scottish

45d

Widening the Horizon – Scotland’s translators for the stage
27 August, Summerhall, Edinburgh. £2.50–£5

A panel event celebrating Scotland’s translators of international plays for UK stages. Chaired by Joyce McMillan, & featuring writer-translators Jo Clifford, Liz Lochhead, Alan McKendrick, Katherine Mendelsohn & Mariem Omari, the event will explore the importance of this vibrant aspect of Scottish theatre.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/widening-the-horizon-scotlands-translators-for-the-stage-tickets-1994150609153

#Scottish #literature #theatre #drama #translation

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45d

Congratulations to Douglas Stuart, whose latest novel JOHN OF JOHN has been longlisted for the 2026 Booker Prize.

“This excavation of family, violence and shame is woven through with beautiful imagistic detail, and – unexpectedly – shades of hope. We loved the rich, textural detail of the story”

@bookstodon

https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/books/john-of-john

#Scottish #literature #novel #BookerPrize #Hebrides #LGBTQ #LGBTQfiction

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45d

Alone in this bay near Port Mary
only the waves creeping in
and the squeal of a buzzard
high on a clifftop for company…

—Norman Bissell, “Lichen Circles”
published in Slate, Sea & Sky: a journey from Glasgow to the Isle of Luing (Luath Press, 2007)

https://luath.co.uk/products/slate-sea-and-sky

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #naturepoetry #Glasgow #Hebrides

Lichen Circles
by Norman Bissell

Alone in this bay near Port Mary
only the waves creeping in
and the squeal of a buzzard
high on a clifftop for company

even hotter than yesterday
less wind, sea less frantic

I lie here on this shingle beach
in the early evening sun
until the sea laps my ankles
and the sun’s shadows grow long

around me sea pinks on wizened rock
terns diving out by the reef

three hours I’ve lain here now
among the glistening wet pebbles
and the lime green lichen circles

sky blue all blue
and a heat haze
right along the coast of Mull

drifting with the haze taking it all in
becoming those lichen circles.

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44d

‘McDermid recalls: “You said, ‘how do we do this?’ and I said, ‘we’ll make it an epistolary novel’, and I had to explain what that was.” (“That’s not true!” interjects Sharp.)’

—Val McDermid & Jo Sharp on writing THE DOOR OF THE SEAS together

@bookstodon

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jul/28/val-mcdermid-jo-sharp-this-door-of-the-seas

#Scottish #literature #HistoricalFiction #ValMcDermid

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29d

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 #poem #poetry #Perseids #astronomy #folklore

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

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.

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44d

We needed it—and he stood there,
feet on the dry porch, saying rain,
cloud and skyful, the sound of drumming…

—Niall Campbell, “The Rainmaker”
from POETRY, July/August 2020

Today, 29 July, is World Rain Day 🌧️

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/153822/the-rainmaker

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #rain #drought #WorldRainDay

The Rainmaker
by Niall Campbell

We needed it—and he stood there,
feet on the dry porch, saying rain,
cloud and skyful, the sound of drumming;

the bath trough in the garden listened,
white and bone dry, as he described
a bright wash across the dust fields,

the surest downpour, the flushed skin,
my soaked shirt, heavy as a bell.
Then off he went to the scorched fields,

humming, and weighing what we paid.
What did he say: prayer is moisture;
hope is a well—I didn’t care,

I wanted just the words from him—
what I couldn’t dare say—not there
beneath that sun, that blur of fire-sky.

My thoughts all thoughts of water, I
spun my head round—to hear the spill
of the word rain across the boards,

and nothing grew dark, nothing fell—
but something fell, and the ground took,
and something wild as garlic grew.

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49d

miscarriage

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29d

“An epic American family saga, it explores a collective emotional malaise at the heart of a great power in decline. This is a bold and ambitious work… an expansive, compelling and heartfelt novel”

—Jake Arnott reviews 𝘊𝘢𝘯 𝘕𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘚𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘜𝘴?, Irvine Welsh’s latest novel

@bookstodon

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/aug/13/can-nothing-save-us-by-irvine-welsh-review-us-family-saga-is-a-late-career-triumph

#Scottish #literature #novel #IrvineWelsh #gunculture

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44d

Rock an’ stane lay glisterin’ on aa the heichs abune.
Cool an’ kind an’ whisperin’ it drifted gently doon,
till hill an’ howe war rowed in it, an’ land an’ sea war gane.
Aa was still an’ saft an’ silent in the smoky smirr o rain.

