Eggplant.place

34d

“At this novel’s heart – as with all Kelman’s work – is an unfettered inner voice, a living consciousness in motion… Kelman gifts us the consciousness of childhood as an eternal experience”

—Alan Warner on James Kelman’s 2008 novel KIERON SMITH, BOY

@bookstodon

https://www.productmagazine.co.uk/books/world-book-trip/

#Scottish #literature #novel #children #childhood #WorldChildrensDay

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34d

Trouble is not my middle name.
It is not what I am.
I was not born for this…

—Liz Lochhead, “Listen”
A poem written for the Children’s Panel, to encourage new voluntary members, 2012. Published in FUGITIVE COLOURS (Polygon, 2016)

https://birlinn.co.uk/product/fugitive-colours/

#Scottish #literature #childhood #children #poem #poetry #WorldChildrensDay

Listen
by Liz Lochhead

Written for the Children’s Panel, to encourage new voluntary members, 2012.

Trouble is not my middle name.
It is not what I am.
I was not born for this.
Trouble is not a place
though I am in it deeper than the deepest wood
and I’d get out of it (who wouldn’t?) if I could.

Hope is what I do not have in hell –
not without good help, now. Could you
listen, listen hard and well
to what I cannot say except by what I do?

And when you say I do it for badness
this much is true:
I do it for badness done to me before
any badness that I do to you.

Hard to unfankle this.
But you can help me.
Maybe.
Loosen
all these knots and really listen.
I cannot plainly tell you this, but, if you care,
then – beyond all harm and hurt –
real hope is there.

ALT

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34d

See ma mammy
See ma dinner ticket
A pititnma
Pokit an she pititny
Washnmachine…

—Margaret Hamilton, “Lament for a Lost Dinner Ticket”
published in NEW POEMS 1972–73: a PEN anthology of contemporary poetry, ed. Douglas Dunn (Hutchinson, 1973)

https://www.scotslanguage.com/articles/node/id/21

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #childhood #children #Scots #Scotslanguage ##WorldChildrensDay

Lament for a Lost Dinner Ticket
Margaret Hamilton

See ma mammy
See ma dinner ticket
A pititnma
Pokit an she pititny
Washnmachine.

See thon burnty
Up wherra firewiz
Ma mammy says Am no tellynagain
No’y playnit.
A jist wen’y eatma
Pokacrisps furma dinner
Nabigwoffldoon.

The wummin sed Aver near
Clapsd
Jistur heednur
Wee wellies sticknoot.

They sed Wot heppind?
Nme’nma belly
Na bedna hospital.
A sed A pititnma
Pokit an she pititny
Washnmachine.

They sed Ees thees chaild eb slootly
Non verbal?
A sed MA BUMSAIR
Nwen’y sleep.

ALT

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34d

The lights from the parlour and kitchen shone out
Through the blinds and the windows and bars;
And high overhead and all moving about,
There were thousands of millions of stars…

—Robert Louis Stevenson, “Escape at Bedtime”
from A CHILD’S GARDEN OF VERSES (1885)

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Childrensliterature #kidlit #childhood #children #19thcentury #Victorian #RobertLouisStevenson #WorldChildrensDay

Escape at Bedtime
by Robert Louis Stevenson

The lights from the parlour and kitchen shone out
Through the blinds and the windows and bars;
And high overhead and all moving about,
There were thousands of millions of stars.
There ne’er were such thousands of leaves on a tree,
Nor of people in church or the Park,
As the crowds of the stars that looked down upon me,
And that glittered and winked in the dark.

The Dog, and the Plough, and the Hunter, and all,
And the star of the sailor, and Mars,
These shone in the sky, and the pail by the wall
Would be half full of water and stars.
They saw me at last, and they chased me with cries,
And they soon had me packed into bed;
But the glory kept shining and bright in my eyes,
And the stars going round in my head.

