scottish

114d

Val McDermid: The Stories Too Dark for Fiction

In this episode of Behind the Crimes, Val reflects on her path from newsroom reporter to bestselling novelist. Val speaks candidly about her years in journalism, which included covering stories such as Lockerbie, Hillsborough and the Peter Sutcliffe investigation. The conversation also explores how those experiences shaped her fiction.

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

#Scottish #literature #CrimeFiction #journalism #ValMcDermid

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191d

“I can’t begin to convey to you the power of Lindsay’s vision; I found it overwhelming when I first read the book, thirty years ago, & I’ve seldom seen its equal outside Blake.”
—Philip Pullman

David Lindsay (1876–1945) was born #OTD, 3 March – author of A VOYAGE TO ARCTURUS & other weird works

A 🎂 🧵

@bookstodon

1/4

#Scottish #literature #ScienceFiction #fantasy #metaphysics #20thCentury #cultfiction

A battered paperback book cover, spread out to show front, back, and spine. The book title is A VOYAGE TO ARCTURUS, by David Lindsay. A puff quote reads, “One of the most brilliant flights of pure fantasy ever recorded” – London Times.

The cover shows a dark purple-black cliff-face. In front of it, from the back to the front cover, a slender dragonish creature coils. It has multiple green wings, and is covered in multi-hued scales: blue and blue-green on top, and yellow and orange beneath. Two slim, androgynous figures are mounted on the dragon's back. Both are dressed in loose robes. The leading figure sits upright, holding reins and directing the dragon; they are wearing a large, flowing red headdress. The figure behind is darker, with their arms wrapped around the leading figure's chest, and their head resting on the other's shoulder.

Edited 191d ago

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191d

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”
published in THE BONNIEST COMPANIE (Picador, 2015)

Today, 3 March, is World Wildlife Day.

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

#Scottish #literature #WorldWildlifeDay #poem #poetry #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.

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191d

Today,
on our journey home,
we saw

a buzzard
making a kill
on the roadside verge…

—John Burnside, “Wild”
Published in THE THING THAT MATTERED MOST: Scottish poems for children, @scottishpoetrylibrary / B&W, 2006

Today, 3 March, is World Wildlife Day.

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

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #WorldWildlifeDay

Wild
John Burnside

Today,
on our journey home,
we saw

a buzzard
making a kill
on the roadside verge.

It glided across
our windscreen
and hunkered down

on something –
we couldn’t see
what it was – as the wings

folded around
what Lucas called
‘the prey’.

He wanted to know
if buzzards took children,
or cats;

then,
as we slowed to look,
he chose to admire

the plumage
and the fierce light
of its eye.

Edited 191d ago

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191d

Tha a’ chlosach air ragachadh
mar gun robh e a’ snàmh,
spliadh is ceann air an togail,
sùil is bian
a’ deàrrsadh mar umha…

—Meg Bateman, “Dòbhran Marbh”
Published in THE GOLDEN TREASURY OF SCOTTISH VERSE, @canongate.co.uk 2021

Today, 3 March, is World Wildlife Day

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

#Scottish #literature #Gaidhlig #Gaelic #WorldWildlifeDay #poem #poetry

Dòbhran Marbh
Meg Bateman

Tha a’ chlosach air ragachadh
mar gun robh e a’ snàmh,
spliadh is ceann air an togail,
sùil is bian
a’ deàrrsadh mar umha.

Tionndaidhidh mi air falbh,
air mo nàrachadh ro mheatair de
dhòbhran fom sgrùdadh,
is am bàs air biast cho falbhach
a ghlacadh.

Air ulbhaig, làrach fhuilteach
a chuinnlean; os a cionn,
sgeilp a’ stobadh a-mach
de riasg ’s de fhraoch
far an do thuit e

An comhair a chinn dha na creagan foidhe,
far an laigh e san dubhar mar chloich eile,
a shròn air a pronnadh, gaoisid na fhiaclan,
air a chùlaibh, a shaobhaidh, ùrail, gorm,
mun cuairt air sa bhruach, dàil-chuach is seòbhrach.

Sìnidh mo làmh gu grad thuige
’s mi a’ tuigsinn gun deach a nàdar
ceàrr air an drip an earraich,
gun rachadh an dòbhran mòrail
cuideachd air iomrall.

Dead Otter
Meg Bateman

Rigor mortis curves the beast
as if swimming,
flat head and webbed foot
raised, eyes gleaming,
pelt of bronze.