—George Campbell Hay, “The Smoky Smirr o’ Rain”

A poem for World Rain Day 🌧️

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Scots #Scotslanguage #rain #WorldRainDay

The Smoky Smirr o Rain
George Campbell Hay

A misty mornin’ doon the shore wi a hushed an’ caller air,
an’ ne’er a breath frae East or West tie sway the rashes there,
a sweet, sweet scent frae Laggan’s birks gaed breathin’ on its ane,
their branches hingin beaded in the smoky smirr o rain.

The hills aroond war silent wi the mist alang the braes.
The woods war derk an’ quiet wi dewy, glintin’ sprays.
The thrushes didna raise for me, as I gaed by alane,
but a wee, wae cheep at passin’ in the smoky smirr o rain.

Rock an’ stane lay glisterin’ on aa the heichs abune.
Cool an’ kind an’ whisperin’ it drifted gently doon,
till hill an’ howe war rowed in it, an’ land an’ sea war gane.
Aa was still an’ saft an’ silent in the smoky smirr o rain.

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44d

Conan Doyle’s Orient
2 Oct, Institute of English Studies, London: free

Arthur Conan Doyle never visited Asia, but he had numerous dealings with the Orient in fact & in imagination, as an author of fiction (including the Sherlock Holmes stories), a traveller, an imperialist, a war correspondent, an amateur Egyptologist, & an investigator of the occult.

@litstudies

https://ies.sas.ac.uk/news-events/events/conan-doyles-orient

#Scottish #literature #Orient #orientalism #19thcentury #Victorian #ConanDoyle #SirArthurConanDoyle

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44d

Martin O’Connor & Len Pennie on Scots Language

Martin O’Connor, the writer & star of Through the Shortbread Tin, sat down recently with poet & performer Len Pennie to blether all things Scots language

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

#Scottish #literature #Scots #Scotslanguage

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29d

There is recent talk
of re-introducing wolves
to this demi-nation
of lambs and glaikit rams
and scraggy ewes,
(and – let’s face it –
hardly any shepherds left to care)…

—Douglas Lipton, “Wolves”
published in Such Strange Joy (inyx, 2001)

Today, 13 August, is International Wolf Day 🐺

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

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #rewilding #Scotland #wolf #wolves #InternationalWolfDay

Wolves
Douglas Lipton

for the new Scottish Parliament

The icy rain is spitting
on the pines and golden birches.
Hangings of black cloud
are torn apart by sunbursts
and then tugged shut again.

Behind us wait Przewalski’s Horses,
black Aurochs, Arctic Fox, Wisent, Lynx
and the other extinct of the country.
We are approaching the enclave
of the Wolves. You hold me,
Kiss me. The children are scurrying.
Our friends, too, are there
with two more scurriers
and a screamer in a papoose
and we are followed by other little packs
of back-bitten families,
out for a day of different frictions,
weather-incited.

From a crag of varnished wood
and plate-glass
we watch those almost-
wild dogs of the north
examine their territory,
tear meat and socialise.
Their puppies play,
rollicking like boulders of fur
in a river of pure air.

There is recent talk
of re-introducing wolves
to this demi-nation
of lambs and glaikit rams
and scraggy ewes,
(and – let’s face it –
hardly any shepherds left to care),
but the wolves are sure to be enclosed
or else we’d dare
to be entire again,
let forests grow,
and take our chances.

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29d

Mary Shelley’s Gothic Dundee
26 August, online
SWI members free; non-members £6.13

Mary Shelley was sent to Dundee as a teenager, & it was here, so she claimed in the 1831 edition of FRANKENSTEIN, that her eerie imagination was first stirred. What was so “gothic” about Dundee in the 1810s? And how did it inspire her? Prof Daniel Cook investigates.

