Eggplant.place

264d

At times, in those last few months,
he would think of a word
and he had to remember the tree, or the species of frog,

the sound denoted…

—John Burnside, “The Last Man to Speak Ubykh“
published in the London Review of Books, August 2002

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v24/n16/john-burnside/the-last-man-to-speak-ubykh

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #MotherLanguageDay #UNESCO #linguistics

The Last Man to Speak Ubykh
John Burnside

The linguist Ole Stig Andersen was keen to seek out the remaining traces of a West Caucasian language called Ubykh. Having heard that there was one remaining speaker he set out to find the man and arrived in his village on 8 October 1992. The man had died a few hours earlier.

At times, in those last few months,
he would think of a word
and he had to remember the tree, or the species of frog,

the sound denoted:
the tree itself, or the frog, or the state of mind
and not the equivalent word in another language,

the speech that had taken his sons
and the mountain light;
the graves he swept and raked; the wedding songs.

While years of silence gathered in the heat,
he stood in his yard and whispered the name of a bird
in his mother tongue,

while memories of snow and market days,
his father’s hands, the smell of tamarind,
inklings of milk and blood on a sunlit floor

receded in the names no longer used:
the blue of childhood folded like a sheet
and tucked away.

Nothing he said was remembered; nothing he did
was fact or legend
in the village square,

yet later they would memorise the word
he spoke that morning, just before he died:
the word for death, perhaps, or meadow grass,

or swimming to the surface of his mind,
that other word they used, when he was young,
for all they knew that nobody remembered.

ALT

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1y

Well Versed Author Events: Niall Campbell
20 August, online, free

Niall Campbell reads some of his poetry, discusses his work, & answers questions as part of the Well Versed series in partnership with StAnza International Poetry Festival

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/well-versed-author-events-niall-campbell-tickets-1561423853779

#Scottish #literature #poetry

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268d

Those lumbering horses in the steady plough,
On the bare field – I wonder, why, just now,
They seemed terrible, so wild and strange,
Like magic power on the stony grange…

—Edwin Muir (1887–1959), “Horses” 🐴
published in THE GOLDEN TREASURY OF SCOTTISH VERSE, @canongatebooks 2021

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

#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #EdwinMuir #YearoftheHorse #LunarNewYear #ChineseNewYear #poem #poetry #horse #horses #Orkney

Edwin Muir
Horses

Those lumbering horses in the steady plough,
On the bare field – I wonder, why, just now,
They seemed terrible, so wild and strange,
Like magic power on the stony grange.

Perhaps some childish hour has come again,
When I watched fearful, through the blackening rain,
Their hooves like pistons in an ancient mill
Move up and down, yet seem as standing still.

Their conquering hooves which trod the stubble down
Were ritual that turned the field to brown,
And their great hulks were seraphims of,
Or mute ecstatic monsters on the mould.

And oh the rapture, when, one furrow done,
They marched broad-breasted to the sinking sun!
The light flowed off their bossy sides in flakes;
The furrows rolled behind like struggling snakes.

But when at dusk with steaming nostrils home
They came, they seemed gigantic in the gloam,
And warm and glowing with mysterious fire
That lit their smouldering bodies in the mire.

Their eyes as brilliant and as wide as night
Gleamed with a cruel apocalyptic light,
Their manes the leaping ire of the wind
Lifted with rage invisible and blind.

Ah, now it fades! It fades! And I must pine
Again for the dread country crystalline,
Where the blank field and the still-standing tree
Were bright and fearful presences to me.

ALT

Edited 263d ago

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1y

I’ll ha’e nae hauf-way hoose, but aye be whaur
Extremes meet – it’s the only way I ken
To dodge the curst conceit o’ bein’ richt
That damns the vast majority o’ men.

—from “A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle”

A 🎂🧵 for Hugh MacDiarmid—born #OTD, 11 Aug 1892

1/8

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/hugh-macdiarmid

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Scots #Scotslanguage #modernism #20thcentury #MacDiarmid

ALT

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262d

Islands Matter Public Seminar: Faroese & Shetlandic Folklore
26 February, free online

Prof Jóan Pauli Joensen (University of the Faroe Islands) on “Water Beings in the Faroese Folklore – Tradition & Change” & Prof Andrew Jennings (UHI Institute for Northern Studies) on “From Fetlar to Foula – The Norse Roots of Shetland Folklore”

https://www.uhi.ac.uk/en/research-enterprise/cultural/institute-for-northern-studies/events/islands-matter-public-seminar---faroese--shetlandic-folklore.html

