scottish

127d

“Annie S. Swan both requires revaluation through her own biography & calls into question easy valorisations of ‘danger’ as expressed in terms of explicit challenge & radicalism. The extent of her appeal & influence demands a more nuanced analysis of the politics of emotion & the gendering of reader response”

—Prof Glenda Norquay on Annie S. Swan (1859–1943) – born #OTD, 8 July

1/3

https://dangerouswomenproject.org/2016/09/08/annie-shepherd-swan/

#Scottish #literature #19thcentury #20thcentury #romance #womenwriters

1 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

120d

“I was born in 1962. There’s been an environmental crisis for as long as I’ve lived. To step outside that constant culpability was one of the many delights of RING OF BRIGHT WATER”

—Kathleen Jamie in the London Review of Books on Gavin Maxwell (1914–1969) – born #OTD, 15 July

1/3

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v33/n14/kathleen-jamie/diary

#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #GavinMaxwell #naturewriting #otter #RingofBrightWater

1 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

116d

Edinburgh Poetry Tours
Various dates in August, Edinburgh. Pay-what-you-can tickets, from £4.50

Poet Ken Cockburn presents, on & around the Royal Mile, an Edinburgh alive with literature. If you’re new to Edinburgh you’ll see some key sights, & if you know the city you’ll experience it afresh by slowing down & listening to the words of poets writing across the centuries.

https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/embro

#Scottish #literature #poetry #Edinburgh

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

120d

“If you are Scottish, on the old side, the sort of person who was in an upper stream at school, it’s probable that SUNSET SONG already holds a place in your mental closet. If you aren’t, you may never have heard of it”

—Jenny Turner on Lewis Grassic Gibbon, for the London Review of Books

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v48/n13/jenny-turner/hated-and-loved-in-a-breath

#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #LewisGrassicGibbon #SunsetSong

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

120d

A Stewed Rhubarb Online Poetry Reading
28 July, online. Tickets £1.50

Join Stewed Rhubarb Press for an evening of contemporary Scottish poetry with Siún Carden, Craig Aitchison & Biff Smith. Three distinctive voices, three acclaimed publications, & an hour of live readings & conversation hosted by Charlie Roy.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/a-stewed-rhubarb-online-poetry-reading-tickets-1993255644289

#Scottish #literature #poetry

Edited 120d ago

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

126d

Watershed
Rivers, Rights, Explorations & Conversations
24 July, The Briggait, Glasgow – free

The conversation will begin with reflections on Jude & Louise's citizen investigation into ownership, privatisation & access to Glasgow's river explored through their podcast Who owns the Clyde? Plus the launch of the Saltire Society pamphlet ‘Who Owns the Clyde?’.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/watershed-launch-with-louise-welsh-jude-barber-tickets-1989915290200?aff=odcleoeventsincollection

#Scottish #literture #Glasgow #Commonwealth #CommonwealthGames #rivers #Clyde

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

126d

NAMING THE SNAKES
New Writing Scotland 44
Ed. by Chris Powici, Allan Radcliffe & Anna C. Frater

The best new short fiction & poetry from forty-three writers who are Scottish by birth, residence, or inclination, writing in English, Gaelic, & Scots. Available for preorder now from all good bookshops! (And the evil one too.)

https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/newwriting/nws44/

#Scottish #literature #NewWriting #shortstories #shortfiction #poetry #poems #Gaidhlig #Gaelic #Scots #Scotslanguage #writingcommunity

Book cover:

Naming
the
Snakes

New
Writing
Scotland
44

Edited by Chris Powici and Allan Radcliffe
Gaelic Editor: Anna C. Frater

The cover image shows a mix of overlapping yellow, orange, and purple fabrics, semi-transparent, on top of a drawing of a hand holding a disc which rests on top of a pillar. The head of a snake coils up from below to rest on the disc.

1 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

126d

He picked up a pebble
and threw it into the sea.

And another, and another.
He couldn't stop.

He wasn't trying to fill the sea.
He wasn't trying to empty the beach.

He was just throwing away,
nothing else but…

—Norman MacCaig, “Small boy”
published in THE POEMS OF NORMAN MacCAIG (Birlinn, 2009)

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

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #20thcentury #NormanMacCaig

Small boy
by Norman MacCaig

He picked up a pebble
and threw it into the sea.

And another, and another.
He couldn't stop.

He wasn't trying to fill the sea.
He wasn't trying to empty the beach.

He was just throwing away,
nothing else but.

Like a kitten playing
he was practising for the future

when there'll be so many things
he'll want to throw away

if only his fingers will unclench
and let them go.