@litstudies

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/swi-expert-talk-mary-shelleys-gothic-dundee-tickets-1996447619573

#Scottish #literature #Scotland #Dundee #romanticism #MaryShelley #gothic #horror #19thcentury #Frankenstein

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29d

Bring back the wolf!
He’s not long gone, you know.
He went out when sheep came in.
Sheep cleared men and women.
Now let wolves clear sheep…

—Edwin Morgan, “Wolf”
in CENTENARY SELECTED POEMS (Carcanet 2020)

A poem for International Wolf Day 🐺

https://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?product=9781784109967

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #wolf #wolves #InternationalWolfDay #Scotland #rewilding #EdwinMorgan

from BEASTS OF SCOTLAND

Wolf
by Edwin Morgan

Bring back the wolf!
He’s not long gone, you know.
He went out when sheep came in.
Sheep cleared men and women.
Now let wolves clear sheep.
A little wildness please,
a little howling to be heard from the chalets,
a circling of yellow eyes at Aviemore.
That legend much discredited,
of the following of the sledges,
let us test it in the Cairngorms,
in the winter playgrounds with their merry cries,
in the white paths through the forest.
It would be good to get not a few scalps
to crawl with fear when they hear
that eerie arctic song
as one by one the muzzles
lift and open in the dark,
and the dark is long.

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43d

I love all films that start with rain:
rain, braiding a windowpane
or darkening a hung-out dress
or streaming down her upturned face…

—Don Paterson, “Rain”
Published in RAIN (Faber, 2010)

A poem for World Rain Day 🌧️

https://www.faber.co.uk/product/9780571251742-rain/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #rain #WorldRainDay

Don Paterson
Rain

I love all films that start with rain:
rain, braiding a windowpane
or darkening a hung-out dress
or streaming down her upturned face;

one big thundering downpour
right through the empty script and score
before the act, before the blame,
before the lens pulls through the frame

to where the woman sits alone
beside a silent telephone
or the dress lies ruined on the grass
or the girl walks off the overpass,

and all things flow out from that source
along their fatal watercourse.
However bad or overlong
such a film can do no wrong,

so when his native twang shows through
or when the boom dips into view
or when her speech starts to betray
its adaptation from a play,

I think to when we opened cold
on a starlit gutter, running gold
with the neon of a drugstore sign
and I’d read into its blazing line:

forget the ink, the milk, the blood –
all was washed clean with the flood
we rose up from the falling waters
the fallen rain’s own sons and daughters

and none of this, none of this matters.

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43d

the rain has stopped
but still it’s falling
under the trees

—Alan Spence
published in CLEAR LIGHT, @canongatebooks 2012

A haiku for World Rain Day 🌧️

https://canongate.co.uk/books/94-clear-light/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #haiku #rain #WorldRainDay

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43d

“The plotless beauty of his writing, and its fearless look at the emptiness of his own life, put ‘the Scottish Beat’ on a par with Kafka and Camus”

—Tony O’Neill on “The junky genius of Alexander Trocchi (1925–1984)”, born #OTD, 30 July. A 🎂 🧵

1/9

https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2007/aug/23/thejunkygeniusofalexander

#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #Trocchi #modernism

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43d

Twenty years ago this week, Black Watch first shocked, thrilled & moved audiences in its world premiere at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

To celebrate, BBC Scotland will air a special filmed performance of the play on 1 August.

“Black Watch: A Soldier’s Story”, the documentary exploring the journey of the landmark production, will also be aired on 1 August.

The play is currently available on the iPlayer (UK only):

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b007xrqx/artworks-scotland-the-black-watch

#Scottish #literature #drama #theatre #BlackWatch

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44d

Nairn Book & Arts Festival
29 Aug–6 Sep

Tickets are on sale for the 2026 Nairn Book & Arts Festival, an annual celebration of literature, art, music, and drama in the Scottish Highlands.

https://www.nairnfestival.co.uk

#Scottish #literature #arts #drama #music #Nairn #Highlands #festival #bookfestival

Nairn Book and Arts Festival

An annual celebration of literature, art, music, and drama in the Scottish Highlands

Image: an illustration of three children dancing among swirls of pink and purple colours

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28d

Acknowledging Agnes Owens: a celebration of her writing & legacy
24 September, Òran Mór, Glasgow – free

Launch event for the Byres Road Book Festival, in collaboration with the Agnes Owens Archive – with Dani Garavelli, Kirstin Innes, William Letford, & Chitra Ramaswamy

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/acknowledging-agnes-owens-a-celebration-of-her-writing-and-legacy-tickets-1995450547303

