scottish

40d

Keepers of the Light
Currently on BBC Sounds

For generations, the Stevenson family built lighthouses around Scotland’s coast. Robert Louis Stevenson was expected to do the same – but instead, he chose to write. Keepers of the Light explores the uneasy boundary between art & engineering, & how one extraordinary family shared an impulse to create in very different forms.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0031py0

#Scottish #literature #19thcentury #Victorian #art #engineering #lighthouse #RobertLouisStevenson

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39d

A nighean a dhìreas an staidhre le do sheanmhair,
a dàrna làmh na do làimh-sa, a bata san tèile,
saoilidh tu gu bheil i cho sean ris a’ cheò,
gun smuain air do làmh fhèin a’ fàs preasach
no do dhruim crotach…

—Meg Bateman, “Nighean is Seanmhair aig a’ Ghailearaidh Nàiseanta”
published in TRANSPARENCIES (Polygon, 2013)

Today, 4 October, is Grandparents’ Day

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Gaidhlig #Gaelic #grandparents #GrandparentsDay

Meg Bateman
Nighean is Seanmhair aig a’ Ghailearaidh Nàiseanta

A nighean a dhìreas an staidhre le do sheanmhair,
a dàrna làmh na do làimh-sa, a bata san tèile,
saoilidh tu gu bheil i cho sean ris a’ cheò,
gun smuain air do làmh fhèin a’ fàs preasach
no do dhruim crotach . . .
ach tha sibh nur co-aoisich
’s sibh a’ siubhal an t-saoghail seo còmhla.

Treòraichidh i gu dealbh thall san oisean thu,
“Fèin-dhealbh a’ pheantair aig fichead bliadhna ’s a trì”
le Dàibhidh Màrtainn (Albannach, ochdamh linn deug),
seallaidh i dhut tuar nam ban-sìth na ghruaidh,
na sgàilean na shùilean, a ruisg fhada bhàna,
is cha dad nas treasa do chòir-sa seach a còir-se
air a bheul cumadail glacte fo gach lì.

Meg Bateman
Girl and Grandmother at the National Gallery

Girl helping your grandmother up the gallery steps
with her stick in one hand and her arm in yours,
to you she seems as old as the hills,
you little imagine your own hand wrinkled
or your back bent,
but you are contemporaries –
you walk this earth together.

She leads you to a painting over in the corner,
“Self-portrait of the Artist at Twenty-Three”
by David Martin (eighteenth century, Scottish),
shows you the trace of foxglove in his cheek,
the shadowy eyes and long fair lashes,
and no better claim have you than she
on the chiselled lips caught between glazes.

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39d

Whan du telt me hoo du thowt o ‘luck’
as nae mair as chance, de happy hubbelskju
o aentropie, I thowt onnly o de ben-end
o my grandmidder’s hoose an aa her talismans
o tat…

—Roseanne Watt, “Lukkie”

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

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Shetland #Shaetlan #Scots #Scotslanguage #grandparents #GrandparentsDay

Lukkie
Roseanne Watt

Whan du telt me hoo du thowt o ‘luck’
as nae mair as chance, de happy hubbelskju
o aentropie, I thowt onnly o de ben-end
o my grandmidder’s hoose an aa her talismans
o tat. Inbi, luck wis acht an lenned lik coins,
hot fae de löf. Dere wis wyes aboot it:
a sixpence fir de scratchcairds; tree skoilts
o a gingernut wid gie dee a wish; a dram
onnly ivvir gied sungaets roond de room.
Ee time, ower supper, shö telt me hoo shö won
an aamos fae a haafman; a beaded bag
fir a skurtfoo o her luck at sea. I browt him
tae de dance dat week, but someen took him
fae de cloakroom. Less. Dere’s joost some tings
dat du canna keep a haad o. Dat’s true enoff.
It seems tae me wir luck his aye been wattir
cupped by hands at prayer, in a langwich
at his mair wirds fir ill-luckit tings as fair.
Nivir leet, shö says. De lotto’s demoarn.
Can I git dee a gingernut?

