Eggplant.place

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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27d

“The influence of Walter Scott can be felt in every province of the literature of his age.”
—Pushkin

Walter Scott was born #OTD, 15 Aug 1771. He was & is one of the most significant figures in world literature

@litstudies

1/2

https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/issues/issue-16/

#Scottish #literature #WalterScott #SirWalterScott #19thcentury #romanticism #novel

A portrait head of Walter Scott, painted by Sir Henry Raeburn, c.1822–23, oil on canvas. Walter Scott is clean shaven, with thinning fair hair brushed across a high forehead. His grey-blue eyes look out past the viewer, at something we cannot see.

ALT

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27d

“Scott is the most filmic of writers… He may be considered difficult to read today, long-winded & meandering by modern standards, but his narratives still come alive when the characters move dramatically in a visual world”

—Walter Scott & Cinema

1/2

https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2013/05/wattie-goes-to-hollywood-scott-scotland-and-film/

#Scottish #literature #WalterScott #SirWalterScott #19thcentury #Victorian #romanticism #novel #cinema #film #cinemahistory

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27d

Walter Scott, Opera, & the Italian Journey

“What was it about Scott’s poems and novels that attracted composers all over Europe—and inspired more than seventy operas? […] We have four on Rob Roy, four on The Heart of Midlothian, eight on The Bride of Lammermoor, and no less than eleven each on Ivanhoe and Kenilworth.”

📷 “Lucia di Lammermoor”, Metropolitan Opera 2011

https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2011/05/scott-opera-and-the-italian-journey/

#Scottish #literature #WalterScott #SirWalterScott #19thcentury #Victorian #opera #classicalmusic

Natalie Dessay as Lucia di Lammermoor for the Metropolitan Opera in 2011. The photo shows a young woman in a white wedding dress. She holds one hand to her cheek and looks upwards and away, with a lost, distracted expression. She has long, dark hair. Her raised hand, and the entire front of her white dress, is splashed with red blood. Behind her, a group of men and women in what appear to be late-19th-century formal clothes are seen, out of focus, standing on a curving stair.

ALT

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41d

Men slapped the ponies from pit bank to field,
slammed the gate shut and left them to their fortnight
but it rained solid so their poor backs turned black-sodden as old carpet.

Told not to, the boy went out with brown apples and endearments,
dug his nails into their manes, gave each one a Sunday name…

—Pippa Little, “Lammas Goldfish”
published in NAMING THE SNAKES: New Writing Scotland 44 (ASL, 2026)

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

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Lammas

Pippa Little
Lammas Goldfish

for Ray

Men slapped the ponies from pit bank to field,
slammed the gate shut and left them to their fortnight
but it rained solid so their poor backs turned black-sodden as old carpet.

Told not to, the boy went out with brown apples and endearments,
dug his nails into their manes, gave each one a Sunday name. Then
saw it first, flickering, inner-lit through the gloom of their trough,

strange discarded thing from a drunken homecoming
the night of the Lammas fair, won for a kiss perhaps,
beautiful, the word hurt in his mouth.

And kept watch day after day as it swelled in its pink-gold
pomp, memorised every curved samurai scale,
its secret flowering. Until one morning early

he came to the field to find it gone,
the water numb and calm and grey
and every beast led back inside the earth.

ALT

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27d

From Sept 2025 – Dr Gerard McKeever, lecturer in modern Scottish literature at the University of Edinburgh, speaks about Walter Scott’s relationship with Scotland, particularly through the lens of his so-called “Scotch Novels”

@litstudies

1/2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twvrXYw1Sus

#Scottish #literature #WalterScott #SirWalterScott #Scotland ##19thcentury #Victorian #novel

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26d

He will outlast us, churning out his books,
advocate and historian, his prose
earning him Abbotsford with its borrowed gates,
its cheap mementos from the land he made…

—Iain Crichton Smith, “At the Scott Exhibition, Edinburgh Festival”
published in DEER ON THE HIGH HILLS (Carcanet, 2021)

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

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #WalterScott #IainCrichtonSmith #writers #writing

AT THE SCOTT EXHIBITION, EDINBURGH FESTIVAL
Iain Crichton Smith

He will outlast us, churning out his books,
advocate and historian, his prose
earning him Abbotsford with its borrowed gates,
its cheap mementos from the land he made.
Walking the room together in this merciless
galaxy of manuscripts and notes
I am exhausted by such energy.
I hold your hand for guidance. Over your brow
the green light falls from tall and narrow windows.
His style is ignorant of this tenderness,
the vulnerable angle of your body
below the Raeburn with its steady gaze.

