scottish

93d

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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93d

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.

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90d

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.

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.

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78d

“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

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91d

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.

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91d

“[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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74d

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

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91d

Oot behind a lorry,
Peyin nae heed,
Ablow a doubledecker,
A poor wean deid…

—James Copeland (1918–2002), “Black Friday”

Actor & writer James Gordon Copeland’s much anthologised poem “Black Friday” packs tragedy, compassion, & a sense of close community into nine short verses

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #20thcentury #Glasgow #Scots #Scotslanguage

Black Friday
James Copeland

Oot behind a lorry,
Peyin nae heed,
Ablow a doubledecker,
A poor wean deid.

Perra worn sannies,
Wee durrty knees,
Heh, erra polis,
Stand back please!

Lookit the conductriss.
Face as white as chalk,
Heh, see the driver but
Cannae even talk.

Anyone a witness?
Na, we niver saw.
Glad ah’m no the polis
Goin tae tell its maw.

Weemen windae-hingin
Herts in their mooth,
It’s no oor close, Lizzie
Oh Gawdstrewth!

Screams on the landin,
Twa closes doon,
It’s no wee Hughie!
Poor Nellie Broon.

Phone up the shipyard.
Oh, what a shame!
Yes, we'll inform him,
Please repeat the name.

See Big Hughie,
Jokin wi the squad,
Better knock off, Heug,
Oh dear God.

Whit – no his laddie?
Aw, bloody hell!
D’ye see Hughie’s face but,
He’s just a boy himsel.

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91d

“From Scotland to the World”: The Poetry of Hope Mirrlees, Helen Adam, Muriel Spark, & Veronica Forrest-Thomson
—Dorothy McMillan, HUMANITIES 8/4, 2019

Dorothy McMillan discusses four 20th-century women writers “poised… between Scotland and Modernism”

@litstudies

https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0787/8/4/184

#Scottish #literature #poetry #20thcentury #womenwriters #modernism

Abstract

The four poets that provide the material for this chapter did not know each other and they probably did not know each other’s work. However, they had important formative experiences in common: They were all educated in Scotland and they all left Scotland after that early education. Yet, they all retained special, although different, ties to that country, to its history, and its writing. They were all “modern” in their poetry, sometimes bizarrely so: Of each of them it could be said, “There was no one like her.” This strangeness they also share, as they share a willingness, even desire, to shock, a muddling of contemporary and archaic, of real and legendary. Veronica Forrest-Thomson’s “Hold on to your seat-belt Persephone” is an indicative phrase. I aim to show that these serially inimitable modern writers have complicated and intertwined Scottish and international connections.

Keywords: Scotland; ballads; kaleidoscope; Charles Bernstein; Edwin Morgan

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92d

Typographica Scoto-Gadelica: Scottish Gaelic Typographic Visual Identity through Print & Book Culture
3 Dec, Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, Skye, & online – free

Visual identity of language – the use of distinct characters, diacritics, & conventions – is a key factor in cultural identity & national heritage. This talk will explore Scottish Gaelic’s contemporary visual identity.

https://www.smo.uhi.ac.uk/edwin-pickstone/?lang=en

#Scottish #literature #Gaelic #Gaidhlig #BookHistory #printing #typography #identity #design

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92d

Hoy Sound Unscrolled
a poetry reading with Heather H. Yeung
9 Dec, Stromness, ticketed

On the 9th anniversary of the creation of her 9-metre-long scroll-poem KENNINGS, Orkney poet Heather Yeung (楊希蒂) launches the book version of her poem/artefact

https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/whats-on/stromness/stromness-kirk-church-of-scotland/hoy-sound-unscrolled-a-poetry-reading-with-heather-h-yeung/2025-12-09/19:30/t-zozgorv

#Scottish #literature #poetry #Orkney

A piece of paper stained a deep blue, with a more concentrated colour forming waves at the bottom above the paper's white edge. The words

HOY SOUND UNSCROLLED

are printed in white across the top, and spill over the edges of the image. The author's name,

HEATHER H. YEUNG

is printed in white across the bottom.

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92d

So on the bus through late November running
by yellow lights tormented, darkness falling,
the two girls sang for miles and miles together…

—Iain Crichton Smith, “Two Girls Singing”
Published in DEER ON THE HIGH HILLS, ed. by John Greening (Carcanet, 2021)

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

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #20thcentury #November

Two Girls Singing
by Iain Crichton Smith

It neither was the words nor yet the tune.
Any tune would have done and any words.
Any listener or no listener at all.