ALT

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33d

Cauld, cauld as the wall
That rins frae under the snaw
On Ben a’Bhuird…

—Nan Shepherd, “Cauld, cauld as the wall”
published in A KIST O SKINKLAN THINGS (ASL, 2017)

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

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Scots #Scotslanguage #winter

Nan Shepherd
Cauld, cauld as the wall

Cauld, cauld as the wall
That rins frae under the snaw
On Ben a’Bhuird,
And fierce, and bricht,
This water’s nae for ilka mou,
But him that’s had a waucht or noo
Nae wersh auld waters o the plain
Can sloke again,
But aye he clim’s the weary hicht
To fin’ the wall that lowps like licht,
Caulder than mou can thole, and aye
The warld cries out on him for fey.

ALT

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33d

Reigniting Spark: Jewish Values in the Modernism of Muriel Spark
26 Nov, University of Edinburgh & online – free

Prof Holli Levitsky investigates how Muriel Spark navigates her Jewish identity amidst the broader themes of modernity, nationalism, & personal identity

@litstudies

https://www.iash.ed.ac.uk/event/professor-holli-levitsky-reigniting-spark-jewish-values-modernism-muriel-spark

#Scottish #literature #murielspark #20thcentury #womenwriters #Jewish #Catholic #modernism #identity

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10d

Finally, I’m done with the phone calls and everything else
and when I switch on the radio it feels like lying in salt water –
all I need to do is breathe: Bach will keep me afloat…

—Elizabeth Burns (1957–2015) was born #OTD, 14 December

1/3

https://www.wayleavepress.co.uk/?page_id=898

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #womenwriters #music #classicalmusic #Bach

Listening to Bach’s B Minor Mass in the kitchen
by Elizabeth Burns

Finally, I’m done with the phone calls and everything else
and when I switch on the radio it feels like lying in salt water –
all I need to do is breathe: Bach will keep me afloat.
I’m mixing yeast into flour, making rolls for my daughter’s
birthday breakfast in the morning, kneading and kneading
the dough then setting it to rise; arranging in a glass
the last of the tiny pink roses with a sprig of green,
finding the blue candles and ironing the tablecloth,
the one my granny embroidered, sweeping the floor,
thinking about the hot August night of the birth,
and about the people we met on Westray last week,
and the presents I still need to wrap, and Bach himself
who is like a mountain covered in wildflowers,
and the singers in the Albert Hall who, the conductor says,
get close to godliness through this performance;
and I’m wondering, as all those voices fill my kitchen
with the Mass, if this is what he means: the sense
of time and place dissolving, so what divides us
from the past and elsewhere, and from each other,
falls away, and everything’s connected and we are all
drops of water in this enormous breaking wave.

ALT

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31d

The City is of Night; perchance of Death…

James “B.V.” Thomson (1834–1882) – poet, journalist, translator, anarchist, atheist – was born #OTD, 23 Nov, in Port Glasgow. Best known for his long poem THE CITY OF DREADFUL NIGHT, he influenced TS Eliot & is seen as a progenitor of Modernism

1/4

https://psychogeographicreview.com/the-city-of-dreadful-night/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Victorian #19thcentury #modernism #TSEliot

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31d

Wha’s Doctor Wha? Wha better kens nor he
that jouks the yetts and rides the birlin wheels
o time and space, shape-shiftin as he reels
through endless versions o reality? …

—James Robertson, “Doctor Wha”
First published in Where Rockets Burn Through (ed. Russell Jones, 2012)

Today, 23 November, is Doctor Who Day!

1/2

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Scots #Scotslanguage #sciencefiction #SFpoetry #DoctorWho #DoctorWhoDay

Doctor Wha
by James Robertson

Wha’s Doctor Wha? Wha better kens nor he
that jouks the yetts and rides the birlin wheels
o time and space, shape-shiftin as he reels
through endless versions o reality?
Bit dis he ken himsel? Weel, mibbe sae,
yet wha’s tae ken gin aw that’s kent by Wha
maks mair or less or better sense ava
nor whit we ithers ken, or think we dae?
The universe is fou o parallels:
wha’s like us? Hunners? Thoosans? We oorsels
micht be mere glisks o life-forms yet tae be.
Whit’s real? Whaur’s here? When’s noo? Wha’s quick or deid?
Wha’s jist a thochtie in anither’s heid?
Wha’s Doctor Wha? Wha better kens nor he?