It was all in his life, not in his books
‘Oh I am dying, take me home to Scotland
where I can breathe though that breath were my last.’
He limped through an Edinburgh being made anew.
He worked his way through debts, past a dead wife.
My dear, we love each other in our weakness
as he with white grave face diminishing through
stroke after stroke down to the unpaid room.
We know what we are but know not what we will be.
I tremble in this factory of books.
What love he must have lost to write so much.

ALT

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26d

The Laird o’ Cockpen, he’s proud an’ he’s great,
His mind is ta’en up wi’ the things o’ the State…

Carolina Oliphant, Lady Nairne (1766–1845) was born #OTD, 16 Aug. Oliphant wrote over 100 popular songs to traditional Scottish tunes. Although she shunned publicity & never acknowledged her authorship, along with Robert Burns she is one of the most significant figures in Scottish folksong

1/3

#Scottish #literature #song #folksong #18thcentury #19thcentury #womenwriters #Scots #Scotslanguage

Carolina Oliphant, Lady Nairne
“The Laird o’ Cockpen”

The Laird o’ Cockpen, he’s proud an’ he’s great,
His mind is ta’en up wi’ the things o’ the State;
He wanted a wife, his braw house to keep,
But favour wi’ wooin’ was fashious to seek.

Down by the dyke-side a lady did dwell,
At his table head he thocht she’d look well,
M’Leish’s ae dochter o’ Clavers-ha’ Lea,
A penniless lass wi’ a lang pedigree.

His wig was weel pouther’d and as gude as new,
His waistcoat was white, his coat it was blue;
He put on a ring, a sword, and cock’d hat,
And wha could refuse the Laird wi’ a’ that?

He took the grey mare, and rade cannily,
And rapp’d at the yett o’ Clavers-ha’ Lea;
‘Gae tell Mistress Jean to come speedily ben, –
She’s wanted to speak to the Laird o’ Cockpen.’

Mistress Jean she was makin’ the elderflower wine;
‘An’ what brings the Laird at sic a like time?’
She put aff her apron, and on her silk goun,
Her mutch wi’ red ribbons, and gaed awa’ doun.

An’ when she cam’ ben, he bowed fu’ low,
An’ what was his errand he soon let her know;
Amazed was the Laird when the lady said ‘Na’,
And wi’ a laigh curtsie she turned awa’.

Dumfounder’d was he, nae sigh did he gie,
He mounted his mare – he rade cannily;
An’ aften he thought, as he gaed through the glen,
She’s daft to refuse the laird o’ Cockpen.

ALT

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40d

Last night, when the moon
slipped into my attic-room
disguised as an oblong of light,
I sensed she’d come to commiserate.

It was August. She travelled
with a small valise
of darkness, and the first few stars
returning to the northern sky…

—Kathleen Jamie, “Moon”
published in SELECTED POEMS, (Picador, 2018)

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

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry

Moon
by Kathleen Jamie

Last night, when the moon
slipped into my attic-room
disguised as an oblong of light,
I sensed she’d come to commiserate.

It was August. She travelled
with a small valise
of darkness, and the first few stars
returning to the northern sky,

and my room, it seemed,
had missed her. She pretended
an interest in the bookcase
while other objects

stirred, as in a rock pool,
with unexpected life:
strings of beads in their green bowl gleamed,
the paper-crowded desk;

the books, too, appeared inclined
to open and confess.
Being sure the moon
harboured some intention,

I waited; watched for an age
her cool gaze shift
first toward a flower sketch
pinned on the far wall

then glide down to recline
along the pinewood floor,
before I’d had enough. Moon,
I said, we’re both scarred now.