As nightingales in rocks or a child crooning
in its own world of strange awakening
or larks for no reason but themselves.

So on the bus through late November running
by yellow lights tormented, darkness falling,
the two girls sang for miles and miles together

and it wasn’t the words or tune. It was the singing.
It was the human sweetness in that yellow,
the unpredicted voices of our kind.

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74d

The Many Primes of Muriel Spark
First broadcast in 2018. Available on BBC iPlayer until 27 December.

Kirsty Wark celebrates the life and work of Dame Muriel Spark, author of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and one of the twentieth century’s most enigmatic cultural figures.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09qlx14

#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #womenwriters #MurielSpark

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92d

Creative Conversations: Kristie de Garis
1 Dec, University of Glasgow & online – free

Kristie de Garis’s Drystone: A Life Rebuilt is unflinchingly honest and unexpectedly funny. A story about the weight of the past, resilience and the hard work of living on your own terms.

Some things may never change. What matters is the life you build anyway.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/creative-conversations-kristie-de-garis-tickets-1828297881179

#Scottish #literature #drystoneWalling

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95d

Reading Scotland with Margaret Bennet
Why Scotland Celebrates St Andrew's Day
2 Dec, online – free

Dr Margaret Bennet talks about the relevance of celebrating St Andrew’s Day today & dives into the origins of this national holiday

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

#Scotland #Scottish #literature #culture #StAndrewsDay

READING SCOTLAND
with Margaret Bennett

Why Scotland Celebrates St Andrew's Day

Tuesday 2nd December 2025
6.00–7.30 pm (German time) on MS Teams

www.scotland.uni-mainz.de

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89d

The Little White Rose
(To John Gawsworth)

The rose of all the world is not for me.
I want for my part
Only the little white rose of Scotland
That smells sharp and sweet—and breaks the heart.

—Hugh MacDiarmid, “The Little White Rose”

A poem for St Andrew’s Day 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46800/the-little-white-rose

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #20thcentury #Scotland #HughMacDiarmid #StAndrewsDay

A small spray of white Scottish roses, some open, some just beginning to bud. Prickly stems bearing neat, fern-like, dark green foliage carry cupped, single, creamy-white flowers with pale yellow centres.

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87d

“Helen Adam marched through her life to the beat of her own drum”
—Kristin Prevallet

Helen Adam (1909–1993) – fey child prodigy (published by Faber & Faber at 14) & daughter of the manse; bardic matriarch of the San Francisco Beats; Worm Queen – was born #OTD, 2 Dec.

A 🎂🧵

1/7

https://caesuramag.org/posts/kristin-prevallet-poems-by-helen-adam

#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #womenwriters #gothic #supernatural #ballads #SanFrancisco #BeatPoets #poetry

Edited 87d ago

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87d

“I met people who gave me books, who handed me a thousand lives so that I might learn to live my own”

—Andrew O’Hagan, on why he supports the Scottish Book Trust Christmas appeal

https://www.heraldscotland.com/business_hq/25609921.andrew-ohagan-join-scottish-book-trusts-appeal-change-lives/

#Scottish #literature #books #reading #Christmas #charity

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1y

Fossil hunter, folklorist, evangelist, stonemason, newspaper editor, social justice campaigner, & geologist, Hugh Miller (1802–1856) – born #OTD, 10 Oct – deserves to be remembered in the company of Carlyle, Ruskin, Matthew Arnold & JS Mill as one of the leading moral & social thinkers of the 19th century

A 🎂🧵

1/4

#Scottish #literature #19thcentury #Victorian #geology #fossil #HughMiller

A faded 19th-century sepia photograph of Hugh Miller. He is standing, dressed in workman's overalls, his shirt-sleeves rolled up. He has bushy hair and large sideburns, and his left elbow is propped up on a carved gravestone. His right hand rests on a large stonemason's maul, and he holds a chisel in his left hand.