#Scottish #Scotland #Shetlandic #Faroese #Shetland #Faroes #folklore #Norse

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263d

Escape to the tailored suit,
the pan-loaf speech,
the benefits of higher education…

—“Kailyard & After” by William Neill (1922–2010), b. #OTD, 22 Feb. He wrote poetry in all three of Scotland’s languages & was an active campaigner for Scots & Gaelic

A 🎂 🧵

1/4

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

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Scots #Scotslanguage #minoritylanguage

William Neill
Kailyard and After

When I wes wee I hud tae dae ma share
mulkan the kye wi the weemin in the byre;
I mind hou I wad scoosh lang streeman jaups
that loupit in the luggie makkin froth
rise oot frae yon rich deeps.

The douce kye skelpit roon thaim wi their tails
tae dicht the flees aff; whiles they’d cotch yir lug
a fair bit ding: ye’d sweir ablo yir braith.
An whiles the wilder yins wad try tae pit
their fit intil the luggie an caa ye oot
on tae the settles, luggie, stuil an aa …
an gin ye didna sett in ticht eneuch
there ye wad be, rubbin a sair hainch
a loch o mulk aboot ye in the grup,
the auld dug barkan an the weemin lauchan
tae see yir breeks aa smoort wi mulk an sharn.
Man, whit a contrast tae ma life-style nou …
nae dungarees, nae luggie and nae kye.

Escape to the tailored suit,
the pan-loaf speech,
the benefits of higher education,
the dull rewards of strict conformity.

O what a fall was there, my countrymen.

ALT

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263d

The Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh and the School of English, University of St Andrews are offering a Joseph Bell Writer’s residency. The residency is open to writers or researchers in fiction, non-fiction, poetry, drama, screenplay, literary and/or historical scholarship, life-writing and medical humanities.

Closing date: 12 noon, 6 March 2026

https://www.vacancies.st-andrews.ac.uk/Vacancies/W/7234/0/464724/889/joseph-bell-writer-in-residence-at-the-royal-college-of-surgeons-of-edinburgh-and-the-school-of-english-university-of-st-andrews

#Scottish #literature #writers #medicalhumanities #fiction #nonfiction #poetry #drama #screenplay #screenwriting

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1y

Now westlin winds, and slaught’ring guns
Bring Autumn’s pleasant weather;
And the moorcock springs, on whirring wings,
Amang the blooming heather…

—Robert Burns, “Song, Composed in August”
First published in POEMS, CHIEFLY IN THE SCOTTISH DIALECT (Kilmarnock, 1786)

Pages digitised by the National Library of Scotland

1/3

https://digital.nls.uk/poems-chiefly-in-the-scottish-dialect/archive/74464614#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=230&xywh=-1574%2C0%2C5647%2C4185

#Scottish #literature #poetry #song #RobertBurns #18thcentury #nature #environment

SONG
composed in August

Tune, I had a horse, I had nae mair

Now westlin winds and slaught'ring guns
Bring Autumn's pleasant weather;

ALT

And the moorcock springs on whirring wings
Amang the blooming heather:
Now waving grain, wide o'er the plain,
Delights the weary Farmer;
And the moon shines bright, when I rove at night,
To muse upon my Charmer.

The Partridge loves the fruitful fells,
The Plover loves the mountains;
The Woodcock haunts the lonely dells,
The soaring Hern the fountains:
Thro' lofty groves the Cushat roves,
The path of man to shun it;
The hazel bush o'erhangs the Thrush,
The spreading thorn the Linnet.

Thus ev'ry kind their pleasure find,
The savage and the tender;
Some social join, and leagues combine,
Some solitary wander:

ALT

Avaunt, away! the cruel sway!
Tyrannic man's dominion;
The Sportsman's joy, the murd'ring cry,
The flutt'ring, gory pinion!

But PEGGY dear, the ev'ning's clear,
Thick flies the skimming Swallow,
The sky is blue, the fields in view,
All fading-green and yellow:
Come let us stray our gladsome way,
And view the charms of Nature;
The rustling corn, the fruited thorn,
And ilka happy creature.

We'll gently walk, and sweetly talk,
Till the silent moon shine clearly;
I'll grasp thy waist, and fondly prest,
Swear how I love thee dearly:
Not vernal show'rs to budding flow'rs,
Not Autumn to the Farmer,
So dear can be, as thou to me,
My fair, my lovely Charmer!

