Eggplant.place

213d

Let us remember
the stillborn: how they

cede their places here
with such good grace

that no one ever
speaks of them

again…

—John Burnside, “A Footnote to Colossians”
published in RUIN, BLOSSOM (Penguin, 2024)

https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/456120/ruin-blossom-by-burnside-john/9781529909258

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #JohnBurnside

John Burnside
A Footnote to Colossians

For ye are dead, and your life is hid
Colossians 3:3

Let us remember
the stillborn: how they

cede their places here
with such good grace

that no one ever
speaks of them

again.
In school,

we placed them, carefully,
in Limbo,

deep in the folds of smoke
and snowfall, where

their names would never
find them:

pagan, now,
and immaterial,

like phantoms,
or that

boy I sometimes saw
in polaroids,

the one they said
was me.

ALT

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212d

A Kick Up the Arts

Gray Day on 25 February celebrates the 45th anniversary of Lanark. Curated by Sorcha Dallas, custodian of the Alasdair Gray Archive, the event will be hosted by writer & comedian Josie Long & will feature a new short story by Rachelle Atalla inspired by Gray’s work.

A Kick Up the Arts host Nicola Meighan visits the archive & speaks to Sorcha, Josie & Rachelle about the upcoming celebration

https://www.akickupthearts.org/blog-3-1/josie-long-rachelle-atalla-amp-sorcha-dallas-on-alasdair-gray

#Scottish #literature #AlasdairGray #GrayDay #podcast

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213d

The swine hangs on,
The swine hangs on to power,
The townsfolk mutter round the tower…

—Alan Jackson, “The Swine”
published in Salutations: Collected Poems 1960–1989 (Polygon, 1990)

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

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #20thcentury

The Swine
Alan Jackson

The swine hangs on,
The swine hangs on to power,
The townsfolk mutter round the tower:

“Roast him, toast him,
Thin his blood.
Try fire first,
Then try flood.

Char the timbers,
Crack the stone.
Make him marrow
In a splintered bone.

Then he’ll tumble,
Our hot meat.
Then we hack him.
Then we eat.”

ALT

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213d

The Carrying Stream – 4

Scottish Folk & European Music with Kirsteen McCue, Professor of Scottish Literature & Song Culture at the University of Glasgow

Discussing the history of Scottish folk music & particularly its influence on the birth of modern music – from Beethoven to Bob Dylan

https://pod.link/1865430519/episode/ZThjODAzZjEtODQ1ZS00OWY2LWI5NzItZjI0NjBhNWU2NTBm

#Scottish #music #folkmusic #folksong #podcast

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184d

The 19th-century Gaelic poet & songwriter Màiri Nic a’ Phearsain (Mary MacPherson) – known as Màiri Mhòr nan Òran (Great Mary of the Songs) – was born #OTD, 10 March 1821. Much of her work was political & was especially focused on the struggle for land rights

1/5

https://www.thenational.scot/news/19145415.mairi-mhor-nan-oran-celebrating-one-greatest-gaelic-poets/

#Scottish #literature #Gaidhlig #Gaelic #19thcentury #Victorian #history #landrights

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212d

Saltire Sessions: Gerda Stevenson

The Saltire Society talks to Gerda Stevenson – actress, writer, director & musician – about storytelling in its different forms, Scots language, loss & Gerda’s new short story collection CAT WUMMIN, published by Luath Press.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l93GKY8DeaM

#Scottish #literature #Scots #Scotslanguage #womanwriters

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212d

I nod and nod to my own shadow and thrust
A mountain down and down.
Between my feet a loch shines in the brown,
Its silver paper crinkled and edged with rust…

—Norman MacCaig, “Climbing Suilven”
from BETWEEN MOUNTAIN AND SEA: Poems From Assynt (Birlinn, 2018)

https://birlinn.co.uk/product/between-mountain-and-sea/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #climbing #hillwalking #Suilven #Sutherland #20thcentury #NormanMacCaig

Norman MacCaig
Climbing Suilven

I nod and nod to my own shadow and thrust
A mountain down and down.
Between my feet a loch shines in the brown,
Its silver paper crinkled and edged with rust.
My lungs say No;
But down and down this treadmill hill must go.

Parishes dwindle. But my parish is
This stone, that tuft, this stone
And the cramped quarters of my flesh and bone.
I claw that tall horizon down to this;
And suddenly
My shadow jumps huge miles away from me.