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39d

My grandfather didn’t know he was a Taoist.
He had fished the river Awe for sixty years.
Life is sensed as a flowing movement,
a power like wind or water. When he cast,
it was the bank that moved, not the river…

—Lorn Macintyre, “Satori”
from The Bridport Prize Anthology 2013

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #grandparents #GrandparentsDay #fishing #Zen #satori #tao #taoism

Satori
Lorn Macintyre

My grandfather didn’t know he was a Taoist.
He had fished the river Awe for sixty years.
Life is sensed as a flowing movement,
a power like wind or water. When he cast,
it was the bank that moved, not the river.
The osprey with the salmon in its talons
needed no metaphor to describe its beauty.
He saw the suchness of the landscape,
the great whole, perfect, sky, mountain,
as in a painting by the Zen K’un-t’an.
There is no Gaelic for the term satori,
the solution lying beyond the intellect,
that flash of delighted intuition, sensing
that a salmon is lying in the current,
while not seeing a ripple with the eye.
If I had told him: ‘you read the river
like a book, noting between the lines
what other fishermen fail to spy,’
he would have clouted me on the head,
the way Zen Masters took the big stick
to pupils who insisted on comparison.
The river needs no language, no homage.
It goes its own way, like the osprey
which will never run out of sky.

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39d

There is no need they say
but the needles still move
their rhythms in the working of your hands
as easily
as if your hands
were once again those sure and skilful hands
of the fisher-girl…

—Liz Lochhead, “For my Grandmother Knitting”
published in DREAMING FRANKENSTEIN (Birlinn, 2011)

https://birlinn.co.uk/product/dreaming-frankenstein-2/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #grandparents #grandparentsday #knitting

For My Grandmother Knitting
by Liz Lochhead

There is no need they say
but the needles still move
their rhythms in the working of your hands
as easily
as if your hands
were once again those sure and skilful hands
of the fisher-girl.

You are old now
and your grasp of things is not so good
but master of your moments then
deft and swift
you slit the still-ticking quick silver fish.
Hard work it was too
of necessity.

But now they say there is no need
as the needles move
in the working of your hands
once the hands of the bride
with the hand-span waist
once the hands of the miner’s wife
who scrubbed his back
in a tin bath by the coal fire
once the hands of the mother
of six who made do and mended
scraped and slaved slapped sometimes
when necessary.

But now they say there is no need
the kids they say grandma
have too much already
more than they can wear
too many scarves and cardigans –
gran you do too much
there’s no necessity.

At your window you wave
them goodbye Sunday.
With your painful hands
big on shrunken wrists.
Swollen-jointed. Red. Arthritic. Old.
But the needles still move
their rhythms in the working of your hands
easily
as if your hands remembered
of their own accord the pattern
as if your hands had forgotten
how to stop.

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39d

No one makes soup like my Grandpa’s,
with its diced carrots the perfect size
and its diced potatoes the perfect size
and its wee soft bits –
what are their names? …

—Jackie Kay, “Grandpa’s Soup”
published in DARLING (Bloodaxe, 2007)

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

#Scottish #literature poem #poetry #grandparents #GrandparentsDay

Grandpa’s Soup
by Jackie Kay

No one makes soup like my Grandpa’s,
with its diced carrots the perfect size
and its diced potatoes the perfect size
and its wee soft bits –
what are their names?
and its big bit of hough,
which rhymes with loch, floating
like a rich island in the middle of the soup sea.

I say, Grandpa, Grandpa your soup is the best soup in the whole world.
And Grandpa says, Och,
which rhymes with hough and loch,
Och, Don’t be daft,
because he’s shy about his soup, my Grandpa.
He knows I will grow up and pine for it.
I will fall ill and desperately need it.
I will long for it my whole life after he is gone.
Every soup will become sad and wrong after he is gone.
He knows when I’m older I will avoid soup altogether.
Oh Grandpa, Grandpa, why is your soup so glorious? I say,
tucking into my fourth bowl in a day.

Barley! That’s the name of the wee soft bits. Barley.

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6d

You that through all the dying summer
Came every morning to our breakfast table,
A lonely bachelor mummer,
And fed on the marmalade
So deeply, all your strength was scarcely able
To prise you from the sweet pit you had made…

—Edwin Muir, “The Late Wasp”
from One Foot in Eden (Faber, 1956)

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Autumn

The Late Wasp
by Edwin Muir

You that through all the dying summer
Came every morning to our breakfast table,
A lonely bachelor mummer,
And fed on the marmalade
So deeply, all your strength was scarcely able
To prise you from the sweet pit you had made, –
You and the earth have now grown older,
And your blue thoroughfares have felt a change;
They have grown colder;
And it is strange
How the familiar avenues of the air
Crumble now, crumble; the good air will not hold,
All cracked and perished with the cold;
And down you dive through nothing and through despair.