ALT

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29d

“Laidlaw is the melancholy heir to Marlowe. Reads like a breathless scalpel cut through the bloody heart of a city’ – Denise Mina

William McIlvanney discusses and reads from his LAIDLAW trilogy at Dundee Literary Festival 2013, in conversation with Russel D. McLean

@bookstodon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K879j3KVFvo

#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #CrimeFiction #WilliamMcIlvanney

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28d

Unveiling Lady Scott
Walter Scott, French Influence & Transcultural Connections
Free online from 26 Nov–10 Dec 2025

Céline Sabiron sheds new light on Walter Scott’s work by investigating the French influence of his wife, Charlotte Charpentier & argues that she, as a knowledgeable art & literature enthusiast, greatly assisted him in his work as his secretary, amanuensis, & proofreader

@litstudies

https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/unveiling-lady-scott/312FE027B29B98DEA13AEFD0A39EA095

#Scottish #literature #18thcentury #romanticism #WalterScott

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29d

Burns and Nature
21 January, Glasgow – free

An exploration of Robert Burns’s relationship to nature, told through poetry, spoken word & film.

This event, presented in partnership with the Centre for Robert Burns Studies at the University of Glasgow, will examine Burns’s relationship to place, his life as a farmer, & his perspective on humanity’s relationship to the natural world.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/burns-and-nature-tickets-1975112411391

#Scottish #literature #18thcentury #RobertBurns #poetry #environmentalism #nature

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30d

Computer’s First Christmas Card: a Poetry/Coding workshop
4 December, Mitchell Library, Glasgow – free

Inspired by Edwin Morgan’s poem ‘The Computer’s First Christmas Card’, attendees at this Poetry/Coding workshop will code a festive poem & leave with a handmade Christmas card! There will also be a chance to see some items from the Edwin Morgan collection.

No experience of coding or creative writing necessary.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/computers-first-christmas-card-a-poetrycoding-workshop-tickets-1969671946815

#Scottish #literature #Glasgow #poetry #coding #writing

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63d

Investigating Irish & Scottish Women Writers of Children’s Literature
12 December, Edinburgh University – free

A one-day symposium exploring regional & national identities in children’s literature c.1750–1940 – an era of major cultural & political upheaval in Ireland & Scotland

@litstudies

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/investigating-irish-scottish-women-writers-of-childrens-literature-tickets-1838781518019

#Scottish #Irish #literature #childrensliterature #kidlit #womenwriters #identity

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30d

The night tinkles like ice in glasses.
Leaves are glued to the pavement with frost.
The brown air fumes at the shop windows,
Tries the doors, and sidles past…

—Norman MacCaig, “November night, Edinburgh”
published in The Poems of Norman MacCaig (Birlinn, 2011)

https://birlinn.co.uk/product/the-poems-of-norman-maccaig/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #20thcentury #November #winter #Edinburgh #normanmacCaig

Norman MacCaig
November night, Edinburgh

The night tinkles like ice in glasses.
Leaves are glued to the pavement with frost.
The brown air fumes at the shop windows,
Tries the doors, and sidles past.

I gulp down winter raw. The heady
Darkness swirls with tenements.
In a brown fuzz of cottonwool
Lamps fade up crags, die into pits.

Frost in my lungs is harsh as leaves
Scraped up on paths. – I look up, there,
A high roof sails, at the mast-head
Fluttering a grey and ragged star.

The world’s a bear shrugged in his den.
It’s snug and close in the snoring night.
And outside like chrysanthemums
The fog unfolds its bitter scent.

ALT

Edited 30d ago

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28d

Scotland’s Gutenberg: William Ged & the Invention of Stereotype Printing, 1725–49

Examining the ‘non-moveable type’ productions of Edinburgh goldsmith William Ged (c.1683–1749), Dr William Zachs hypothesises the existence of a group of previously unknown stereotyped books, thus offering a revised history of book production in 18th-century Britain

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMcEZ9FK6ak

#Scottish #literature #history #BookHistory #printing #bookproduction #18thcentury

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29d

‘A Tartan Belle’: Jane, Duchess of Gordon and the Romanticisation of Scottish Identity in London, c.1780–1812
25 Nov, online – free

At a time when markers of Scottish identity were still viewed with suspicion in England, Jane, Duchess of Gordon used her social influence to make Scottish culture interesting & romantic to the British elite

https://www.history.ac.uk/news-events/events/tartan-belle-jane-duchess-gordon-romanticisation-scottish-identity-london-c1780-1812

#Scottish #literature #history #culture #identity #18thcentury #romanticism

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29d

“Scottishness is not some pedigree lineage. This is a mongrel tradition!”

