The Glenriddell Manuscripts preserve Robert Burns’s own chosen poems & letters, illuminating his creative process. After his death, they went on an extraordinary journey before returning to Scotland. Ralph McLean, manuscripts curator for long 18th century collections at the National Library of Scotland, tells us more
#Scottish #literature #RobertBurns #manuscripts #18thcentury #poetry
This photo’s saying nothing, is black and white, opaque.
A frozen moment, not a memory.
The boyfriend with the Pentax took it for the sake
Of taking it…
—Liz Lochhead, “Photograph, Art Student, Female, Working Class, 1966”
from FUGITIVE COLOURS (Birlinn, 2016)
29 June is National Camera Day 📷
https://birlinn.co.uk/product/fugitive-colours/
#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Sixties #1960s #photography #NationalCameraDay
Writing Science Fiction from Scotland – Ken MacLeod
19 June, Glasgow – free
Award-winning science-fiction author Ken MacLeod discusses his career & how he became a major figure in the world of SF.
His work has been widely translated & ranges from near-future dystopia to far-flung space opera, drawing on his first-hand knowledge of biological science, information technology, & political activism.
https://www.glasgowlife.org.uk/event/1/writing-science-fiction-from-scotland-ken-macleod
Moniack Mhor Creative Writing Centre’s Write Highlands Bursary offers fully funded non-residential places on creative writing courses on life writing, fiction, & poetry for writers living in the Highland Council area. You do not need to be a published writer.
@writingcommunity
https://forms.office.com/e/8LtwJL245v
#Scottish #literature #writing #writers #Highlands #Iamwriting #writingcommunity
Of Mice and Mountain Daisies: Robert Burns & Nature
17 June, Ellisland – tickets by donation
Led by acclaimed authors & historians Neil Baxter & Mary Craig, this special event will examine how Robert Burns experienced nature not simply as an observer, but as a poet whose daily life at Ellisland was shaped by the land, the River Nith & the rhythms of rural life
#Scottish #literature #18thcentury #RobertBurns #poetry #nature #naturepoetry
A literary history map of Stirling has been launched to celebrate the city’s wealth of myths & legends & contemporary writing greats.
Stirling’s map offers six literary routes tracing the steps of Scotland’s great writers & the sites that inspired them, from the Golden Lion Hotel, where Robert Burns etched his “Stirling Lines” on a window, to the Trossachs of Walter Scott’s “The Lady of the Lake”.
https://www.stirling.gov.uk/news/step-into-stirling-s-story-as-new-literary-walking-map-launched/
“Colour is a language in the novel… The men can’t talk about the truth of their feelings, or about what’s really going on. But they have such specificity around colour, and that’s the one place they can meet”
—Douglas Stuart on JOHN OF JOHN, & championing Hebridean weavers
@bookstodon
#Scottish #literature #novel #DouglasStuart #Hebrides #tartan #textile #tweed #weaving #queerlit
I mind when I was a bairnie hou ma mither
brocht out ae day a kist o skinklan things,
ferlies I thocht them, ilk mair rare nor anither,
aa kind o gowdies, stanes and chains and rings…
—Douglas Young, “Thesaurus Paleo-Scoticus”
10 June is Gies a Scots Poem Day
https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/volumes/a-kist-o-skinlan-things/
#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Scots #Scotslanguage #GiesAScotsPoemDay
Graeme Armstrong: Raveheart
22 June, Erskine – £12
Graeme Armstrong discusses his new novel RAVEHEART: a high-octane narcotic trip of a story where underground rave culture clashes with a dystopian regime. Followed by a Q&A & book signing
A summer of reading-related episodes of the Love Scotland podcast begins with author Denise Mina talking about juggling facts & fiction in historical novels
https://pod.co/for-the-love-of-scotland-podcast/denise-mina-tales-of-historic-fact-and-fiction
Robert Burns & Black Lives
24 June, Alloway – free
Clark McGinn, author & honorary research fellow at the Centre for Robert Burns Studies, examines Burns’s connections to the transatlantic slave trade, highlighting the paradoxes & moral conflicts of the poet’s time
#Scottish #literature #18thcentury #romanticism #RobertBurns #slavery #SlaveryHistory
“[Spark] knew what the world thought of women like her, who prioritize their artistic and intellectual development over marriage, men and motherhood. She had known this, in fact, years before she herself became an object of public scrutiny. It is all there in the work she fought so fiercely to create, right from the beginning.”