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88d

When the day-birds have settled
in their creaking trees,
the doors of the forest open
for the flitting
drift of deer
among the bright croziers
of new ferns
and the legible stars…

—Robin Robertson, “What the Horses See at Night”
published in SAILING THE FOREST: Selected Poems (Picador, 2014)

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

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #naturewriting #naturepoetry

What the Horses See at Night
by Robin Robertson

When the day-birds have settled
in their creaking trees,
the doors of the forest open
for the flitting
drift of deer
among the bright croziers
of new ferns
and the legible stars;
foxes stream from the earth;
a tawny owl
frisks the long meadow.
In a slink of river-light,
the mink’s face
is already slippery with yolk,
and the bay’s
tiny islands are drops
of solder
under a drogue moon.
The sea’s a heavy sleeper,
dreaming in and out with a catch
in each breath, and is not disturbed

by that plowt – the first
in a play of herring, a shoal
silvering open
the sheeted black skin of the sea.
Through the starting rain, the moon
skirrs across the sky dragging
torn shreds of cloud behind.
The fox’s call is red
and ribboned
in the snow’s white shadow.
The horses watch the sea climb
and climb and walk
towards them on the hill,
hear the vole
crying under the alder,
our children
breathing slowly in their beds.

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88d

Robert Burns & the Glenriddell Manuscripts
22 January 2026, National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh – free

Discover the incredible story of the Glenriddell Manuscripts – the largest collection of Robert Burns’s original writings in the world.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/robert-burns-and-the-glenriddell-manuscripts-tickets-1975276014733

#Scottish #literature #RobertBurns #18thcentury #poetry #song #letters #manuscripts

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73d

goodk kkkkk unjam ingwe nches lass? start again goodk
lassw enche sking start again kings tart! again sorry…

—Edwin Morgan, “The Computer’s Second Christmas Card”
published in COLLECTED POEMS (Carcanet, 1990)

https://www.carcanet.co.uk/9781857541885/collected-poems/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #concretepoetry #20thcentury #computing #EdwinMorgan

(written in bright green text, in a monospaced font on a black background, to emulate an old CRT computer monitor; the text is divided up into blocks of five letters each)

The Computer's Second Christmas Card
by Edwin Morgan

goodk kkkkk unjam ingwe nches lass? start again goodk
lassw enche sking start again kings tart! again sorry
goodk ingwe ncesl ooked outas thef? unmix asloo kedou
tonth effff rewri tenow goodk ingwe ncesl asloo kedou
tonth effff fffff unjam feast ofsai ntste venst efanc
utsai ntrew ritef easto fstep toeso rryan dsons orry!
start again good? yesgo odkin gwenc eslas looke dout?
doubt wrong track start again goodk ingwe ncesl asloo
kedou tonth efeas tofst ephph phphp hphph unjam phphp
repea tunja mhphp scrub carol hphph repea tscru bcaro
lstop subst itute track merry chris tmasa ndgoo dnewy
earin 1699? check digit banks orryi n1966 endme ssage

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73d

Marking the centenary of the birth of journalist, author, & native Gaelic speaker Finlay J. Macdonald (1925–1987), the BBC has commissioned John Urquhart to make Gaelic translations of a series of readings recorded by Macdonald for Radio 4

https://www.welovestornoway.com/index.php/articles/40837-celebrating-the-work-of-finlay-j-macdonald

#Scottish #literature #Gaidhlig #Gaelic #Hebrides

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86d

Robert Louis Stevenson died #OTD, 3 December, in 1894, aged 44. He is buried on Mt Vaea, on the island of Upolu in Samoa 🇼🇸 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

📷 Thomas Andrew (1855–1939): Burial of Robert Louis Stevenson, 1894 / Le maliu o Tusitala i le tausaga 1894
🧵

1/6

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Burial_and_grave_of_Robert_Louis_Stevenson_in_Samoa,_1894.jpg

#Scottish #literature #19thcentury #Victorian #RobertLouisStevenson #Samoa #Tusitala

A black-and-white photograph, showing the burial of Robert Louis Stevenson. About thirty or forty people – a few are of European origin but most are Samoan – stand solemnly in a thickly wooded area around what must be Stevenson's coffin, draped in cloth and leaves.

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86d

Re-Tracing the Dance-Steps of the Hugboon: The Nordic Background of Orkney Folk Legends
5 December, online – free

In this seminar, Prof Terry Gunnell (University of Iceland) will explore the Nordic connections of Orkney legends & folklore

https://llc.ed.ac.uk/celtic-scottish-studies/css-seminar-series-251205

#Scottish #literature #legends #folklore #folktales #Norse #Orkney

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