Are they quite beyond you,
the simple words of love? Say them.
You are not my mother;
with my mother, I waited unto death.

ALT

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40d

Like an unnourished rose I see you now, and yours the
Pallor of that city of soot and pigeons…

—George Sutherland Fraser, “A Winter Letter (To my sister in London, from Asmara)”
published in From the Line: Scottish War Poetry 1914–1945 (ASL, 2014)

Today, 2 August, is Sisters Day

https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/volumes/from_the_line/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #sisters #SistersDay #WarPoem #WarPoetry #WW2

George Sutherland Fraser
A Winter Letter
(To my sister in London, from Asmara)

Like an unnourished rose I see you now, and yours the
Pallor of that city of soot and pigeons
Where the leaf is pale, that seems to curl its tendrils
Always around the painted green of iron,
I imagine you pale among the pigeon droppings,
And with your eyelids shadowed like the violets
They sell in bunches from their pavement baskets,
And I imagine you not with your old buxomness
But slim like the young ladies in the advertisements,
With your hair preened in a mode of cockney smartness
And your hands in the pockets of a heavy coat . . .
Do you think wistfully as I do, my darling,
These mornings when your heart is not in that city,
Reluctant stroller to the Board of Trade,
Of our glittering and resourceful north, with its
Terminus smell in the morning of cured herrings
And its crackling autumn suburbs of burned leaves?
Though I write in winter, and now except for the hollies
The trees in our old garden are all bare:
Now as they walk these streets of flashing mica,

ALT

They puff white steam from their nostrils, men and horses,
And their iron heels strike out sparks from the frosty road!
Now the white mist seeps round the red brick baths by the sea-front
And the children are girning at play with blue fingers
For a sea-coal fire and the starch of a Scotch high-tea,
Now with nipped red cheeks, the girls walk the streets rapidly,
And the shop-window's holly and tinsel can hardly delay.
I think of the swirl of the taffeta schoolgirls at Christmas,
Remembering Bunny whose skin was like cream upon milk,
Remembering Joy with her honey-dark skin and dark glances,
Remembering Rosemary's chatter and eloquent eyes,
Ahimé! and sigh because war with its swoop and its terror
That pounces on Europe and lifts up a life like a leaf,
Though its snell wind whirl you into a niche where you’re cosy
Yet its years eat up youth and the hope of fulfilment of youth.

And last night I dreamt I returned and therefore I write,
Last night my train had drawn up at a black London station,
And there you were waiting to welcome me, strange but the same,
And I shook your gloved hands, kissed your light-powdered cheek, and was waiting
To see your new flat, and your books, and your hats, and your friends,
When I suddenly woke with a lost lonesome head on my pillow,
And black Africa turning beneath me towards her own dawn,
And my heart was so sore that this dream should be snapped at the prologue
That I send you my soreness, dear heart, for the sake of this dream.

ALT

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41d

It was upon a Lammas night,
When corn rigs are bonie,
Beneath the moon’s unclouded light,
I held awa to Annie…

—Robert Burns, “Corn Rigs”
pages from Robert Burns: Selected Poems & Songs (OUP, 2013)

Today, 1 August, is Lammas Day

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/selected-poems-and-songs-9780199682324?cc=gb&lang=en&

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #song #18thcentury #folksong #RobertBurns #Lammas #LammasDay #romanticism #Scots #Scotslanguage

SONG
Tune-Corn Rigs are bonie

It was upon a Lammas night,
When corn rigs are bonie,
Beneath the moon's unclouded light,
I held awa to Annie:®
The time flew by, wi' tentless heed,
Till 'tween the late and early;
Wi' sma' persuasion she agreed,
To see me thro' the barley.