ALT

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1y

I couldn’t touch a stop and turn a screw,
And set the blooming world a-work for me,
Like such as cut their teeth—I hope, like you—
On the handle of a skeleton gold key…

—“Thirty Bob a Week”, by the 19th-century poet, playwright & novelist John Davidson (1857–1909) – born #OTD, 11 April. A 🎂 🧵

1/3

Page images from THE YELLOW BOOK vol. 2, 1894 – available on @gutenberg_org

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/41876/41876-h/41876-h.htm#Page_99

#Scottish #literature #poetry #19thCentury #Victorian #Modernist #Modernism #workingclass

John Davidson
Thirty Bob a Week

I couldn’t touch a stop and turn a screw,
And set the blooming world a-work for me,
Like such as cut their teeth—I hope, like you—
On the handle of a skeleton gold key.
I cut mine on a leek, which I eat it every week:
I’m a clerk at thirty bob as you can see.

But I don’t allow it’s luck and all a toss;
There’s no such thing as being starred and crossed;
It’s just the power of some to be a boss,
And the bally power of others to be bossed:
I face the music, sir; you bet I ain’t a cur!
Strike me lucky if I don’t believe I’m lost!

For like a mole I journey in the dark,
A-travelling along the underground
From my Pillar’d Halls and broad suburban Park
To come the daily dull official round;
And home again at night with my pipe all alight
A-scheming how to count ten bob a pound.

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211d

Nan Shepherd (1893–1981) was born #OTD, 11 Feb. Recently her nature writing & her memoir THE LIVING MOUNTAIN have gained attention—but she was also an important modernist novelist. Charlotte Peacock weighs her contribution to Scotland’s literary renaissance

A 🎂 🧵

1/9

https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2020/12/quiet-pioneer-the-novels-of-nan-shepherd-1893-1981/

#Scottish #literature #NanShepherd #modernist #modernism #20thCentury #NatureWriting #memoir #WomenWriters

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210d

Gave yet another lecture. God, I’m boring.
Said all the same old things I’ve said before
With touches of “however-ing” and “therefore-ing”.
Dear God, it’s true, I’m just an ancient bore…

—Douglas Dunn, “Thursday”
published in THE NOISE OF A FLY (Faber, 2019)

https://www.faber.co.uk/product/9780571333820-the-noise-of-a-fly/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #academia

Thursday
Douglas Dunn

Gave yet another lecture. God, I’m boring.
Said all the same old things I’ve said before
With touches of “however-ing” and “therefore-ing”.
Dear God, it’s true, I’m just an ancient bore.

If only I could tap my old exuberance,
High spirits that I plied in days before,
Then maybe I would find a kind deliverance
From the curse of being such a bloody bore.

For I’m the model of a modern academic.
I’m absolutely super at ennui.
I’m just stunning when it comes to a polemic,
And boredom’s snoredom’s what I guarantee.

I’m putting extra pennies in my pension.
Retirement beckons and the garden calls,
That beautiful, botanical dimension
Where boiler-suited pensioners scratch their balls.

But I’ve a problem. It’s called “work ethic”, so
I’ll slog on with the daily, dreary toil.
Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, what a lousy way to go,
To work all day then burn the midnight oil.

ALT

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211d

Thanks to funding from the Scottish government, ASL is offering free class sets of Donald S. Murray’s play SEQUAMUR – one of the set texts for Higher English – to secondary schools in Scotland. See our website for details:

https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/free-publications/sequamur/

#Scottish #literature #drama #Higher #HigherEnglish #school #secondaryschool

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142d

Alistair MacLean (1922–1987) – author of The Guns of Navarone, Ice Station Zebra, Where Eagles Dare, etc. – was born #OTD, 21 April, 1922. A native Gaelic speaker, he grew up near Inverness. @NeilDrysdale looks at MacLean’s remarkable life

@bookstodon

1/5

https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/past-times/2390095/from-arctic-convoys-to-far-east-vj-day-missions-alistair-macleans-life-was-a-real-life-thriller/

#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #thriller #film #movies #actionmovies #Gaidhligh #Gaelic

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210d

I met a young man in a floppy hat
who stopped and smiled; he too had charm.
“My finches,” he said, “you are watching my finches.”

—Edwin Morgan, “Darwin in the Galapagos (1835 AD)”
published in A BOOK OF LIVES (Carcanet, 2007)

Charles Darwin was born #OnThisDay, 12 February, 1809

https://www.carcanet.co.uk/9781857549188/a-book-of-lives/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #EdwinMorgan #Darwin #CharlesDarwin #DarwinDay #evolution

Edwin Morgan
Darwin in the Galapagos (1835 AD)

It was a cool day for the equator
as I clambered whistling over the clinker.
Clouds had brought a shower across the shore.
Grey black scoured and pitted rocks
glistened, and so did an iguana
eyeing me lazily with its wet crest bristling.
I saw the drag-marks of a giant tortoise –
what a dogged message thrusting into the thicket!
And the air was bright with birds, well, bright and dark –
green, brown, yellow – little birds, finches
flirting their few inches, drenching the freshness
with a spray of chatter and chirm, with a charm
peculiar to these islands, these Incantadas

I met a young man in a floppy hat
who stopped and smiled; he too had charm.
“My finches,” he said, “you are watching my finches.”
We sat on an old stump, I cherish the moment.
A man both ingenuous and ingenious,
a genius indeed, enthusiastic, shy,
well no, not really shy, but modest,
that was a type I could talk to for ever.