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

35d

Walter Scott country

Currently on BBC Sounds: Martha Kearney looks at how Walter Scott’s writing explored Scotland’s environmental history, & how he incorporated ecological themes in his novels, using landscapes as active components of storytelling.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00325d6

#Scottish #literature #18thcentury #19thcentury #romanticism #WalterScott #SirWalterScott #ecology #environment #environmentalism #Scotland

1 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

126d

That was when I threw the stone and then ran after;
splashing into Smallholm burn I made the colours
of a summer’s day cascade around me…

—Ron Butlin, “Histories of Desire”
published in HISTORIES OF DESIRE (Bloodaxe, 1995)

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/histories-desire/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #20thcentury

Histories of Desire
Ron Butlin

At Carsethorn, Solway Coast

That was when I threw the stone and then ran after;
splashing into Smallholm burn I made the colours
of a summer’s day cascade around me.
That was when the water stilled to rowanberries,
clouds and dark green leaves I could never reach
before. I tried to pick one up –
that was when the earth and sky first slipped
between my finders.

All histories are histories of desire, they tell me
how my life begins and ends: a stretch of water,
a stone a child sends skimming
to the other side.

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

126d

“He was an advocate of the new, & that made him stand out in a Scottish modernist literary milieu where there was a kind of gruff, backwards-looking impulse”

—Greg Thomas on A HOME IN SPACE, a new collection of Edwin Morgan’s concrete, visual & sound poetry

https://list.co.uk/news/greg-thomas-on-edwin-morgan-he-nudged-scottish-literature-into-the-modern-world-48514

#Scottish #literature #poetry #concretepoetry #soundpoetry #visualpoetry #EdwinMorgan

1 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

126d

Scots Whay Hae! speaks to the five shortlisted authors for this year’s Scottish Crime Debut of the Year award: May Rinaldi (Liar Thief); Zoë Rankin (The Vanishing Place); Linda Duncan McLaughlin (Original Sins): Frances Crawford (A Bad, Bad Place); and Kirsty Lockwood (We Know What You Did)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXlAe5b0R5c

#Scottish #literature #podcast #CrimeFiction #BloodyScotland

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

156d

“I mean, your society’s broken, so who should we blame? Should we blame the rich, powerful people who caused it? No let’s blame the people with no power & no money & these immigrants who don’t even have the vote, yeah it must be their fucking fault.”

—Iain Banks died #OTD, 9 June, 2013

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/jun/15/iain-banks-the-final-interview

#Scottish #literature #IainBanks #IainMBanks

7 0 1 View Post & Replies See Original

125d

BBC Short Works: I Love You, Mr Demille

Currently on BBC Sounds: A silent movie writer finds her voice in this new story by Sara Sheridan – inspired by the true story of Lorna Moon & her close friendship with darling of the silver screen, Mary Pickford

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002ym80

#Scottish #literature #screenwriting #Hollywood #cinemahistory #filmhistory #womenwriters #20thcentury

1 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

60d

First hints of our condition manifest:
Spite in the wind, mist-gauze across the moon,
Light chill, the spider’s filaments, blanched grass,
And two days as warm as the south change nothing at all…

—Peter Davidson, “September Castles”
from ARCTIC ELEGIES (Carcanet, 2022)

https://www.carcanet.co.uk/9781800172630/arctic-elegies/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #autumn #September

September Castles
by Peter Davidson

First hints of our condition manifest:
Spite in the wind, mist-gauze across the moon,
Light chill, the spider’s filaments, blanched grass,
And two days as warm as the south change nothing at all.
A morning comes when you know this cannot end well.
Soon it will be no time for gathering in gardens
All too soon, my dears, it will be the weather
For Brahms quintets, for leaves drifting triste past the windows
Of those in their rooms alone for the duration,
For whom this is no time to build. Those now alone
Are going to remain so through this estranging season
Of reading, of writing emails as detailed as letters,
Of watching dry leaves grow sodden on empty pavements.
Rilke said this in lines that I last read in Edinburgh
With my most beautiful aunt in her later age
When, many things gone, she remembered those verses in German.

1 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

60d

Short Works: Nothing to Report

Currently on BBC Sounds: a new story from award-winning crime writer Liam McIlvanney. A man’s early morning run veers off course when he encounters a strange figure by the Clyde.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00318ct

#Scottish #literature #shortstory #shortfiction #LiamMcIlvanney #audiobook

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

119d

Happy World Snake Day – 16 July – to all who celebrate. Here’s Edwin Morgan’s “Siesta of a Hungarian Snake”, published in COLLECTED POEMS (Carcanet, 1990) 🐍

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

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #EdwinMorgan #snakes #snake #WorldSnakeDay

Edwin Morgan
Siesta of a Hungarian Snake

s sz sz SZ sz SZ sz ZS zs ZS zs zs z

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

119d

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

Another poem for World Snake Day 🐍

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

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #snake #snakes #naturewriting #naturepoetry #Quinag #Sutherland #Highlands #WorldSnakeDay

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.