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5d

I’m truly sorry Man’s dominion
Has broken Nature’s social union,
An’ justifies that ill opinion,‍‍
‍‍‍‍‍‍Which makes thee startle,
At me, thy poor, earth-born companion,‍‍
‍‍‍‍‍‍An’ fellow-mortal!

—Robert Burns, “To a Mouse, On turning her up in her Nest, with the Plough, November 1785”

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #18thcentury #RobertBurns #ToAMouse #environmentalism

To a Mouse, On turning her up in her Nest, with the Plough, November 1785.
Robert Burns

Wee, sleekit, cowran, tim’rous beastie,
O, what a panic’s in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,‍‍
Wi’ bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an’ chase thee‍‍
Wi’ murd’ring pattle!

I’m truly sorry Man’s dominion
Has broken Nature’s social union,
An’ justifies that ill opinion,‍‍
Which makes thee startle,
At me, thy poor, earth-born companion,‍‍
An’ fellow-mortal!

I doubt na, whyles, but thou may thieve;
What then? poor beastie, thou maun live!
A daimen-icker in a thrave‍‍
’S a sma’ request:
I’ll get a blessin wi’ the lave,‍‍
An’ never miss’t!

Thy wee-bit housie, too, in ruin!
Its silly wa’s the win’s are strewin!
An’ naething, now, to big a new ane,‍‍
O’ foggage green!
An’ bleak December’s winds ensuin,‍‍
Baith snell an’ keen!

Thou saw the fields laid bare an’ waste,
An’ weary Winter comin fast,
An’ cozie here, beneath the blast,‍‍
Thou thought to dwell,
Till crash! the cruel coulter past‍‍
Out thro’ thy cell.

That wee-bit heap o’ leaves an’ stibble
Has cost thee monie a weary nibble!
Now thou’s turn’d out, for a’ thy trouble,‍‍
But house or hald,
To thole the Winter’s sleety dribble,‍‍
An’ cranreuch cauld!

But Mousie, thou art no thy-lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men‍‍
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,‍‍
For promis’d joy!

Still, thou art blest, compar’d wi’ me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But Och! I backward cast my e’e,‍‍
On prospects drear!
An’ forward, tho’ I canna see,‍‍
I guess an’ fear!

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6d

Mind that night in November, the pair of us
bursting from Mareel like late-comers
to the cinema-dark of the evening.
How we nearly missed it, the other show
that night…

—Roseanne Watt, “Mareel”
published in MODER DY (Polygon, 2019)

https://birlinn.co.uk/product/moder-dy/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Shetland #auroraborealis

Mareel
by Roseanne Watt

Mind that night in November, the pair of us
bursting from Mareel like late-comers
to the cinema-dark of the evening.
How we nearly missed it, the other show
that night: the aurora, the dancers, unspooling
their reels of green across the sky, despite
a bone-bright moon in the south. Mind
how the waves in Hay’s Dock lit up with this
borrowed phosphorescence, and we skirled
at the spectacle of it all; a sky of light, a sea of sky,
and behind us, the noost of Mareel,
its north-pointed prow.

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38d

The Dominie is growin’ grey,
And, feth, he’s keepit thrang
Wi’ counts an’ spellin’ a’ the day,
And liffies when they’re wrang…

—“The Dominie’s Happy Lot”, by poet & schoolmaster Walter Wingate (1865–1918)

Times may have changed, but happy World Teachers’ Day – 5 October – to all who celebrate!

1/4

https://www.unesco.org/en/days/teachers

#Scottish #literature #teachers #teaching #WorldTeachersDay #poem #poetry #19thcentury #Victorian #Scots #Scotslanguage

The Dominie’s Happy Lot
Walter Wingate

The Dominie is growin’ grey,
And, feth, he’s keepit thrang
Wi’ counts an’ spellin’ a’ the day,
And liffies when they’re wrang.
He dauners out at nine o’clock,
He dauners hame at four—
Frae twal to ane to eat and smoke—
And sae his day is owre!

Oh! Leezie, Leezie, fine and easy
Is a job like yon—
A’ Saturday at gowf to play,
And aye the pay gaun on!

And when the burn comes doun in spate,
And troots are taken weel,
To tak’ a day he isna blate,
Sine marches aff wi’s creel.
His garden, it has ne’er a weed,
His tatties are a’ soun’,
The laddies needna fash to read,
As lang’s they delve his grun’.

Oh! Leezie, Leezie, fine and easy
Is a job like yon—
Weel or ill he’s maister still,
And aye the pay gaun on!