The sky was blue, the wind was still,
The moon was shining clearly;
I set her down, wi' right good will,
Amang the rigs o' barley:
I ken't her heart was a' my ain;
I lov'd her most sincerely;
I kiss'd her ore and owre again,
Amang the rigs o' barley.

I lock'd her in my fond embrace;
Her heart was beating rarely:
My blessings on that happy place,
Amang the rigs o' barley!
But by the moon and stars so bright,
That shone that hour so clearly!
She ay shall bless that happy night,
Amang the rigs o' barley.

ALT

I hae been blythe wi' Comrades dear;
I hae been merry drinking;
I hae been joyfu gath'rin gear;
I hae been happy thinking:
But a' the pleasures e'er I saw,
Tho' three times doubl'd fairly,
That happy night was worth them a',
Amang the rigs o' barley.

CHORUS
Corn rigs, an' barley rigs,
An' corn rigs are bonie:
I'll ne'er forget that happy night,
Amang the rigs wi' Annie.

ALT

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40d

Bookmark 2026
10–11 October, Blairgowrie

Tickets are on sale for Bookmark, Blairgowrie’s annual book festival.

https://bookmarkblair.com/bookmark-events

#Scottish #literature #books #bookfestival #Blairgowrie

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40d

Early autumn the school trunk would re-appear
as if to say summer was over, time for my sister to disappear…

—Diana Hendry, “Parting (i.m. Julie Betty Rowan)”
published in Second Wind (Saltire Society, 2015)

A poem for Sisters Day

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/parting-0/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #sisters #SistersDay

Parting
Diana Hendry

i.m. Julie Betty Rowan

Early autumn the school trunk would re-appear
as if to say summer was over, time for my sister to disappear.

She was the homely one my mother loved too much.
A North Wales boarding school, my father’s mute reproach.

Me – an avid reader of all Blyton’s stories of St Clare’s –
they kept at home, unaware I longed to go and envied her.

The trunk seemed huge, as deep as sorrow and in it
every vest and sock was named – only love went missing.

I remember most the heavy winter coat she had to wear –
grey as the railway station full of girls, grief in the parting air.

* * * * *

And now she’s gone, the sister I didn’t see
for more than twenty years. O there were letters

now and then and phone calls, but mostly
between us nothing but distance and neglect.

So now I find a deadness in my heart
and numbness where the pain should be.

To friends I say ‘we grew apart,
‘had nothing in common’, though what can compare

with those early years of childhood shared?

ALT

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24d

Val McDermid, queen of crime writing
The Royal Literary Fund podcast

The internationally acclaimed author of more than 40 books joins fellow crime writer & band mate Doug Johnstone to discuss: how the publishing industry has changed; the novel she had to run away to write; becoming lead singer of The Fun Lovin' Crime Writers in her sixties; & why she’s having more fun with more genres than ever.

@bookstodon

https://podcast.rlf.org.uk/513-val-mcdermid-queen-of-crime-writing

#Scottish #literature #ValMcDermid #crimefiction

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24d

What do we sense on the moor but ghost folk,
ghost deer, even ghost wolf. The path itself is a
phantom, almost erased in ling and yellow tormentil:
flowers of this summer and this summer only…

—Kathleen Jamie, “Moor”
from CAIRN (Sort of Books, 2024)

https://sortof.co.uk/kathleen-jamie-cairn

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

Moor
Kathleen Jamie

What do we sense on the moor but ghost folk,
ghost deer, even ghost wolf. The path itself is a
phantom, almost erased in ling and yellow tormentil:
flowers of this summer and this summer only,
even as they flourish they’re passing into memory,
already bequeathing themselves –

The moor in summer dreams itself out of all
previous summers. Bog-cotton, the green fritillary,
the fly-catching sundew … likewise the larksong,
all iterated as though for the first time.

It is their first time! And every time before.

We bring the past out of the land and bear the land
into the future, but at heart of all is the land, contested,
exploited and beloved. (The turbines, plantations, the
missile-test sites.) We pass and fade on the face of the
earth, sun-nets drifting over distant hillsides, the cloud
shadows. We become the half-sensed ghosts.