I turn away, embarrassed
by a metre of otter
laid out for my scrutiny,
by death’s exposure
of so fleet a creature.

On a boulder, the bloody
stamp of its nostrils;
above, a jutting ledge
of tangled, fibrous root
where it must have fallen

headlong to the rocks where it lies in shade
with staved in snout and stillness of stone,
white fur gripped between its teeth,
with its lair behind, lush with liverwort,
and a flicker of violets and primrose in the bank.

I reach out to it, shocked
that in the urgency of spring
instinct could fail it,
shocked that it too
could lose its footing.

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191d

Flinching in my hands
this soiled and studded but good heart,
which stippling my cupped palms, breathes –

—Jen Hadfield, “Hedgehog, Hamnavoe”
published in NIGH-NO-PLACE (Bloodaxe Books, 2007)

Today, 3 March, is World Wildlife Day.

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/hedgehog-hamnavoe/

#Scottish #literature #WorldWildlifeDay #poem #poetry #hedgehogs #Shetland

Hedgehog, Hamnavoe
Jen Hadfield

Flinching in my hands
this soiled and studded but good heart,
which stippling my cupped palms, breathes –

a kidney flinching on a hot griddle,
or very small Hell’s Angel, peeled from the verge
of a sweet, slurred morning.

Drunk, I coddle it like a crystal ball,
hellbent the realistic mysteries
should amount to more than guesswork

and fleas.

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191d

The grey roots circle thee, who never knew
At any hour within thy travels lone
A human shape but mine…

—Olive Fraser, “The Adder of Quinag”
published in THE WRONG MUSIC, @canongatebooks 1989

Today, 3 March, is World Wildlife Day.

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/adder-quinag/

#Scottish #literature #WorldWildlifeDay #poem #poetry #snake

The Adder of Quinag
Olive Fraser

The grey roots circle thee, who never knew
At any hour within thy travels lone
A human shape but mine. Thou com’st to view,
Wild, unafraid, what stands beside thy stone
And gazes on thee in thy wilderness
Of fifty miles. What thinkst thou of me,
For I am of a race thou could’st not guess
Would murder all thy hapless innocency?

O mountain, take thy small heart back again
And keep him in thy care when I shall go,
Unvisited by all things but the rain,
The hurtless sunbeams, and the winds that blow
For ever in his moors. O let him hold
No intricate memory of that being who stood
Just once by his wild beauty, and did fold
Him with a blessing alien to my blood.

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165d

I hear your 𝘣𝘰𝘭𝘥 𝘣𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘬𝘣𝘪𝘳𝘥, that slow singer,
alone at my desk yet walking with you
through your valleys and hills, that shining
stream bubbling notes of your music
your pure Welsh music…

—Sheila Templeton, “For R.S. Thomas”
Published in A Little Touch of Cliff in the Evening: New Writing Scotland 30 (ASL, 2012)

The Welsh poet R.S. Thomas (1913–2000) was born #OTD, 29 March

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #RSThomas

Sheila Templeton
FOR R. S. THOMAS

I hear your bold blackbird, that slow singer,
alone at my desk yet walking with you
through your valleys and hills, that shining
stream bubbling notes of your music
your pure Welsh music. And I am walking
behind my father, born in your time, but
seeded in his own north land, ploughing,
proud to stride behind his pair o horse;
high cheek-boned, hair rain-flattened
the colour of wet barley, speaking the secret
words to his beasts, turning his park
into a sea of order, yes, with your stiff clods
glinting in the wind, gulls and peesie-weeps
skirling encouragement; above him
only a dark yearning sky.
Another enduring ordinary man,
born to till and toil, to win his wars
to wrestle with his burning under those stars.

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190d

The Worm Queen Turns: Helen Adam (1909–93)
From Dundee Manse to California Coven
10 March, University of Glasgow – free

From Celtic Twilight to the Beat Generation, Adam’s career explodes literary historical periodisation & tangles its sequential logic

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/corey-gibson-the-worm-queen-turns-tickets-1701079658049

#Scottish #literature #CelticTwilight #beats #20thcentury #womenwriters #poetry

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176d

This week; the sermon is salt
and the taste of it as song. A clean, cold burn

quickens the blood…

—A.M. Havinden, “Sea Chapel”
published in Break in Case of Silence: New Writing Scotland 39 (ASL, 2021)

https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/newwriting/nws39/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry

A. M. Havinden
Sea Chapel

This week; the sermon is salt
and the taste of it as song. A clean, cold burn

quickens the blood. Unseen, underfoot,
deep notes of wrack and weed wind

ankles. We raise our voices
in bright blasphemy, in shock and defiance

a hymn of human-scale endurance,
how great and small we are;

how outrageously alone; how far
we’ve come, suddenly, from shore.