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

119d

Come to Where I Am
11 Aug, Edinburgh. £15 / pay what you can

A special one-off new writing showcase presented by Paines Plough in association with Playwrights’ Studio Scotland

Three Scottish playwrights – Uma Nada-Rajah, Hannah Lavery, & Linda McLean – present monologues about the places & people that shape them

https://bookings.shedinburgh.com/event/9854:106/9854:143/

#Scottish #literature #drama #theatre #playwright

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

124d

An orange sunshade wheels about her head.
The sunshade shading sun is yet a sun
mimicked by colour, halo of the red
and mild attendant of the coloured bone…

—Iain Crichton Smith, “Girl with orange sunshade”
published in DEER ON THE HIGH HILLS (Carcanet, 2021)

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

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #IainCrichtonSmith #summer

Iain Crichton Smith
Girl with orange sunshade

An orange sunshade wheels about her head.
The sunshade shading sun is yet a sun
mimicked by colour, halo of the red
and mild attendant of the coloured bone.

Yet it is mimic as if the other sun
should not attack her, being saved by this
paper not passion which she learns to spin
as if herself were Fortune, pert-faced miss.

And this cool wheel about her ordered hair
is like the art we nourish in our rooms
on little water and a jar of air.
It holds us steady from the searing flames.
We mimic fire to shield us from the fire
and shade our heads with bright and paper poems.

Edited 124d ago

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

77d

Nights and days of blinding rain, Atlantic lows
sweeping across the carse
trees and hills lost in thick noonday mist.

Now this raw light
and a hard Steppe wind pouring down Glen Tye
towards the late sun…

—Chris Powici, “The Wild Summer”
published in Talking About Lobsters: New Writing Scotland 34 (ASL, 2016)

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry

Chris Powici
The Wid Summer

i.m. Angus Dunn

Nights and days of blinding rain, Atlantic lows
sweeping across the carse
trees and hills lost in thick noonday mist.

Now this raw light
and a hard Steppe wind pouring down Glen Tye
towards the late sun.

A raven lifts from a fencepost
and gives itself to the cold, marvellous air
pitching and wheeling
as if there’s no tomorrow, as if there’s
only ever hunger, longing, flight – here, now

and this, as you know, is the real poem Angus –
a lone dark bird telling the truth about the world
telling it well –
not these words

though, given time, I’ll get them as right as I can
even if there’s no raven, just skeins of autumn greylag
flowing calmly south.

Even if it’s way too late by then.

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

118d

She’s goat her legs oot –
her foldin plastic chair
oan the gress at Glesga Green –
an her airms an enough
creamy dimpled bosom
tae please Renoir…

—Sheila Templeton, “Glesga Fair”
published in Songs of Other Places: New Writing Scotland 32 (ASL, 2014)

The Glasgow Fair is a holiday dating back to the 12th century CE. Happy Fair Weekend to all the Glasgow Fairies!

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Scots #Scotslanguage #Glasgow #GlasgowFair

Glesga Fair
Sheila Templeton

She’s goat her legs oot –
her foldin plastic chair
oan the gress at Glesga Green –
an her airms an enough
creamy dimpled bosom
tae please Renoir;
bra straps oan show,
frock lirkit richt up
ower her knees
sittin lik a mannie
legs weel splayed as if
tae accommodate
magnificent baws –
but it’s no that.
It’s tae mak room
mak a space
for her belly,
lovely big roon
wumman’s belly
growthie in the sun.

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

124d

Jenni Fagan: ‘Maya Angelou taught me that I owed myself hope’

The Scottish author on loving The Hobbit, fairytales, Frankenstein and the shock of A Clockwork Orange

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jul/10/jenni-fagan-maya-angelou-taught-me-that-i-owed-myself-hope

#Scottish #literature #novel #womenwriters #JenniFagan

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

118d

“…on one occasion the Highland Queen was berthed by the master and a boy, the rest of the crew being quite incapable…”

In this blog post, Donald Meek explores the origins of the terms, common to Scots & Gaelic: “steaming drunk” & “smùid”

https://meekwrite.blogspot.com/2013/04/maritime-and-linguistic-studies.html

#Scottish #literature #Glasgow #GlasgowFair #DoontheWatter #Scots #Scotslanguage #Gaidhlig #Gaelic #boozecruise

A late 19th-century postcard. The printed text reads:

Mottoes for those going
“Doon the Watter”

If it's losing the boat,
or losing your drink—
lose the boat.

The image shows a colour illustration of a moustachio'd young man, standing at a bar, wearing a boater hat at a rakish angle, a dark green jacket, a yellow-and-white striped waistcoat and a red bow tie. He has one hand in his pocket as he looks over his shoulder, out of the door of the bar to see, in the distance, a steamship leaving the harbour. He raises a full pint mug to toast its departure.

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

118d

jack an jill
went up thi hull
“tay huv a wee refreshmint”

guess whut

—published in Tom Leonard’s INTIMATE VOICES 1965–1983 (Galloping Dog Press, 1984)

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Scots #Scotslanguage #Glasgow #GlasgowFair #KeepTheHeid

jack an jill
went up thi hull
“tay huv a wee refreshmint”

guess whut

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

Previous Page Next Page