When winter days are cauld and dark,
And dykes are deep wi’ snaw,
And bairns are shivern’ owre their wark,
He shuts the shop at twa;
And when it comes to Hogmanay,
And fun comes roarin’ ben,
And ilka dog maun tak’ a day,
The Dominie tak’s ten!

Oh! Leezie, Leezie, fine and easy
Is a job like yon—
To stop the mill whene’er you will,
And aye the pay gaun on!

And when Inspectors gi’e a ca’
He tak’s them roun’ to dine,
And aye the upshot o’ it a—
“The bairns are daein’ fine!”
And sae the “Board” come smirkin’ roun’
Wi’ prizes in their haun’;
And syne it’s frae the end o’ June
Until the Lord kens whan!

Oh! Leezie, Leezie, fine and easy
Is a job like yon—
Sax weeks to jaunt and gallivant,
And aye the pay gaun on!

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38d

This newspaper hoarding – here displayed by Tom Leonard (1944–2018) on his bookcase – was described by the author as

“the only ‘trophy’ I ever got for my poetry that continues to give me some pleasure, when I remember it.”

4–10 October is Banned Books Week

1/3

https://www.tomleonard.co.uk/journal/blog-march.html

#Scottish #literature #censorship #BannedBooksWeek #poetry

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37d

Her memory is mostly updraft, embering
eighty-three years of nature’s gleanings –
like knowing-fine
that October’s nettles are the fiercest…

—Leonie Charlton, “Mrs Maclean”
published in NOTHING BUT A SET OF EYES FOR STARS: New Writing Scotland 41 (ASL, 2023)

https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/newwriting/nws41/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry

MRS MACLEAN
by Leonie Charlton

Her memory is mostly updraft, embering
eighty-three years of nature’s gleanings –
like knowing-fine
that October’s nettles are the fiercest

last night a toad circled the house
he poisoned her sense of home
and today she misplaced a whole turnip
has looked in all the obvious old places

is still looking now by brittle moonlight
keeping a beady eye out for drag-marks
and toe-dabs of a predating toad,
the coppered stare and deft tongue.
Her memory is mostly updraft, embering.

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37d

The merry badger keeps his way
Nocturnally,
And I go merry to my play
Even as he…

—Olive Fraser, “The Solitaries”
from THE WRONG MUSIC, @canongate.co.uk 1989

Happy National Badger Day – 6 October – to all who celebrate!

https://www.badgertrust.org.uk/brocktober

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #20thcentury #naturepoetry #womenwriters #badger #badgers #NationalBadgerDay

The Solitaries
by Olive Fraser

The merry badger keeps his way
Nocturnally,
And I go merry to my play
Even as he.

Minding our own business
Tending our own,
We are no more than this.
Leave us alone.

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37d

Third Man Syndrome – the belief, at the far edge of exhaustion, fear or grief, that someone unseen walks alongside – has inspired Kathleen Jamie to write a new narrative poem where that presence speaks. She sets it among people who have met it.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0032f9x

#Scottish #literature #poetry #mountaineering

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37d

Josephine Tey & the problem of time
20 Oct, Melrose. £6

According to Val McDermid, Josephine Tey is the bridge between Golden Age & contemporary crime fiction. Tey’s books were unconventional in their portrayal of sexuality & in their playful challenges to the norms of the genre, & also took unusual approaches to questions of time & space. Prof Timothy Baker investigates.

https://melroseliterarysociety.org.uk/melrose-literary-society/programme-2026-27/josephine-tey-and-the-problem-of-time/

#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #crimefiction #womenwriters #crimewriting #detectivefiction

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4d

When you see millions of the mouthless dead
Across your dreams in pale battalions go,
Say not soft things as other men have said,
That you’ll remember. For you need not so…

—Charles Hamilton Sorley (1895–1915)

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47427/when-you-see-millions-of-the-mouthless-dead

#Scottish #literature #RemembranceSunday #poem #poetry #warpoetry #warpoem #WW1

'When You See Millions of the Mouthless Dead'
By Charles Hamilton Sorley

When you see millions of the mouthless dead
Across your dreams in pale battalions go,
Say not soft things as other men have said,
That you'll remember. For you need not so.
Give them not praise. For, deaf, how should they know
It is not curses heaped on each gashed head?
Nor tears. Their blind eyes see not your tears flow.
Nor honour. It is easy to be dead.
Say only this, "They are dead." Then add thereto,
"Yet many a better one has died before."
Then, scanning all the o'ercrowded mass, should you
Perceive one face that you loved heretofore,
It is a spook. None wears the face you knew.
Great death has made all his for evermore.

