Eggplant.place

6d

Daft gowk, in macaroni dress,
Are ye come here to shaw your face,
Bowden wi’ pride o’ simmer gloss,
To cast a dash at Reikie’s cross…

—“On Seeing a Butterfly in the Street”, by Robert Fergusson (1750–1774) – born #OTD, 5 Sept. In his short life he reinvigorated #poetry in Scots. A 🎂🧵

1/10

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #18thcentury #Edinburgh #RobertFergusson

On Seeing a Butterfly in the Street
Robert Fergusson

Daft gowk, in macaroni dress,
Are ye come here to shaw your face,
Bowden wi’ pride o’ simmer gloss,
To cast a dash at Reikie’s cross;
And glowr at mony a twa-legg’d creature,
Flees, braw by art, tho’ worms by nature?

Like country laird in city cleeding,
Ye’re come to town to lear’ good breeding;
To bring ilk darling toast and fashion
In vogue amang the flee creation,
That they, like buskit belles and beaux,
May crook their mou’ fu’ sour at those
Whase weird is still to creep, alas!
Unnotic’d ʼmang the humble grass;
While you, wi’ wings new buskit trim,
Can far frae yird and reptiles skim;
Newfangle grown wi’ new-got form,
You soar aboon your mither worm.

Kind Nature lent but for a day
Her wings to mak ye sprush and gay;
In her habuliments a while
Ye may your former sell beguile,
And ding awa’ the vexing thought
O’ hourly dwinin’ into nought,
By beengin’ to your foppish brithers,
Black corbies dress’d in peacock’s feathers;
Like thee they dander here and there,
Whan Simmer’s blinks are warm and fair,
And lo’e to snuff the healthy balm,
Whan E’enin’ spreads her wing sae calm;
But whan she girns and glow’rs sae dour
Frae Borean houff in angry show’r,
Like thee they scour frae street or field,
And hap them in a lyther bield;
For they were never made to dree
The adverse gloom o’ Fortune’s e’e,
Nor ever pried life’s pinin’ woes,
Nor pu’d the prickles wi’ the rose.

ALT

Poor Butterfly! thy case I mourn,
To green kail-yard and fruits return:
How could you troke the mavis’ note
For “penny pies all-pipin’ hot?”
Can lintie’s music be compar’d
Wi’ gruntles frae the City Guard?
Or can our flow’rs, at ten hour’s bell,
The gowan or the spink excel?

Now shou’d our sclates wi’ hailstanes ring,
What cabbage-fauld wad screen your wing;
Say, fluttering fairy! wert thy hap
To light beneath braw Nanny’s cap,
Wad she, proud butterfly of May!
In pity let you skaithless gae?
The furies glancing frae her een
Wad rug your wings o’ siller sheen,
That, wae for thee! far, far outvy
Her Paris artist’s finest dye;
Then a’ your bonny spraings wad fall,
And you a worm be left to crawl.

To sic mishanter rins the laird
Wha quits his ha’-house and kail-yard,
Grows politician, scours to court,
Whare he’s the laughing-stock and sport
O’ Ministers, wha jeer and jibe,
And heeze his hopes wi’ thought o’ bribe,
Till in the end they flae him bare,
Leave him to poortith, and to care.
Their fleetchin’ words owre late he sees,
He trudges hame, repines, and dies.

Sic be their fa’ wha dirk their ben
In blackest business nae their ain;
And may they scad their lips fu’ leal,
That dip their spoons in ither’s kail.

ALT

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5d

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…

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

5–6 September is National Cinema Weekend 🎥🎬🍿

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

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #cinema #film #NationalCinemaWeekend

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.

ALT

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4d

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

Celebrate the latest issue 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 #writingcommunity #Glasgow

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4d

Susan Ferrier (1782–1854) was born #OTD, 7 Sept. Her 3 novels – 𝘔𝘢𝘳𝘳𝘪𝘢𝘨𝘦, 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘐𝘯𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦, & 𝘋𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘺 – are vivid & humorous accounts of Scottish society. Often compared to her contemporary Jane Austen, Ferrier’s satires are much more vicious…

A 🎂🧵

1/10

https://www.nls.uk/collections/stories/literature-and-poetry/susan-ferrier-and-her-contemporaries/

#Scottish #literature #Regency #18thcentury #19thCentury #romanticism #WomenWriters #SusanFerrier #JaneAusten #humour #satire

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2d

A Home in Space: Edwin Morgan’s Selected Concrete, Visual & Sound Poetry
17 September, University of Glasgow – free