#Scottish #literature #AgnesOwens #20thcentury #womenwriters #Glasgow

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26d

I send to you, commissioners,
A paper that may please ye, sirs
(For troth they say it might be worse‍‍
An’ I believe’t)…

—Robert Louis Stevenson, “To the Commissioners of Northern Lights”, which Stevenson sent to them along with his design for “a new form of intermittent light”

This weekend is International Lighthouse & Lightship Weekend

1/5

https://illw.net

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Scots #ScotsLanguage #RobertLouisStevenson #19thcentury #Victorian #lighthouse #engineering

To the Commissioners of Northern Lights
Robert Louis Stevenson

I send to you, commissioners,
A paper that may please ye, sirs
(For troth they say it might be worse‍‍
An’ I believe’t)
And on your business lay my curse‍‍
Before I leav’t.

I thocht I’d serve wi’ you, sirs, yince,
But I’ve thocht better of it since;
The matter I will nowise mince,‍‍
But tell ye true:
I’ll service wi’ some ither prince,‍‍
An’ no wi’ you.

I’ve no been very deep, ye’ll think,
Cam’ delicately to the brink
An’ when the water gart me shrink‍‍
Straucht took the rue,
An’ didna stoop my fill to drink—‍‍
I own it true.

I kent on cape and isle, a light
Burnt fair an’ clearly ilka night;
But at the service I took fright,‍‍
As sune’s I saw,
An’ being still a neophite‍‍
Gaed straucht awa’.

Anither course I now begin,
The weeg I’Il cairry for my Sin,
The court my voice shall echo in,‍‍
An’—wha can tell?—
Some ither day I may be yin‍‍
O’ you mysel’.

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43d

“Although this was his first visit, Conan Doyle already knew something of Egypt. The country had been a popular theme in the European imagination, a place of mystery and glamour that had inspired various European works of art in the nineteenth century, from Shelley’s sonnet ‘Ozymandias’ to Verdi’s opera Aida.”

—Arthur Conan Doyle in Egypt

https://euppublishingblog.com/2026/07/21/arthur-conan-doyle-in-egypt/

#Scottish #literature #ConanDoyle #19thcentury #Victorian #Egypt #imperialism #orientalism

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28d

Nae wind comes owre sae free
Upon the yirden rose
As hill-blawn winds that gae
Whaur the white bloom grows…

—William Soutar, “Summer Song”
published in WILLIAM SOUTAR: Collected Works (Tippermuir, 2024)

https://tippermuirbooks.co.uk/product/william-soutar-collected-works-vols-1-2/

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

Summer Song
by William Soutar

Nae wind comes owre sae free
Upon the yirden rose
As hill-blawn winds that gae
Whaur the white bloom grows.

There is nae biggit bower
Sae gledsome for the sicht
As the sma', wilder'd fleur
Flanterin' wi' licht.

And herts will tine their fear
Whan love sae freely blaws,
Open to joy and care
As the sma', white rose.

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27d

Dream of me riding the horse you galloped as a girl –
the one that rode onto the ferry

just as the floor was rising up, in the days when
horses rode the wild sea…

—Jackie Kay, “Dream Pier”
published in DARLING (Bloodaxe, 2007)

https://www.bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/product/darling-877

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry

Jackie Kay
Dream Pier

Dream of me riding the horse you galloped as a girl –
the one that rode onto the ferry

just as the floor was rising up, in the days when
horses rode the wild sea.

Dream of us swimming in the crazy sea,
our wet hair dark as seals

just as they rise up from the salt water
sleek, slippery clever.

Dream of you, dream of me, and the old country,
strolling in the heather.

Dream of the years falling off, and the rainy weather.
Then dream of us as girls,

Bold girls who become black horses, black horses who bolt
the stable one dark night.

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42d

“You will have heard that I am going to commence Poet in print; and to-morrow my works go to the press. I expect it will be a volume of about two hundred pages. It is just the last foolish action I intend to do—and then turn a wise man as fast as possible.”

The “Kilmarnock Edition” of Robert Burns’s Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect was published #OTD, 31 July, 1786.

https://digital.nls.uk/poems-chiefly-in-the-scottish-dialect/archive/74464614#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=0&xywh=-9336%2C-785%2C21170%2C15693

#Scottish #literature #poetry #18thcentury #RobertBurns #romanticism #BookHistory

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