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176d

James Macpherson’s Epic Journey
23 April, online – tickets from £3.35

Investigating the life, work, & legacy of James Macpherson. How did he create his epics – & who helped him? What poems did he draw upon for inspiration, from his own Gaelic culture? What impact did Macpherson’s poems have, in Britain & beyond – & on Scottish Gaelic culture too? And how did the controversy over the “Ossian” epic’s authenticity first begin?

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/james-macphersons-epic-journey-domhnall-uilleam-stiubhart-zoom-tickets-1981485519529

#Scottish #literature #Ossian #18thcentury

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189d

“I never read such an impious book,” said the reader, throwing it on the floor.
“You need not hurt me,” said the book; “you will only get less for me second hand, and I did not write myself.”

For World Book Day (UK & Ireland), a fable about a book: Robert Louis Stevenson’s “The Reader”

@bookstodon

#Scottish #literature #RobertLouisStevenson #fables #shortstories #flashfiction #microfiction #19thcentury #Victorian

XI—THE READER

“I never read such an impious book,” said the reader, throwing it on the floor.

“You need not hurt me,” said the book; “you will only get less for me second hand, and I did not write myself.”

“That is true,” said the reader. “My quarrel is with your author.”

“Ah, well,” said the book, “you need not buy his rant.”

“That is true,” said the reader. “But I thought him such a cheerful writer.”

“I find him so,” said the book.

“You must be differently made from me,” said the reader.

“Let me tell you a fable,” said the book. “There were two men wrecked upon a desert island; one of them made believe he was at home, the other admitted—”

“O, I know your kind of fable,” said the reader. “They both died.”

“And so they did,” said the book. “no doubt of that. And everybody else.”

“That is true,” said the reader. “Push it a little further for this once. And when they were all dead?”

“They were in God’s hands, the same as before,” said the book.

“Not much to boast of, by your account,” cried the reader.

“Who is impious now?” said the book.

And the reader put him on the fire.

The coward crouches from the rod,
And loathes the iron face of God.

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189d

The Clockwork Orange Project is an experimental literary project taking place on the Glasgow Subway, sponsored by the Royal Society of Literature, & is open to anyone living in or around (or with some meaningful connection to) Glasgow.

The goal of the project is to reimagine urban public spaces as sites of community and creativity, and to produce work that is collaborative, interactive and experimental.

https://kelvingrovewriters.wordpress.com/2026/03/02/the-clockwork-orange-project/

#Scottish #literature #writing #writers #Glasgow

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140d

Book launch:

the many days / uno dei tanti giorni
A revised and extended bilingual edition of poems by Norman MacCaig

7 June, The Waverley Bar, Edinburgh

This new publication contains an introductory appreciation of MacCaig's poetry by his translator, Marco Fazzini, & a preface by Seamus Heaney.

Marco will be joined by a number of poets reading MacCaig's work in both their original English and new Italian translations.

#Scottish #literature #poetry #NormanMacCaig #translation #Italian

the many days / uno dei tanti giorni
A revised and extended bilingual edition of poems by Norman MacCaig

This new publication contains an introductory appreciation of MacCaig's poetry by his translator, Marco Fazzini, and a preface by Seamus Heaney.
Marco will be joined by a number of poets reading MacCaig's work in both their original English and new Italian translations.
Confirmed poets and readers include: Gerda Stevenson, Alan Spence, Andrew Greig and Christine De Luca.

Venue:
The Waverley Bar (upstairs),
3-6 St Mary's Street,
Edinburgh EH1 ITA
Date d time:
Sunday 7th June, 7pm - 9pm

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188d

There’s no a muir in my ain land but’s fu’ o’ sang the day,
Wi’ the whaup, and the gowden plover, and the lintie upon the brae.
The birk in the glen is springin’, the rowan-tree in the shaw,
And every burn is rinnin’ wild wi’ the meltin’ o’ the snaw…

—Lady John Scott, “The Comin’ o’ the Spring”

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/comin-o-spring/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Scots #Scotslanguage #Spring

The Comin’ o’ the Spring
Lady John Scott

There’s no a muir in my ain land but’s fu’ o’ sang the day,
Wi’ the whaup, and the gowden plover, and the lintie upon the brae.
The birk in the glen is springin’, the rowan-tree in the shaw,
And every burn is rinnin’ wild wi’ the meltin’ o’ the snaw.