An evening to discover & celebrate the incredible body of visual & sound poetry by Edwin Morgan, much of which is rarely seen & will now be available in this significant new volume from Reaktion Books.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/a-home-in-space-edwin-morgans-selected-concrete-visual-sound-poetry-tickets-1996801819996

#Scottish #literature #poetry #visualpoetry #concretepoetry #soundpoetry #EdwinMorgan #20thcentury

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3d

Pentlands Book Festival
26 October–25 November

The programme for the 2026 Pentlands Book Festival is now online! Tickets to the events are free but essential – see the website for details.

https://pentlandsbookfestival.org

#Scottish #literature #BookFestival #Pentlands #Edinburgh

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3d

Ness Book Fest 2026
2 & 3 October, Inverness

Tickets are now on sale for Ness Book Fest, the largest free book festival in the Highlands! Tickets to the events are free but essential – see the website for details.

https://nessbookfest.com

#Scottish #literature #BookFestival #Highlands #Inverness

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3d

This far north, the harvest happens late.
Rooks go clattering over the sycamores
whose shadows yawn after them, down to the river.
Uncut wheat staggers under its own weight…

—Dorothy Lawrenson, “September”
published in Painted, spoken 22 (2011)

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

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

September
Dorothy Lawrenson

This far north, the harvest happens late.
Rooks go clattering over the sycamores
whose shadows yawn after them, down to the river.
Uncut wheat staggers under its own weight.

Summer is leaving too, exchanging its gold
for brass and copper. It is not so strange
to feel nostalgia for the present; already
this September evening is as old

as a photograph of itself. The light, the shadows
on the field, are sepia, as if this were
some other evening in September, some other
harvest that went ungathered years ago.

ALT

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94d

A Kick Up the Arts: Bloody Scotland 2026

In the latest episode of A Kick Up the Arts, Nicola Meighan discusses what’s in store at Bloody Scotland 2026 with this year’s guest programmer, Denise Mina, festival director Bob McDevitt and best-selling author and board member Craig Robertson, along with two of the writers shortlisted for this year’s prestigious debut prize, Linda Duncan McLaughlin and May Rinaldi.

https://www.akickupthearts.org/blog-3-1/bloody-scotland-2026

#Scottish #literature #podcast #crimefiction #crimewriting

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2d

The deid-hole’s a sma-boukit place for you.
You need tae be blawn aboot the cosmos
so’s your live matter mells wi the spaces
and you become the stour starns are made o…

—Alastair Mackie: In Memoriam Hugh MacDiarmid (1892–1978)

Christopher Murray Grieve – Hugh MacDiarmid – died #OTD, 9 September

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

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Scots #Scotslanguage #HughMacDiarmid #InMemoriam

In Memoriam Hugh MacDiarmid (1892–1978)
Alastair mackie

The deid-hole’s a sma-boukit place for you.
You need tae be blawn aboot the cosmos
so’s your live matter mells wi the spaces
and you become the stour starns are made o.

Sma spirit, ye couped yoursel oot like an ocean
and on it ye sailed tae your odyssey.
Your poems set their bows for the infinite.
It was a sma bit coble made o Scots.

Ahent the muckle brae-face o your brou
barmed the thochts. They were like boolders,
ram-stam, ramgunshoch, aften wilyart. Polyphemus
hurlin craigs at the galleys’ hotterin starns.

And aye the sky-line cockit its fore-finger.
For fifty years laneliness was your crony.
Your spaces were polar anes, the cauld burn
o your mind the aixle-tree that iled your world.

I think o Pascal’s infinite spaces
and Scotland a wee dot in the abyss.
You gied it a starn; the muckle hole skinkles
yet in the licht. Sic matter never dees.

The terror that I feel is for the muckle howe-hole
your last sleep leaves ahent. As if a mountain
that held up the lyft had sunk intae the mools
and suddenly the sky-line’s unfrienly.

And oor steps styter and Scotland’s again
‘the bonny broukit bairn’. Lie back in your kist
licht bearer. And may the giant back-birn
ye cairriet lie lichtly in the earth’s happin.