ALT

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1y

Now, on the moors where the guns bring down
The predestinated birds,
Shrill, wavering cries pass
Like the words of an international peace;
And I would that these cries were heard in every town,
Astounding the roar of the wheel
And the lying mouth of the news…

—William Soutar (1898–1943), “The Guns”

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #20thcentury

The Guns
William Soutar

Now, on the moors where the guns bring down
The predestinated birds,
Shrill, wavering cries pass
Like the words of an international peace;
And I would that these cries were heard in every town,
Astounding the roar of the wheel
And the lying mouth of the news:
And I would that these cries might more and more increase
Until the machine stood still;
And men, despairing in the deathly queues,
Heard their own heart-beats
Shouting aloud, in the silence of the streets:
“Are we not also hand-fed in a wilderness:
What are we waiting for?”

ALT

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260d

“Novels like LANARK do what all the best art does: awaken your imaginative capacities without swallowing them whole. It does not give you answers, but it does give you the right questions.”

—Stephen Durkan: “LANARK: an escape to reality”

https://stephendurkan.wordpress.com/2021/02/25/lanark-an-escape-to-reality/

#Scottish #literature #AlasdairGray #GrayDay #Lanark #fantasy

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1y

That August night
the Perseid shower rained
on moor and lily-loch, on a frightened world –
on us, in a roofless shieling

with all our tat…

—Kathleen Jamie, “One of Us”
published in SELECTED POEMS (Picador, 2018)

https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/kathleen-jamie/selected-poems/9781509882953

#Scottish #literature #folklore #poem #poetry #Perseids

One of Us
by Kathleen Jamie

We are come in a stone boat,
a miracle ship that steers itself
round skerries where guillemots
and shags stand still as graves.
Our sealskin cloaks are clasped
by a fist-sized penannular brooch,
our slippers are feathery
gugas’ necks: so delicate
we carried them over the wracky shore,
past several rusted tractors. Truth:
this was a poor place, a
ragged land all worn to holes. No one,
nothing, but a distant
Telecom van, a bungalow
tied with fishing floats
for want of flowers.
That August night
the Perseid shower rained
on moor and lily-loch, on a frightened world –
on us, in a roofless shieling

ALT

with all our tat: the
golden horn of righteousness,
the justice harp; what folks expect.
We took swans’ shape
to cross the Minch, one last fling
with silly magic – at our first
mainland steps a dormobile
slewed into a passing place; cameras flashed.
So we stayed high, surprised
a forester making aeolian flutes
from plastic tubes,
he shared his pay. ‘Avoid
the A9. For God’s sake,
get some proper clothes.” We ditched
the cloaks, bought yellow
Pringle sweaters in Spean Bridge,
and house by safe house
arrived in Edinburgh. So far so
tedious: we all hold
minor government jobs, lay plans, and bide our time.

ALT

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260d

INTERVIEWER: When somebody asks you to describe your book LANARK, what do you say to them?
ALASDAIR GRAY: I say it is a Scottish petit bourgeois model of the universe.
I: Just like that?
AG: Yes, I’ve rehearsed it & honed it down to as few words as possible.

It’s #GrayDay! Alasdair Gray’s LANARK was first published on 25 Feb 1981

@bookstodon
🧵
preface/

🎨 Screenprint of the title page to LANARK, by Gray & Murray Robertson

https://shop.glasgowprintstudio.co.uk/artists/38-alasdair-gray/works/23001-alasdair-gray-lanark-title-page-2014/

#Scottish #literature #AlasdairGray #Lanark

A coloured screenprint of a title page for LANARK: A Life in Four Books. The illustration contains dreamlike imagery against a background of stars and rushing clouds: at the very top, a black-and-white sketch of Glasgow tenements and streets; next to it, a strange figure, part woman, part tree, who is eating the apples that grow from her body; next to that, a hand reaches out of a stormy sea towards a golden sun. A monstrous, distorted mixture of a whale and an elephant, with human hands and breasts, is suckling two embracing figures: a blue man and a pink woman. Dominating the image is a blonde, blue-eyed woman, looking outwards. A thin, almost emaciated, monochrome male figure rises from the page of an open sketchbook. He holds a pencil and a set of dividers and is drawing a replica of his own face. On the sketchbook is written "For Andrew Gray and Morag McAlpine | Glasgow Print Studio | 2014"