—James Bailey on Muriel Spark’s eternal pursuit of the literary life – via @literaryhub
https://lithub.com/an-intellectual-monster-why-muriel-spark-never-married/
Someone is waving a white handkerchief
from the train as it pulls out with a white
plume from the station and rumbles its way
to somewhere that does not matter…
—George Bruce (1909–2002), “Departure and Departure and…”
published in The Edinburgh Book of Twentieth-Century Scottish Poetry (EUP 2005)
George MacDonald Fraser (1925–2008) – author, historian, journalist, screenwriter – was born #OTD, 2 April, 1925
“His dedication to strongly researched stories, built firmly on a bedrock of historical fact, but always with an eye to the humour of a situation, was the core of what appealed to me”
Historical novelist Michael Jecks discusses MacDonald Fraser’s writing for the Royal Literary Fund
@bookstodon
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Christian Isobel Johnstone (1781–1857) was born #OTD, 12 June. She edited Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine, famous for its liberal stance & incisive literary reviews, & wrote some of the most remarkable Scottish novels of the Romantic era
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https://www.scottishwomenwritersontheweb.net/writers-a-to-z/christian-isobel-johnstone
#Scottish #literature #romanticism #18thcentury #19thcentury #womenwriters
An iarmailt cho soilleir tana
mar gum biodh am brat-sgàile air a reubadh
’s an Cruthaidhear ’na shuidhe am fianuis a shluaigh
aig a’ bhuntàt ’s a sgadan…
—Ruaraidh MacThòmais, “Leodhas as t-Samhradh”
published in Scottish Religious Poetry: 6th century to the present
https://standrewpress.hymnsam.co.uk/books/9781800830479/scottish-religious-poetry
#Scottish #literature #Gaidhlig #Gaelic #poem #poetry #20thcentury #Summer #Lewis #Hebrides
JOB ALERT
Research Assistant at the University of Strathclyde for the AHRC-funded research project “Beyond The Dear Green Place: Recovering the Lost Works & Literary Networks of Archie Hind”. Hind (1928–2008) is one of Glasgow’s most important postwar writers, & his papers, previously thought lost, are an exceptionally important recent addition to the University’s archive collections.
Congratulations to the six poets shortlisted for the 2026 Edwin Morgan Poetry Award!
✨Tom Bailey
✨Emmett Coleman
✨Zainab Imran
✨Flora Leask Arizpe
✨Kate Millar
✨Caitlin Palmer
Find out more about the shortlist & read a selection of their poems on the Edwin Morgan Trust’s website:
https://edwinmorgantrust.com/2026/07/03/empa-2026-shortlist/
James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879) was born #OTD, 13 June. As a physicist, he ranks alongside Newton & Einstein (“He achieved greatness unequalled”—Max Planck)
He also wrote poetry: “Rigid Body Sings” is based on “Comin’ Through the Rye” by Robert Burns.
#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #19thcentury #Victorian #Scots #Scotslanguage #physics #science #sciencepoetry
Creativity, Community & Class with Kevin P. Gilday
The Creative Resistance Podcast talks to Glasgow poet, performer, & playwright Kevin P. Gilday about gatekeeping of working-class stories, the role of art as a tool for survival rather than a luxury, & Kevin’s groundbreaking community projects like The Bank of Springburn & the Care in Scotland installation
#Scottish #literature #poetry #drama #art #culture #workingclass #workingclasswriters #podcast
“We travelled north from London together on the Caledonian Sleeper. The tree got the upper bunk, I had the lower one.”
On 9 August 1945, the second – & so far, last – nuclear weapon used in war fell on Nagasaki. One of the few things to survive the bomb was a persimmon tree. In 2002, the poet Gerry Loose brought a sapling from that tree to Glasgow’s Botanic Gardens
https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2015/06/travels-with-a-tree/
#Scottish #literature #poetry #Nagasaki #NagasakiDay #Glasgow
Available for preorder
STEVENSON & PLEASURE
Ed. Julie Gay, Lesley Graham & Nathalie Jaëck
£24.95 / €29.95 / $29.95
Looking at physical, creative, & intertextual/intermedial pleasures, these 10 essays explore how pleasure – sensory, intellectual & aesthetic – influenced Robert Louis Stevenson’s work & its reception
@litstudies
https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/occasional_papers/stevenson-and-pleasure/
#Scottish #literature #RobertLouisStevenson #19thcentury #Victorian #pleasure #litstudies #litcrit
James Hutton (1726–1797), father of modern geology, was born #OTD, 14 June (NS; 3 June OS). One of the first European proponents of “deep time”, the conclusion of his 1788 paper “Theory of the Earth” has been called one of the most lyrical sentences in all of science:
The result, therefore, of our present enquiry is, that we find no vestige of a beginning,—no prospect of an end.
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https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/2808
#Scottish #literature #Enlightenment #18thcentury #DeepTime #science #geology
This morning I watched from here
a helicopter skirting like a damaged insect
the Empire State Building, that
jumbo size dentist’s drill, and landing
on the roof of the PanAm skyscraper.
But now midnight has come in
from foreign places…
—Norman MacCaig, “Hotel Room, 12th Floor”
published in THE POEMS OF NORMAN MacCAIG (Birlinn, 2009)
https://birlinn.co.uk/product/the-poems-of-norman-maccaig/
#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #FourthofJuly #july4th #IndependenceDay #NewYork #USA
Mister drags off his box of fireworks to the shore.
Missiz drains her drink and hits the floor
with someone half her age…
—Liz Lochhead, “Fourth of July Fireworks”
published in THREE SCOTTISH POETS: MacCaig • Morgan • Lochhead, @canongatebooks 1992
🇺🇸 🎆
#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #FourthofJuly #America250 #IndependenceDay