ALT

“These finches – all different,” he said.
“They have become separate species, and why is that?
They had some ancestor in Ecuador
but here their beaks have changed to match their food –
small seeds, big seeds, nectar, and do you know
there is one that makes a tool of cactus spines
to ferret grubs from tree-cracks? Oh
I can hardly sleep for excitement!
Nothing is immutable, life changes, we evolve.
Process is gorgeous, is it not!
Process is progress, don‘t you see!”

He taps my arm, his eyes shine. I agree.
Time breaks in great waves as we speak.
And look, a finch on the back of a tortoise
as if it had been listening
lifts its beak and begins a singing
so piercing it gives no end to that beginning.

ALT

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210d

The longlist for the 2025 Duais Leabhair na Gàidhealtachd | Highland Book Prize has been announced. The Prize celebrates the talent, landscape, & cultural diversity of the Scottish Highlands & is open to works of fiction, non-fiction, & poetry

https://www.highlandbookprize.org.uk/longlist/

#Scottish #literature #Highlands #HighlandBookPrize #Gaidhlig #Gaelic

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210d

A country of their own: writing Scotland as a woman
Ifeta Čirić-Fazlija & Lejla Mulalić

This monograph examines the works of five Scottish women authors: Kathleen Jamie, Liz Lochhead, Sharman Macdonald, Rona Munro, & Agnes Owens

Available free online via Open Access

@litstudies

https://ebooks.ff.unsa.ba/index.php/ebooks_ffunsa/catalog/book/125

#Scottish #literature #womenwriters #gender #region #class #workingclass #identity #OpenAccess

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142d

You see that I will have to rise
And turn round and get back where
My running age will slow for a moment
To let me on. It is a colder
Stretch of water than I remember.

The curlew’s cry travelling still
Kills me fairly…

—WS Graham, “Loch Thom”

Today, 21 April, is World Curlew Day

1/4

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/loch-thom/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #curlews #WorldCurlewDay #birds

Loch Thom
by W. S. Graham

1

Just for the sake of recovering
I walked backward from fifty-six
Quick years of age wanting to see,
And managed not to trip or stumble
To find Loch Thom and turned round
To see the stretch of my childhood
Before me. Here is the loch. The same
Long-beaked cry curls across
The heather-edges of the water held
Between the hills a boyhood’s walk
Up from Greenock. It is the morning.

And I am here with my mammy’s
Bramble jam scones in my pocket.
The Firth is miles and I have come
Back to find Loch Thom maybe
In this light does not recognise me.

This is a lonely freshwater loch.
No farms on the edge. Only
Heath grouse-moor stretching
Down to Greenock and One Hope
Street or stretching away across
Into the blue moors of Ayrshire.

2

And almost I am back again
Wading in the heather down to the edge
To sit. The minnows go by in shoals
Like iron-filings in the shallows.

My mother is dead. My father is dead
And all the trout I used to know
Leaping from their sad rings are dead.

3

I drop my crumbs into the shallow
Weed for the minnows and pinheads.
You see that I will have to rise
And turn round and get back where
My running age will slow for a moment
To let me on. It is a colder
Stretch of water than I remember.

The curlew’s cry travelling still
Kills me fairly. In front of me
The grouse flurry and settle. GOBACK
GOBACK GOBACK FAREWELL LOCH THOM.

ALT

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193d

Exploring the Jackie Kay Archive
28 May, National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh. Free, booking required.

Explore the personal archive of Jackie Kay, Scotland's former Makar and beloved writer. Curator Dan Sheehy will share his favourite discoveries from cataloguing her lifetime of work.

https://www.nls.uk/whats-on/jackie-kay-archive/

#Scottish #literature #poetry #JackieKay #womenwriters #archives

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141d

NEW COUNTRIES WILL
GROW UP ON GRACEFUL
PROMONTORIES WHERE A FEW
PEOPLE GATHER TOGETHER/
IN THEIR WORLD IT WILL BE
ILLEGAL TO OWN THE LAND…

Billboard
Robert Montgomery
Ostend Wall Piece. Crystal Ship Festival, 2016
Hahnemühle Photorag

Today, 22 April, is Earth Day.

https://www.robertmontgomery.org/new-gallery/hlltwglwt2au4gtsho09mz2afejeee

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #EarthDay #EarthDay2026 #environment #environmentalism