The wee white cluds in the blue lift are hurryin’ light and free,
Their shadows fleein’ on the hills, where I, too, fain wad be;
The wind frae the west is blawin’, and wi’ it seems to bear
The scent o’ the thyme and gowan thro’ a’ the caller air.

The herd doon the hillside’s linkin’. O licht his heart may be
Whose step is on the heather, his glance ower muir and lea!
On the Moss are the wild ducks gatherin’, whar the pules like diamonds lie,
And far up soar the wild geese, wi’ weird, unyirdly cry.

In mony a neuk the primrose lies hid frae stranger een,
An’ the broom on the knowes is wavin’ wi’ its cludin o’ gowd and green;
Ower the first green sprigs o’ heather, the muir-fowl faulds his wing,
And there’s nought but joy in my ain land at the comin’ o’ the Spring!

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188d

Nuair a bha Gàidhlig aig na h-Eoin – When the Birds Spoke Gaelic
28 March, Isle of Lewis. £12

Port na h-Eala & Skylark’s Ascension are two of the many songs, stories & tunes in the Gaelic tradition featuring or inspired by birds. Join Màiri MacMillan, Alana MacInnes, Gillebrìde MacMillan, Padruig Moireasdan & Coll MacDonald for an evening of songs, stories, folklore & music inspired by birdlife

https://www.tickettailor.com/events/mairimacmillan/2103909

#Scottish #literature #song #music #folklore #Gaidhlig #Gaelic #birds

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187d

“It is not a romantic Tale that the Reader is here presented with, but a real History. Not the Adventures of a Robinson Crusoe, a Colonel Jack, or a Moll Flanders, but the Actions of the HIGHLAND ROGUE…”

Rob Roy MacGregor was baptised #OTD, 7 March, 1671. Walter Scott’s novel made the Scottish outlaw internationally famous – & created the model for today’s roguish antiheroes

@litstudies

1/5

https://theconversation.com/two-centuries-before-marvel-and-star-wars-walter-scotts-rob-roy-was-the-first-modern-anti-hero-89421

#Scottish #literature #history #historicalfiction #romanticism #WalterScott

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187d

Currently on BBC Sounds: THE STATE OF THE ART by Iain M. Banks

In 1977, the Culture starship GCU ARBITRARY discovers Earth: a primitive society on the edge of self-destruction.

When Contact agent Dervley Linter decides to go native, can Diziet Sma change his mind?

@bookstodon

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00hv1dz

#Scottish #literature #sciencefiction #scifi #IainBanks #IainMBanks #TheCulture #audiobook

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175d

Tobias Smollett (1721–1771) was baptised #OTD, 19 March.

George Orwell thought him “Scotland’s best novelist”, “whose outstanding intellectual honesty may have been connected with the fact that he was not an Englishman” (TRIBUNE magazine, 22/9/1944)

1/5

https://orwell.ru/library/reviews/smollett/english/e_ts

#Scottish #literature #Smollett #18thcentury #Orwell

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186d

Scotland, you have invoked her name
just once too often
in your Presbyterian living rooms.
She’s heard, yea
even unto heathenish Arabia
your vixen’s bark of poverty…

—Kathleen Jamie, “The Queen of Sheba”
first published in THE QUEEN OF SHEBA (Bloodaxe Books,1994)

A poem for International Womens’ Day

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #womenwriters #InternationalWomensDay #QueenofSheba

KATHLEEN JAMIE
The Queen of Sheba

Scotland, you have invoked her name
just once too often
in your Presbyterian living rooms.
She’s heard, yea
even unto heathenish Arabia
your vixen’s bark of poverty, come down
the family like a lang neb, a thrawn streak,
a wally dug you never liked
but can’t get shot of.

She’s had enough. She’s come.
Whit, tae this dump? Yes!
She rides first camel
of a swaying caravan
from her desert sands
to the peat and bracken
of the Pentland hills
across the fit-ba pitch
to the thin mirage
of the swings and chute; scattered with glass.

Breathe that steamy musk
on the Curriehill Road, not mutton-shanks
boiled for broth, nor the chlorine stink
of the swimming pool where skinny girls
accuse each other of verrucas.
In her bathhouses women bear
warm pot-bellied terracotta pitchers
on their laughing hips.
All that she desires, whatever she asks
She will make the bottled dreams
of your wee lasses look like sweeties.