ALT

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24d

“For me the political & the personal are not separate, & so I write that way because it’s how I honestly experience the world. Combining the two is a refusal to flatten either.”

—Hannah Lavery talks to SNACK Magazine about her latest poetry collection, EVERYTHING EVERYDAY: A Year of Empty Promises

https://snackmag.co.uk/interview-hannah-lavery-explores-grief-hope-and-everything-everyday-at-the-edinburgh-international-book-festival

#Scottish #literature #poetry

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39d

The hill is tossing high, frail wisps of
rosy cloud to glide in steady gale
along a turquoise sky, around, above the
perpendicular and slightly askew columns,
above the triangular gap
between crown and crag…

—Tessa Ransford, “August 3rd”
published in Shadows from the Greater Hill (Ramsay Head Press, 1987)

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/august-3rd/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #naturepoem #naturewriting

August 3rd
Tessa Ransford

The hill is tossing high, frail wisps of
rosy cloud to glide in steady gale
along a turquoise sky, around, above the
perpendicular and slightly askew columns,
above the triangular gap
between crown and crag.

The moon, full at midnight,
is now high and faded
almost a lazy eyelid:
day’s eye opening
or night’s eye closing.

Birds chase and ride the wind
reeling, wheeling,
aware that in a moment
ordinary flight of day will have to be resumed.

The hawk alone is steady,
keeps position despite the gale
to pinpoint a victim

and far below
grasses tinge in flower:
harebell, yarrow, lady’s yellow bedstraw
Among the rangy thistles and fatted doves.

ALT

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39d

Oidhche nam Bàrd – Poetry in Art & Sound
10 September, Tramway, Glasgow. £20/£12

Sàbhail an ceann-là airson Oidhche nam Bàrd – Poetry in Art & Sound, comharrachadh nàiseanta air còrr agus 1000 bliadhna de bhàrdachd Ghàidhlig.

A landmark celebration of over 1000 years of Gaelic poetry.

https://www.tramway.org/event/92566702-3c0b-4861-b502-b44e01077967/

#Scottish #literature #Gaidhlig #Gaelic #poetry

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25d

Let us now give thanks
for these salt-blown

wind-burned pastures
where oatgrass and timothy
shrink from the harrow of the sea…

—John Glenday, “A Westray Prayer”
published in SELECTED POEMS (Picador 2020)

https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/john-glenday/selected-poems/9781529037715

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Westray #Orkney

John Glenday
A Westray Prayer

in memoriam Mike and Barbara Heasman

Let us now give thanks
for these salt-blown

wind-burned pastures
where oatgrass and timothy
shrink from the harrow of the sea

where Scotland at long last
wearies of muttering its own name
where we may begin

to believe we have always known
what someone in his wisdom
must have meant

when he gave us everything
and told us nothing.

ALT

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30d

I have a few signed copies of my nonfiction book about the Scottish witch trials available on my site: https://feralstrumpet.com/products/ashes-stones-signed-paperback #witch #witches #scotland #scottish #history #folklore

A blue square surrounded by illustrations of thistles with a promotional image of the book Ashes & Stones in the centre. The text reads UK Paperback Edition Signed Copies Available.

ALT

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23d

NAMING THE SNAKES: New Writing Scotland 44
Glasgow launch
8 September, Waterstones Sauchiehall St, Glasgow – £5 / £12 with book

Celebrate the latest issue of NEW WRITING SCOTLAND with a mix of readings of poetry, short fiction & non-fiction in English, Gaelic & Scots – all welcome!

https://www.waterstones.com/events/new-writing-scotland-44-launch/glasgow-sauchiehall-street

#Scottish #literature #Gaidhlig #Gaelic #Scots #Scotslanguage #poetry #shortfiction #newwriting #booklaunch #Glasgow

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38d

It gets late early out here
in the lacklustre places,
wind in the trees and the foodstalls’
ricepaper lamplight, fading and blurred with rain…

—John Burnside, “Travelling South, Scotland, August 2012”
published in BLACK MIDDENS: New Writing Scotland 31 (ASL, 2013)

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

John Burnside
Travelling South, Scotland, August 2012

“Necessity is not the mother of invention; play is”
—Ian D. Suttie

It gets late early out here
in the lacklustre places,
wind in the trees & the foodstalls’
ricepaper lamplight, fading & blurred with rain,
the wire fence studded with fleece
& indelible traces
of polythene wrapping; marrowfat clogging the drains
on the road that runs out to the coast
then disappears.
A last bleed of gold in the west, like a Shan Shui painting,
then darkness.

