born #OTD, 8 Nov – a 🎂 🧵

1/5

https://www.thenational.scot/news/15637617.neil-gunn-and-the-search-for-scotlands-soul/

#Scottish #literature #modernism #20thcentury

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77d

Learn from this picture how we journey in this world
Slithering as we go, the foolish and the wise…

—John Burnside, “Pieter Brueghel: Winter Landscape with Skaters and a Bird Trap, 1565”
from BLACK CAT BONE (Jonathan Cape, 2011)

https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/412331/black-cat-bone-by-john-burnside/9780224093859

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #art #visualart #Bruegel #winter #JohnBurnside

John Burnside
Pieter Brueghel: Winter Landscape with Skaters and a Bird Trap, 1565

Learn from this picture how we journey in this world
Slithering as we go, the foolish and the wise

We have to imagine the duties they leave behind
for the thrill of the river,
the kitchens and middens, the sheepfolds and clouded byres,
the old folk in their sick beds
mumbling prayers.

The day is bright
and this is their escape
from hardship,
but each has his private hurt, her secret dread:
the man who starts thirsty and tired, his body soured
with last nights schnapps,
then skates out to the bridge at breakneck speed,
away from the loveless matron he’s had to endure
for decades; the woman in blue and grey, keeping pace with her child,
untroubled for now, but never released from the fear
that her husband will catch her wasting his precious time
and beat her as he’s beaten her for years,
the moment he gets her home.

At midstream, the children play
with makeshift hockey sticks and, near the church,
a man finds the thoughtless grace
of the boy he once was
to glide free
in the very eye of heaven;
it could be simple – paradise foreseen –
but up on the rightmost bank, amid thorns and briars,

ALT

someone has built a bird trap from a plank
set on a perch, from which a length of rope
snakes to a half-closed door,
and all around it, birds dip from the air,
starlings and fieldfares, redwings, unaware
of any danger.

It seems a fable and perhaps it is:
we live in peril, die from happenstance,
a casual slip, a fault line in the ice;
but surely it’s the other thought that matters,
the sense that, now and then, there’s still a chance
a man might slide towards an old
belonging, momentarily involved
in nothing but the present, skating out
towards a white
horizon, fair
and gifted with the grace
to skate forever, slithering as he goes,
but hazarding a guess that someone else
is close beside him, other to his other.

ALT

A 1565 oil painting on an oak panel, attributed to the Flemish painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder. It shows a village scene where numerous small people skate on a frozen river, while on the right among trees and bushes, birds gather around a bird trap – a heavy wooden board propped up on a single stick, with a few crumbs underneath the board. A string is attached to the stick and leads off to a small dark hole in a wall at the very edge of the painting.

ALT

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110d

The bell that tolls my syllables can tell
An underwater tale, clang how there fell
Suddenly out of a surface shouting world
Into dumb calm doomed children…

—“S.S. City of Benares”, by George Sutherland Fraser (1915–1980) – born #OTD, 8 Nov.

On 18 September, 1940, at one minute past midnight, the SS CITY OF BENARES was torpedoed in the Atlantic. Of 134 passengers, 90 were child refugees bound for Canada. Only 13 children survived.

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #WarPoetry #WW2 #refugees