Spangles scarcely cover
her gorgeous breasts, hanging gardens
jewels, frankincense; more voluptuous
even than Vi-next-door, whose
high-heeled slippers
keeked from dressing gowns
like little hooves, wee tails
of pink fur stuffed in the cleavage of her toes;
more audacious even than Currie Liz
who led the gala floats
through the Wimpey scheme
in a ruby-red Lotus Elan
before the Boys’ Brigade band
and the Brownies’ borrowed coal-truck;
hair piled like candy-floss;
who lifted her hands from the neat wheel
to tinkle her fingers
at her tricks
among the Masons and the elders and the police.

The cool black skin
of the Bible couldn’t hold her,
nor the atlas green
on the kitchen table,
you stuck with thumbs
and split to fruity hemispheres –
yellow Yemen, Red Sea, Ethiopia. Stick in
with the homework and you’ll be

cliver like yer faither.
but no too cliver,
no above yersel.

See her lead those great soft camels
widdershins round the kirk-yaird,
smiling
as she eats
avocados with apostle spoons
she’ll teach us how. But first

she wants to strip the willow
she desires the keys
to the National Library
she is beckoning
the lasses
in the awestruck crowd ...

Yes, we’d like to
clap the camels,
to smell the spice,
admire her hairy legs and
bonny wicked smile, we want to take
PhDs in Persian, be vice
to her president: we want
to help her
ask some Difficult Questions

she’s shouting for our wisest man
to test her mettle:

Scour Scotland for a Solomon!

Sure enough: from the back of the crowd
someone growls:
whae do you think y’ur?

and a thousand laughing girls and she
draw our hot breath
and shout:

THE QUEEN OF SHEBA!

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186d

All our lives, in every city,
out of every landscape
the waters of the Alhambra
have been murmuring to us…

—Imtiaz Dharker, “Women Bathing”
from The Terrorist At My Table (Bloodaxe Books, 2006)

A poem for International Woman’s Day

https://www.bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/product/the-terrorist-at-my-table-837

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #womenwriters #InternationalWomensDay

Women Bathing
by Imtiaz Dharker

All our lives, in every city,
out of every landscape
the waters of the Alhambra
have been murmuring to us.
From fountains, from watercourses,
from the secret pools in courtyards,
voices calling across centuries.

The other women are bathing
in the moonlight.

‘Come,’ they say, ‘Come out of the day’s heat,
out of shaded rooms, let’s escape and slip away,
let the veils fall, one by one.
Slide into the pools that lie like mirrors of the sky,
and let the moon wash over our bodies.’

Bodies lush, generously-hipped.
Bodies like pomegranates,
bursting with promises.

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186d

I didna speak
whan it bleetert doon.
Ma man wis gey taen up wi’ getting us
sortit, an’ it wis fell lang afore we had
the bastes in an’ the fowl settled…

—Eunice Buchanan, “Wife to Noah”
published in MARKINGS 30 (2010)

A poem for International Women’s Day

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/wife-noah/

#Scottish #literature #InternationalWomensDay #poem #poetry #Scots #Scotslanguage

Wife to Noah
Eunice Buchanan

I didna speak
whan it bleetert doon.
Ma man wis gey taen up wi’ getting us
sortit, an’ it wis fell lang afore we had
the bastes in an’ the fowl settled.

I didna speak
whan the watters spewed
ower ma rigs o’ corn an’ doon the street
intae ma hoose amangst ma rugs
an’ the bonny things I had fae ma mither.

I didna speak
whan I heard ma frien
Becca battrin at the howe o’ wir boat,
her bairn in her airms, yowlin like een
o’ the damned o’Hell. We had linkit
doon the years fae bairnie tae wife.
Ma bonny hinnie, weel-hertit Becca.
I clappit ma haunds tae ma lugs
an’ flung ma airms aboot ma laddies,
but still I didna speak

I didna speak
whan the lift grew black an’ blacker
an’ there wis naither muin nor sun an’ the cries
that had been aa aboot us wir smoored.
Nae soond on that black sea but the doonfa, the dreep,
the plowt, the pish-oot o’ grey watter on grey watter.

I canna speak
o’ the things on the watter
as the days drave on – swollen an’ blae,
wi the sea-maws skirlin an’ pickin, skirlin an’ pickin.
Syne whan the well-heid dried an’ the watters sank,
the laund, oor bonny laund, slaich an’ slairy
wi’ black glaur,
an’ oorsels alane.