The animals are gone
that hunted here:
wolves coming down from the hills, that
immaculate hunger,
rumours of bear & cat, quick
martens & raptors.
The rain is darker now,
though not so black,
oil-iridescent, streaked with the smell of lard
– it gets late early out here; though late, out here,
has a different meaning:

stars in the road
& the absence of something more
than birchwoods or song,
pallet fires, tyre-tracks,
grubbed fields clouded with grease
& palm oil, hints
of molasses and lanolin, tarpaper,
iron filings.
A narrow band of weather on the road,
then houses; though we scarcely think of them
as that.

ALT

I remember a meadow at dusk
in another rain
(and this is nostalgia now); I remember
I stood in a wind like gossamer and watched
three roe fawns and a doe
come quietly, one by one, through the silvering grasses,
wary, but curious, giving me just enough space
to feel safe,
their watchfulness reminding me of something
lost, a creaturely
awareness I could only glimpse

in passing.
That meadow is gone, and dusk
isn’t dusk any more
– or not out here –
just miles of tract and lay-by on the way
to junkyards and dead allotments,
guard dogs on tether,
biomass, factory outlets,
the half-light of ersatz dairies petering out
on rotting fields
of rape and mustardseed.

We’ve been going at this for years:
a steady delete
of anything that tells us what we are,
a long
distaste for the blood warmth and bloom
of the creaturely: local
fauna and words for colour, all the shapes
of ritual and lust
surrendered where they fell, beneath a fog
of smut and grime and counting-house
as church, the old gods

ALT

buried undead beneath the rural sprawl
that bears their names, or wandering the hills
of Lammermuir and Whitelee, waiting out
the rule of Mammon, till the land returns
– with or without us –
chainlink going down
to bindweed, drunken
thistles in a sway
of wind and goldfinch on the dead estates, fat
clusters of moss
and gentian, broken

tarmac with new shoots
of coltsfoot breaking through
like velvet, till the darkness of the leaf
unfurls into a light we could have known
but failed to see
by choosing not to find
the kingdom-at-hand:
this order;
this dialectic;
this mother of invention,
ceaseless play.

ALT

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25d

Six Must-Read Scottish Books

Author Doug Johnstone picks six books that speak to the diversity & range of Scottish fiction

@bookstodon

https://orendabooks.co.uk/news/six-must-read-scottish-books-by-doug-johnstone

#Scottish #literature #fiction #novel #novels

Against a dark, misty street scene – author Doug Johnstone stands on the left, beside the cover of his latest novel GHOST NOTES

ALT

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38d

Commonwealth of Nations Poet Laureate Selina Tusitala Marsh & Scotland’s Makar Peter Mackay in Conversation

Selina & Peter’s wide-ranging conversation begins with Selina reading her poem “Tusitala”, & a discussion of where her middle name comes from

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/podcast/selina-tusitala-marsh-commonwealth-poet-laureate-and-peter-mackay-scottish-makar-in-conversation/

#Scottish #literature #Aotearoa #NewZealand #poetry #podcast

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24d

Henry Raeburn’s portrait of Robert Burns had been missing for more than 200 years until it was discovered during a house clearance & sold at auction in 2025. It is on display in the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum in Alloway until 1 November – free, no booking required

https://www.nts.org.uk/stories/burns-portrait-returns-to-poets-birthplace

#Scottish #literature #RobertBurns #romanticism #portrait #painting #visualart #18thcentury #19thcentury #Raeburn #HenryRaeburn

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