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4d

Every bullet has its billet;
Many bullets more than one:
God! Perhaps I killed a mother
When I killed a mother’s son.

—Joseph Lee, “The Bullet”

Poet & journalist Joseph Lee – Dundee’s “fighter writer” – joined the Black Watch in 1914, & survived WW1

https://youtube.com/watch?v=pWpTAFJOg1M

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #RemembranceSunday #warpoem #warpoetry #WW1

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4d

Well how do you do, Private William McBride?
Do you mind if I sit here down by your graveside?
And I’ll rest for a while in the warm summer sun,
I’ve been walking all day long, and I’m nearly done…

—Eric Bogle, “No Man’s Land”

#Scottish #literature #song #folksong #RemembranceSunday #WW1 #FirstWorldWar

No Man’s Land (The Green Fields of France)
Eric Bogle

Well how do you do, Private William McBride?
Do you mind if I sit here down by your graveside?
And I’ll rest for a while in the warm summer sun,
I’ve been walking all day long, and I’m nearly done.
I see by your gravestone you were only nineteen
When you joined the glorious fallen in 1916,
Well, I hope you died quick, and I hope you died clean,
Or, Willie McBride, was it slow and obscene?

Did they beat the drums slowly,
Did they sound the fife lowly,
Did the rifles fire o’er ye as they lowered you down?
Did the bugles sing The Last Post in chorus?
Did the pipes play the Flowers of the Forest?

And did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind
In some faithful heart is your memory enshrined?
And though you died back in 1916,
To that loyal heart are you always nineteen?
Or are you a stranger without even a name,
Forever enshrined behind some glass pane
In an old photograph, torn and tattered and stained,
And fading to yellow in a brown leather frame.

Did they beat the drums slowly,
Did they sound the fife lowly,
Did the rifles fire o’er ye as they lowered you down?
Did the bugles sing The Last Post in chorus?
Did the pipes play the Flowers of the Forest?

Well the sun’s shining now on these green fields of France;
The warm wind blows gently and the red poppies dance.
The trenches have vanished long under the plough
No gas and no barbed wire, no guns firing now.
But here in this graveyard it’s still No Man’s Land
The countless white crosses in mute witness stand
To man’s blind indifference to his fellow man,
And a whole generation who were butchered and damned.

Did they beat the drums slowly,
Did they sound the fife lowly,
Did the rifles fire o’er ye as they lowered you down?
Did the bugles sing The Last Post in chorus?
Did the pipes play the Flowers of the Forest?

And I can’t help but wonder, now Willie McBride,
Do all those who lie here, know why they died?
Did you really believe them when they told you the “The Cause?”
You really believed that this war would end wars?
The suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame,
The killing, the dying, it was all done in vain,
For Willie McBride, it all happened again,
And again, and again, and again, and again.

Did they beat the drums slowly,
Did they sound the fife lowly,
Did the rifles fire o’er ye as they lowered you down?
Did the bugles sing The Last Post in chorus?
Did the pipes play the Flowers of the Forest?

Did the bugles sing The Last Post in chorus?
Did the pipes play the Flowers of the Forest?

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4d

“It is one thing to make sacrifices; it is quite another thing to become the victim of a kind of national amnesia”

—Jackie Kay on Arthur Roberts (1897–1982), of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers & Royal Scots Fusiliers

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/nov/11/jackie-kay-makar-poem-black-scottish-first-world-war-soldier-arthur-roberts

#Scottish #Scotland #WW1 #FirstWorldWar #history #BlackHistory #ArthurRoberts #RemembranceSunday

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4d

He lacks the ordnance of words.
A self-portrait shows
stitches where his mouth should be;
eyes like empty casings.
He left a part of himself in the desert,
this ultra-Marine…

—Sandra Ireland, “Ultramarine”
published in New Writing Scotland 36 (2018)

#Scottish #literature #RemembranceSunday #poem #poetry

Sandra Ireland
Ultramarine

Trauma can affect the non-verbal
part of the brain. Art can free feelings of loss
and grief and pain from the subconscious,
aiding vocalisation.

He lacks the ordnance of words.
A self-portrait shows
stitches where his mouth should be;
eyes like empty casings.
He left a part of himself
in the desert,
this ultra-Marine,
the part which glows
Tyrian Purple.

Now he is bone black inside;
loaded with dark pigment;
aggregates
to be ground down and
made smooth with linseed words.
Time heals.
Give yourself time.