ALT

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203d

For Shakespeare’s (probable) birthday: Edwin Morgan’s “Instructions to an Actor”, from Collected Poems (Carcanet 2012)

“This single poem gets, via the heart of all theatre, to the heart of the communal in all the arts, and to the heart of form, the heart of voice and silence and to the heart of a kind of life that will never actually stop.”
—Ali Smith, in From Saturn to Glasgow: fifty favourite poems by Edwin Morgan

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #theatre #Shakespeare #ShakespeareDay

Edwin Morgan
Instructions to an Actor

Now, boy, remember this is the great scene.
You’ll stand on a pedestal behind a curtain,
the curtain will be drawn, and then you don’t move
for eighty lines; don’t move, don’t speak, don’t breathe.
I’ll stun them all out there, I’ll scare them,
make them weep, but it depends on you.
I warn you eighty lines is a long time,
but you don’t breathe, you’re dead,
you’re a dead queen, a statue,
you’re dead as stone, new-carved,
new-painted and the paint not dry
– we’ll get some red to keep your lip shining –
and you’re a mature woman, you’ve got dignity,
some beauty still in middle age, and
you’re kind and true, but you’re dead,
your husband thinks you’re dead,
the audience thinks you’re dead,
and you don’t breathe, boy, I say
you don’t even blink for eighty lines,
if you blink you’re out!
Fix your eye on something and keep watching it.

ALT

Practise when you get home. It can be done.
And you move at last – music’s the cue.
When you hear a mysterious solemn jangle
of instruments, make yourself ready.
Five lines more, you can lift a hand.
It may tingle a bit, but lift it –
slow, slow –
O this is where I hit them
right between the eyes, I’ve got them now –
I’m making the dead walk –
you move a foot, slow, steady, down,
you guard your balance in case you’re stiff,
you move, you step down, down from the pedestal,
control your skirt with one hand, the other hand
you now hold out –
O this will melt their hearts if nothing does –
to your husband who wronged you long ago
and hesitates in amazement
to believe you are alive.
Finally he embraces you, and there’s nothing
I can give you to say, boy,
but you must show that you have forgiven him.
Forgiveness, that’s the thing. It’s like a second life.
I know you can do it. – Right then, shall we try?

ALT

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260d

“LANARK, in common with all great books, is still, and always will be, an act of resistance. It is part of the system of whispers and sedition and direct communion, one voice to another, we call literature.”

—Janice Galloway, writing in 2002

@bookstodon

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2002/oct/12/fiction.alasdairgray

#Scottish #literature #AlasdairGray #GrayDay #Lanark

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260d

“LANARK is a strange, experimental book that immediately thrusts the reader into a weird world with glimmers of familiarity”

—author Rodge Glass & the International Anthony Burgess Foundation discuss Alasdair Gray’s LANARK

https://www.anthonyburgess.org/blog-posts/ninety-nine-novels-lanark-by-alasdair-gray/

#Scottish #literature #AlasdairGray #GrayDay #Lanark #AnthonyBurgess

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259d

Translating the Saga of the Earls of Orkney
Deep Dives into Orkneyinga saga: Notes from the Translators’ Workshop
5 March, University of Aberdeen – free, all welcome

Prof Judith Jesch is an expert on Norse Scotland & its literature, women in the Viking Age, & runology. Her new translation of Orkneyinga saga was published by Birlinn in 2025

https://www.abdn.ac.uk/dhpa/events/23477/

#Scottish #literature #saga #Orkney #medieval #Vikings #Norse #translation

Book cover

The Saga of the Earls of Orkney
Edited and translated by Judith Jesch

A deep red background, decorated with examples of Norse animal knotwork. Ranged below the title, along the base of the cover, are four of the walrus-ivory Lewis chessmen: from left to right, a standing warrior holding a sword; a seated king, a sword across his knees; a seated queen, one arm held up to her face; and a staring warrior holding a sword and a large kite shield in front of his body. This last chessman is chewing the top of his shield in a depiction of berserker battle-frenzy.

ALT

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258d

Agnes Owens in the archives
23 April, National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh. Free, ticketed

2026 is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Agnes Owens (1926–2014), described by Alasdair Gray in 2003 as "the most unfairly neglected of all living Scottish authors".

Explore how her archives are being used to reappraise her legacy & secure her status as a major Scottish literary figure.

https://www.nls.uk/whats-on/agnes-owens-in-the-archives/

#Scottish #literature #womenwriters #AgnesOwens #workingclass #20thcentury #archives