William McIlvanney (1936–2015) – author & poet (& provider, at a rally in Edinburgh in 1992, of our profile header, as quoted in Neal Ascherson’s 2002 book STONE VOICES) – was born #OTD, 25 November

A 🎂 🧵

@bookstodon

1/9

#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #WilliamMcIlvanney #Scottishness #identity

And then, in a tone of tremendous pride, he said this. “Scottishness is not some pedigree lineage. This is a mongrel tradition!” At those words, for reasons which perhaps neither he nor they ever quite understood, the crowd broke into cheers and applause which lasted on and on.

ALT

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28d

EXTRA TEETH: Issue Ten Launch
3 December, Portobello Bookshop, Edinburgh, & online – tickets from £0 to £12 (in-person, including a copy of the magazine)

EXTRA TEETH are back with a brand new issue packed full of brilliant writing from some of Scotland's finest writers, both emerging & established. The launch will feature an evening of readings from contributors to the magazine: Charlotte Haley, Sadie Maskery & Monica S. Park.

https://www.theportobellobookshop.com/events/extra-teeth-issue-ten-launch

#Scottish #literature #Edinburgh

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28d

Skint, baw ragged, poackets ful eh ma
fingers, cannae afford tae burn toast an
it’s November. Christmas is close…

—William Letford, “This is it”
Published in DIRT (Carcanet, 2016)

https://www.carcanet.co.uk/9781784102005/dirt/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #November

This Is It
by William Letford

Skint, baw ragged, poackets ful eh ma
fingers, cannae afford tae burn toast an
it’s November. Christmas is close. Av been
away bit noo am back an ivery coarner
is a different colour cause am hame an
memories ur painted wae mischief. Am
outside Gregs eatin a macaroni pie an a
busker picks up eez guitar an plugs in eez
amplifier. The sound fae the strings is
like frost. Eez young an the dreams thit
wur boarn in eez bedroom wake me up.
Am watchin people passin an they know
thit eez good bit they don’t want tae look.
They turn thur heeds an tilt thur ears
an jog on. If a hud a spare pound
a wid throw it bit a don’t so a jist listen.
I’d like tae tell um thit this is it, this is
where the hammer hits the stane an sparks
ur made, standin oan a corner in yur hame
toon, an audience eh one radge eatin a
macaroni pie, bit singin, wee man, yur singin.

ALT

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25d

I would like to tell her not to wear such flimsy shoes,
that rubble contains the whole spectrum of knowable
and unknowable dangers…

—Marjorie Lotfi, “Picture of Girl and Small Boy (Burij, Gaza, 2014)”
published in THE WRONG PERSON TO ASK (Bloodaxe Books, 2023)

https://www.un.org/en/observances/international-day-of-solidarity-with-the-palestinian-people

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Gaza #Palestine #PalestineSolidarity

Picture of Girl and Small Boy (Burij, Gaza, 2014)
Marjorie Lotfi

I would like to tell her not to wear such flimsy shoes,
that rubble contains the whole spectrum of knowable
and unknowable dangers: sheets of metal ripped
to knife edge, live wires, bloated arms reaching

for light. Her hair, scraped back into a ponytail,
is open to sky; remnants of buildings filter down
one concrete chunk at a time, and the midday bells
of rockets ring out above her. She carries a boy

on her still narrow hips, his legs entwined around
her yellow dungarees. Like a rodeo rider, his left arm
grips her shoulder to steady himself, or her,
while his torso reels back and away; his body

is asking to slow down, to turn back. Instead,
her eyes comb the ground for a next step, fingers
of her free hand curled into a claw, as if
to frighten off what she somehow sees ahead.