A billboard, covering one wall of a five-storey block. In the foreground, three adults and one child are looking up at it. The billboard is black and carries white text in all capitals. The text reads:

NEW COUNTRIES WILL
GROW UP ON GRACEFUL
PROMONTORIES WHERE A FEW
PEOPLE GATHER TOGETHER/
IN THEIR WORLD IT WILL BE
ILLEGAL TO OWN THE LAND.
//AND THEY WILL MAKE
NEW LITERATURES IN
WHICH THE OIL AGE WILL
BE FORGOTTEN//
AND OUR CITIES WILL BE
FOLDED BACK INTO THE SAND/
AND THEY WILL NOT EVEN
REMEMBER HOW WE ONCE
HELD THE WORLD IN OUR
HANDS AND HOW WE
CRUSHED IT LIKE A BIRD
IN OUR HANDS

ALT

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1y

Beyond ruined houses and a past
eroded by salt and marram grass
stretch miles of sand dunes
where as kids we hurled ourselves
into space …

—Eleanor Livingstone, “Breathless”
from In the Event of Fire: New Writing Scotland 27 (ASLS, 2009)

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry

Eleanor Livingstone
BREATHLESS

Beyond ruined houses and a past
eroded by salt and marram grass
stretch miles of sand dunes
where as kids we hurled ourselves
into space, legs and rebel cries
suspended in the air, landing

spread-eagled in cotton shorts
and bare legs, winded but alive.

On August evenings years later
under cover of dark we returned
stumbling in and out of rabbit holes
to find the sand sun-warmed, soft
and far enough removed for us
to lie as still and silent as the sea

but for fingers finding buttons
and the racket of our hearts.

ALT

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209d

James Leslie Mitchell (1901–1935), better known as Lewis Grassic Gibbon, was born on this day, 13 Feb. Author of SUNSET SONG – & many other titles from historical to science fiction – he is one of the most important Scottish writers of the 20th century.

A 🎂 🧵 …

1/10

https://digital.nls.uk/learning/sunset-song-quines/overview-of-the-novel/biography-of-lewis-grassic-gibbon/

#Scottish #literature #modernism #20thcentury #HistoricalFiction #ScienceFiction #LewisGrassicGibbon

ALT

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207d

Call for papers
Scotland & the In-Between
Société française d’études écossaises Annual Conference
12–14 November, Université de Lorraine (Nancy), France

The conference invites participants to consider the many forms of passage, transition, & mediation that have shaped Scottish history, literature, the arts, language, & culture.

Deadline: 28 April 2026

@litstudies

https://www.bars.ac.uk/blog/?p=6338

#Scottish #literature #history #culture #culturalstudies #callforpapers

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209d

“[Shane] Strachan sees Scots’s revitalization being driven in part by young people’s desire for, as he puts it, ‘what’s left that makes you different’ in an era of social media homogenization. A new generation of Scots speakers wants to talk about what’s happening in the world, in their own words.”

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/scots-language-social-media-tiktok

#Scottish #Scotland #Scots #Scotslanguage #minoritylanguages

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141d

bradan à linne
fadh à frith
craobh à coille

trì nithean
nach meàirle
ghabhail o nàdar…

—Aonghas MacNeacail, “trì nithean”
published in Laoidh an donais òig / Hymn to a young demon (Polygon, 2007)

#Scottish #literature #Gaidhlig #Gaelic #EarthDay #EarthDay2026 #poem #poetry #landrights

aonghas macneacail
three things

salmon from the pool
deer from the moor
tree from the wood

three things
it’s no crime
to take from nature

grouse and salmon and deer
…and land and land and land

whose are they
who stole them

whose are they
who stole them

whose are they
who stole them

ALT

aonghas macneacail
trì nithean

bradan à linne
fadh à frith
craobh à coille

trì nithean
nach meàirle
ghabhail o nàdar

cearc-fhraoich is bradan is fiadh
… is fearann is fearann is fearann

cò leis iad
cò ghoid iad

cò leis iad
cò ghoid iad

cò leis iad
cò ghoid iad

ALT

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183d

RSE Investigates: The history of Scots and English in 10 objects

What can objects tell us about the history of our languages?
Prof Jeremy Smith uncovers the unique stories & histories of English & Scots through ten extraordinary objects: a bone, a piece of jewellery, a stone cross, a jug, two manuscripts, two letters, a broadside sheet, & an early printed book.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8MEEn47TRc

#Scottish #literature #Scots #Scotslanguage #languagehistory

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207d

The sun’s been tint for weeks. Deid maybe.
Likely drooned. Water’s aaplace, teemin doon
gutters and branders, rinnin aff the slates,
floodin pavements. Fowk near droon…

—Ken Morrice, “Foo Mony Cubits?”
published in Selected Poems (Keith Murray, 1991)

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/foo-mony-cubits/

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