Time is just a jumbled mix
on his palette;
there was a lot of ochre out there,
and green earth and
sometimes, now he’s home,
he feels the trickle
of warm vermilion
seeping into
his boots.

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4d

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

—“A Winter Letter” (To my sister in London, from Asmara), by George Sutherland Fraser (1915–1980) – born #OTD, 8 Nov

Published in From the Line: Scottish War Poetry 1914–1945

https://uk.bookshop.org/a/2111/9781906841164

#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #poem #poetry #warpoem #warpoetry #WW2 #SecondWorldWar

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,

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.

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4d

“The understated power of this writing is extraordinary”
—Prof Alan Riach re-examines Neil Gunn’s legacy

Neil M. Gunn (1891–1973), one of the most important & influential writers of the 20th-century Scottish renaissance, was born #OTD, 8 Nov – a 🎂 🧵

1/6

https://www.thenational.scot/news/15637617.neil-gunn-and-the-search-for-scotlands-soul/

#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #novel #novelist #NeilMGunn

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4d

To Marykirk ye’ll set ye forth.
An’ whustle as ye step alang,
An’ aye the Grampians i’ the North
Are glow’rin’ on ye as ye gang.
By Martin’s Den, through beech an’ birk,
A breith comes soughin’, sweet an’ strang,
Alang the road to Marykirk…

—Violet Jacob, “The Road to Marykirk”

Violet Jacob’s only child, Harry, died aged just 20 at the Battle of the Somme, on 16 July 1916.

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Scots #Scotslanguage #womenwriters #warpoem #warpoetry #WW1 #RemembranceSunday

Violet Jacob
The Road to Marykirk

To Marykirk ye'll set ye forth,
An' whustle as ye step alang,
An' aye the Grampians i' the North
Are glow'rin' on ye as ye gang.
By Martin's Den, through beech an' birk,
A breith comes soughin', sweet an' strang,
Alang the road to Marykirk.

Frae mony a field ye'll hear the cry
O' teuchits, skirlin' on the wing,
Noo East, noo West, amang the kye,
And smell o' whins the wind'll bring;
Aye, lad, it blaws a thocht to mock
The licht o' day on ilka thing—
For you, that went yon road last spring,
Are lying deid in Flanders, Jock.

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36d

Feel da mareel.
Noo da licht leaves wis aa alone, wi
da mirkin creepin early,
da last o’ da Simmer gone ta rust…

—Nat Hall, “Hairst”
from nobody remembers the birdman: New Writing Scotland 40 (ASL, 2022)

https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/newwriting/nws40/

#Scottish #literature #Scots #Scotslanguage #Shaetlan #poem #poetry #Shetland

Nat Hall
HAIRST

Feel da mareel.
Noo da licht leaves wis aa alone, wi
da mirkin creepin early,
da last o’ da Simmer gone ta rust.
Atween da nicht an da moarnin,
A meadow pipit i’ da girse
hentin da morsels laek a thief afore
da next gale, hellery –
an i’ da eens o’ October, whaar
da cloods hang ta TV masts,
da dark blue licht o’ da
moarnin is
yet ta leave wis fur da sun.
Wir hairst reminds wis o gansies,
Da need ta wipe oot da windaes –
hear da sistimus i da stanes,
da innerdaeks o wir ain world,
bricht callishang,
spaekalation ahint da glass
juist afore eight, as
staris gadder apö da wires ...
Telegraph codes in
languages
da Hairst records an understands.

Shetlan Glossary
da Hairst: Autumn
da mareel: phosphorescence in the sea (algal bloom)
da Simmer: Summer
da girse: the grass
hentin: getting
da hellery: storm, adverse weather
da eens: the eyes
gansies: jumpers
da sistimus: wren
da innerdaeks: the stonewalled area of a house
bricht callishang: very boisterous vocalisations, noises
spaekalation: rumours
ahint: behind
staris: starlings
apö: on

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36d

Scots Whay Hae! – Bloody Scotland Prizewinners Special

The latest Scots Whay Hae! podcast is a Bloody Scotland prizewinners special, with the first joint winner of the Debut novel prize & the McIlvanney Prize for Best Crime Book of the Year, Frances Crawford, & the winner of this year’s Pitch Perfect, Caroline Grebbell.

https://www.scotswhayhae.com/post/bloody-scotland-prize-winners-special-the-scots-whay-hae-podcast-tallks-to-frances-crawford-caro

#Scottish #literature #CrimeFiction

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