ALT

A Palestinian girl carries a child across rubble from a building that police said was destroyed by an Israeli air strike, in the Burij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, August 1, 2014. REUTERS/Finbarr O'Reilly. Marjorie Lotfi's poem describes the picture in detail:

Picture of Girl and Small Boy (Burij, Gaza, 2014)
Marjorie Lotfi

I would like to tell her not to wear such flimsy shoes,
that rubble contains the whole spectrum of knowable
and unknowable dangers: sheets of metal ripped
to knife edge, live wires, bloated arms reaching

for light. Her hair, scraped back into a ponytail,
is open to sky; remnants of buildings filter down
one concrete chunk at a time, and the midday bells
of rockets ring out above her. She carries a boy

on her still narrow hips, his legs entwined around
her yellow dungarees. Like a rodeo rider, his left arm
grips her shoulder to steady himself, or her,
while his torso reels back and away; his body

is asking to slow down, to turn back. Instead,
her eyes comb the ground for a next step, fingers
of her free hand curled into a claw, as if
to frighten off what she somehow sees ahead.

ALT

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13d

“No Extra Words“ – The Scottish Poet Norman MacCaig (1910–1996)
16 Dec, free online

Anette Degott looks at the life & work of Norman MacCaig
via Scotland HUB at Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz

@litstudies

https://www.scotland.uni-mainz.de/reading-scotland/

#Scottish #literature #poetry #20thcentury #NormanMacCaig

Reading Scotland with Anette Degott

“No Extra Words“ – The Scottish Poet Norman MacCaig (1910–1996)

Tuesday, 16th December 2025
6.00–7.30 pm (German time) on MS Teams

www.scotland.uni-mainz.de

ALT

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26d

Mirror, mirror on the wall
show me in succession all
my faces, that I may view
and choose which I would like as true…

—“Through the Looking Glass”, by Veronica Forrest-Thomson (1947–1975) – born #OTD, 28 Nov

published in COLLECTED POEMS (Shearsman Books, 2008)

1/3

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/143680/through-the-looking-glass

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #20thcentury #WomenWriters #postmodern

Through the Looking Glass
by Veronica Forrest-Thomson

Mirror, mirror on the wall
show me in succession all
my faces, that I may view
and choose which I would like as true.

Teach me skill to disguise
what’s not pleasing to the eyes,
with faith, that life obeys the rules,
in man or God or football pools.

Always keep me well content
to decorate attitude and event
so that somehow behind the scene
I may believe my actions mean;

that one can exercise control
in playing out a chosen role;
rub clouded glass and then,
at will, write self on it again.

But if, in some unlucky glance,
I should glimpse naked circumstance
in all its nowhere-going-to,
may you crack before I do.

ALT

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26d

“[P]ay attention to the moments of contradiction and uncertainty threaded through character dialogue and self-reflection […] Watch his tone. Watch his humour. For me, that’s where the sharpest lessons are.”

—Bethany Jacobs on the worldbuilding of Iain M. Banks

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2506129-why-sci-fi-novelist-iain-m-banks-was-an-astounding-world-builder/

#Scottish #literature #IainBanks #IainMBanks #TheCulture #ScienceFiction #Scifi #worldbuilding

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9d

jollymerry
hollyberry
jollyberry
merryholly
happyjolly
jollyjelly
jellybelly
bellymerry
hollyheppy
jollyMolly
marryJerry
merryHarry
hoppyBarry
heppyJarry
bobbyheppy
berryjorry…

—Edwin Morgan, “The Computer’s First Christmas Card”
first published in THE SECOND LIFE (Edinburgh University Press, 1968)

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #concretepoetry #20thcentury #EdwinMorgan #Christmas #ChristmasCard #computer

(written in bright green text, in a monospaced font on a black background, to emulate an old CRT computer monitor)

The Computer's First Christmas Card
by Edwin Morgan

jollymerry
hollyberry
jollyberry
merryholly
happyjolly
jollyjelly
jellybelly
bellymerry
hollyheppy
jollyMolly
marryJerry
merryHarry
hoppyBarry
heppyJarry
bobbyheppy
berryjorry
jorryjolly
moppyjelly
Mollymerry
Jerryjolly
bellyboppy
jorryhoppy
hollymoppy
Barrymerry
Jarryhappy
happyboppy
boppyjolly
jollymerry
merrymerry
merrymerry
merryChris
ammerryasa
Chrismerry
asMERRYCHR
YSANTHEMUM

ALT

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