But whan I gang the low road on the hinmaist day
an’ I climb the steps for my tryst wi’ God
I will look the Almichty in the face –
an’ I will hae ma say.

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186d

Her hair is cut into that perfect slant –
An innovation circa ’64 by Vidal Sassoon.
She’s wearing C&A’s best effort at Quant
Ending just below the knicker-line, daisy-strewn…

—Liz Lochhead, “Photograph, Art Student, Female, Working Class, 1966”
Published in FUGITIVE COLOURS (Birlinn, 2016)

A poem for International Women’s Day

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

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #InternationalWomensDay

Photograph, Art Student, Female, Working Class
Liz Lochhead

Her hair is cut into that perfect slant –
An innovation circa ‘64 by Vidal Sassoon.
She’s wearing C&A’s best effort at Quant
Ending just below the knicker-line, daisy-strewn.
Keeping herself in tights could blow her grant
Entirely, so each precious pair is soon
Spattered with nail varnish dots that stop each run.
She’s a girl, eighteen – just wants to have fun.

She’s not ‘a chick’. Not yet. Besides, by then
She’ll find the term ‘offensive’. ‘Dollybird’ to quote
Her favourite mags, is what she aspires to when
Her head’s still full of Honey and Petticoat.
It’s almost the last year that, quite this blithely, men
Up ladders or on building sites wolf-whistle to note
The approval they’re sure she will appreciate.
Why not? She did it for their benefit, looks great.

Nor does she object. Wouldn’t think she has the right.
Though when that lech of a lecturer comments on her tits
To a male classmate, openly, she might
Feel – quick as a run in nylon – that it’s
Not what ought to happen, is not polite,
She’ll burn, but smile, have no word that fits
The insult, can’t subject it to language’s prism.
In sixty-six there’s plenty sex, but not ‘sexism’.

Soon: The Female Eunuch and enough
Will be enough. Thanks to newfound feminism and Greer,
Women’ll have the words for all this stuff,
What already rankles, but confuses her, will seem clear
And she’ll (consciously) be no one’s ‘bit of fluff’
Or ‘skirt’ or ‘crumpet’. She’ll know the rule is ‘gay’ not ‘queer’,
‘Ms’ not ‘Miss’ or ‘Mrs’ – she’ll happily obey it
And, sure as the Pill in her pocket, that’s how she’ll say it.

This photo’s saying nothing, is black and white, opaque.
A frozen moment, not a memory.
The boyfriend with the Pentax took it for the sake
Of taking it, a shot among many others, randomly,
To see how it would develop. Didn’t imagine it’d make
An image so typical it’d capture time so perfectly.
How does she feel? Hey, girl, did it feel strange
To be waiting for the a-changing times to change?

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186d

in the room/in the street/on the stair/where some men make free
in plain sight or in secret as if we were sweetmeat…

—Pippa Little, “Spartaca”
published in #MeToo: A women’s poetry anthology (Fair Acre Press, 2018)

A poem for International Women’s Day

https://fairacrepress.co.uk/shop/metoo-rallying-against-sexual-assault-and-harassment-a-womens-poetry-anthology/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #InternationalWomensDay #MeToo

Spartaca
by Pippa Little

in the room/in the street/on the stair/where some men make free
in plain sight or in secret as if we were sweetmeat/to dip
fingers in and then forget – it is the being alone
afterwards that numbs and maims, utterly
alone in the silence of it/where shame creeps in/
stuns dead/but now we rise, all women
fondled and hurt and licked in acid jokery and in hate,
pets, sweethearts, loves, darlings, humourless bitches –
we stand together, each one a Spartaca
no longer silent or alone: each voice stronger,
massing, alive, a wild murmuration
of me too/me too/me too

Spartacus was a rebel slave hunted down by the Romans to be crucified. Asked to identify himself by soldiers, everyone in the crowd around him stepped forward and said ‘I am Spartacus’.

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175d

“Scottishness is as much myth as it is history, which means that we must guard it carefully, retell it beautifully &, more than anything else, love it wisely”

John Burnside (1955–2024) was born #OTD, 19 March. His career as an author & poet spanned nearly 40 years

1/10

https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2024/07/in-search-of-a-homeland

#Scottish #literature #poetry #novels #JohnBurnside #Scottishness #ScottishIdentity

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