ALT

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2d

There are times when I think
of the knowledge we had as children:

the patterns we saw in number, or the spells
and recipes we had
for love and fear…

—John Burnside, “Being and Time”
published in THE LIGHT TRAP (Jonathan Cape, 2002)

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/being-and-time/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #JohnBurnside

Being and Time
John Burnside

There are times when I think
of the knowledge we had as children:

the patterns we saw in number, or the spells
and recipes we had
for love and fear;

the knowledge we kept in the bones
for wet afternoons,
the slink of tides, the absolutes of fog,

or how a lapwing’s egg can tip
the scale of the tongue;

how something was always present in the snow
that fell between our parish and the next,

a perfect thing, not what was always there,
but something we knew without knowing, as we knew

that everything was finite and alive,
cradled in warmth against the ache of space,

marsh-grass and shale, and the bloodroot we dug in the woods
that turned our fingers red, and left a stain

we kept for weeks, through snow and miles of sleep,
as if it was meant to happen, a sliver of fate
unstitching its place in the marrow, and digging in.

ALT

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1d

Bookclub: Irvine Welsh

Currently on BBC Sounds: Irvine Welsh speaks to Bookclub, presented by James Naughtie, about his era-defining 1993 debut TRAINSPOTTING. This episode was recorded at the Edinburgh International Book Festival in August 2026.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m00316t6

#Scottish #literature #Trainspotting #IrvineWelsh #novel

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1d

Creative Writing: Rain
13 Oct/3 Nov/1 Dec, National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh – £5

This series of three workshops, led by writer Lynn Davidson, will explore the rhythms, sounds, moods & patterns of rain & weather through creative writing. All welcome.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/creative-writing-rain-tickets-2000395472708

#Scottish #literature #writing #creativewriting #rain #weather #Edinburgh

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2d

Karen Campbell – Q&A with Book Signing
1 Oct, Duloch Library, Dunfermline – £3

Karen Campbell will talk about how she became a writer, taking everyday people & situations then digging deep beneath the surface to uncover what makes us all unique – but also what unites us

https://www.onfife.com/event/under-the-skin-with-author-karen-campbell-79401a/

#Scottish #literature #novel #Fife

Karen Campbell
Author Event

Talk
Q and A with Book Signing

Thursday 1s October
7pm (doors open 6:45pm)
Duloch Library
Admission £3 – Booking Essential

Over 16 years

To book visit www.onfife.com
or in person at Duloch Library
01383 602208

ALT

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1d

He moves the way light moves: now sudden,
racing up a field as sun clears cloud,

now unnoticed, leaching from the world
until you look up into dark…

—Sheenagh Pugh, “Him Again”
published in A Little Touch of Cliff in the Evening: New Writing Scotland 30 (ASL, 2012)

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #autumn

HIM AGAIN
by Sheenagh Pugh

He moves the way light moves: now sudden,
racing up a field as sun clears cloud,

now unnoticed, leaching from the world
until you look up into dark.

And he inhabits next door's peat stack,
waiting for winter, and the fat sheep

ready for the show, and the gap
in the window of what was a house

and is a shed, and soon will be out of use.
The berries that were once white blossom

on the brambles belong to him,
so they say, and lose all their taste

on a certain day, when he comes to harvest
what is alive, and ripe, and his own.

ALT

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1d

NAMING THE SNAKES: New Writing Scotland 44
Edinburgh launch
15 September, Blackwell’s, South Bridge – £3 / £11 with book

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

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/naming-the-snakes-new-writing-scotland-44-tickets-1995684361648

#Scottish #literature #Gaidhlig #Gaelic #Scots #Scotslanguage #poetry #shortfiction #shortstories #writing #writingcommunity #Edinburgh

naming-the-snakes-new-writing-scotland-44-tickets-1995684361648

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1d

A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle
19 November, National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh. Free, ticketed

Marking the centenary of Hugh MacDiarmid’s landmark poem, “A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle” – a 2685-line work in Scots that is colloquial, lyrical, & highly literary, blending tradition with modernism & exploring both national & international themes

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/a-drunk-man-looks-at-the-thistle-tickets-1999760348033

#Scottish #literature #poetry #Scots #Scotslanguage #MacDiarmid #HughMacDiarmid #modernism

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1d

“Doon the Stair fae Ms Cruickshank” – the 2026 Scottish PEN Helen Cruickshank Memorial Lecture
20 September, Edinburgh – free

In this lecture from the Scottish PEN Writers for Peace Committee, Nada Shawa, author of 𝘐𝘯𝘥𝘪𝘨𝘦𝘯𝘰𝘶𝘴 𝘚𝘰𝘶𝘭: 𝘎𝘢𝘻𝘢 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘔𝘦, will deliver a lecture celebrating the life, poetry & activism of Helen Cruickshank, & explore how the themes of her work resonate for writers today.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/helen-cruickshank-lecture-2026-tickets-1999858019170

#Scottish #literature #ScottishPEN #Scots #Scotslanguage #HelenCruickshank

helen-cruickshank-lecture-2026-tickets-1999858019170

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