iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 2h

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” in DARLING, @bloodaxebooks.bsky.social 2007 #poem #GrandparentsDay www.bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/product/...

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.

1216

Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 3h

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” DREAMING FRANKENSTEIN (2011) #poetry birlinn.co.uk/product/drea...

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.

1121

Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 4h

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 #poem #GrandparentsDay

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.

0219

Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 5h

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” #poem #poetry #Shetland #GrandparentsDay www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/lukkie/

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?

061

Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 5h

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… —Meg Bateman, “Nighean is Seanmhair aig a’ Ghailearaidh Nàiseanta” from TRANSPARIENCIES (Polygon, 2013) Today, 4 October, is #GrandparentsDay #poem #poetry

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.

184

Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 03/10/2026

I want answers, but there are only the wild geese Calling, high in the almost-dark, bearing south, And me, stopped short, clutching a bag of groceries On the doorstep of my not-quite home… —Susan Mansfield, “Bearing South” from The Rooftop Busker: New Writing Scotland 33 (ASL, 2015) #poetry #poem

Susan Mansfield
BEARING SOUTH

I want answers, but there are only the wild geese
Calling, high in the almost-dark, bearing south,
And me, stopped short, clutching a bag of groceries
On the doorstep of my not-quite home.
I feel the calm of their inner compass
And wonder if this is what we mean by certainty,
A deft arrowhead of wingbeats
In tune with the turning wind, the changing light,
A geography in their feathery breasts
Older than the names of continents.
A journey without thought of parting or arrival,
Only the press of forward motion,
The urgency and risk of it all,
A brief touch-down in stubble fields, then on,
The pulse of fellow flyers in the slipstream
And the clear voices calling in the dark:
I am here, I am alive,
I am here, I am alive.

072

Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 03/10/2026

So I stopped my walk, climbed the gate to help an old farmer cursing his deaf god bringing in the last of a poor harvest… —Jim Carruth, “Only Human” published in A Little Touch of Cliff in the Evening: New Writing Scotland 30 (ASL, 2012) #BookWormSat #poem #poetry

Jim Carruth
Only Human

So I stopped my walk, climbed the gate
to help an old farmer cursing his deaf god
bringing in the last of a poor harvest.
He must have been struggling all day
on his own to fill that small trailer.

I cannot make more of this than it was.
I was no passing Samaritan, saving him
minutes at most, nor a reluctant volunteer
some Simon of Cyrene shouldering
the burden of a stranger’s sodden bale.

As for him, this ageing hunch-backed man
he could not raise his head to say thanks
nor straighten his spine to walk like a saint
not even resurrect the past fortnight of rain
into one unblemished day of a risen sun.

0203

Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 03/10/2026

“And then a queer thought came to her there in the drookèd fields, that nothing endured at all, nothing but the land she passed across, tossed & turned & perpetually changed below the hands of the crofter folk…” Lewis Grassic Gibbon, SUNSET SONG (1932) #BookWormSat www.penguin.co.uk/books/57513/...

[…] Nothing endures. And then a queer thought came to her there in the drookèd fields, that nothing endured at all, nothing but the land she passed across, tossed and turned and perpetually changed below the hands of the crofter folk since the oldest of them had set the Standing Stones by the loch of Blawearie and climbed there on their holy days and saw their terraced crops ride brave in the wind and sun. Sea and sky and the folk who wrote and fought and were learnéd, teaching and saying and praying, they lasted but as a breath, a mist of fog in the hills, but the land was forever, it moved and changed below you, but was forever, you were close to it and it to you, not at a bleak remove it held you and hurted you. And she had thought to leave it all!

2255

Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 03/10/2026

Say not of me that weakly I declined The labours of my sires, and fled the sea, The towers we founded and the lamps we lit… —Robert Louis Stevenson’s apologia for deserting the family trade of lighthouse-building & taking up the pen, instead #C19 #poem #poetry #engineering

“Say not of me that weakly I declined”
Robert Louis Stevenson

Say not of me that weakly I declined
The labours of my sires, and fled the sea,
The towers we founded and the lamps we lit,
To play at home with paper like a child.
But rather say: In the afternoon of time
A strenuous family dusted from its hands
The sand of granite, and beholding far
Along the sounding coast its pyramids
And tall memorials catch the dying sun,
Smiled well content, and to this childish task
Around the fire addressed its evening hours.

150

Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 03/10/2026

“I have often thought that to find a family to compare with ours in the promise of immortal memory, we must go back to the Egyptian Pharaohs…” —From RLS’s MEMOIRS OF HIMSELF (privately published, Philadelphia 1912) – online via the @hathitrust.bsky.social #C19 babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=lo...

[…] rose out of obscurity in a clap. My father and Uncle David made the third generation, one Smith and two Stevenson, of direct descendants who had been engineers to the Board of Northern Lights; there is scarce a deep sea light from the Isle of Man north about to Berwick, but one of my blood designed it; and I have often thought that to find a family to compare with ours in the promise of immortal memory, we must go back to the Egyptian Pharaohs: upon so many reefs and forelands that not very elegant name of Stevenson is engraved with a pen of iron upon granite. My name is well known as that of the Duke of Argyle among the fishers, the skippers, the seamen and the masons of my native land. Whenever I smell salt water, I know I am not far from one of the works of my ancestors. The Bell Rock stands monument for my grandfather; the Skerry Vohr for my Uncle Alan; and when the lights come out at sundown along the shores of Scotland, I am proud to think they burn more brightly for the genius of my father.

120

Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 03/10/2026

“When the lights come out at sundown along the shores of Scotland, I am proud to think they burn more brightly for the genius of my father” —Robert Louis Stevenson, MEMOIRS OF HIMSELF Thomas Stevenson (1818–1887), lighthouse engineer & Robert Louis Stevenson’s father #C19 #engineering

Sepia photograph of Thomas Stevenson – a pensive-looking head-and-shoulders portrait of a Victorian gentleman, balding, clean-shaven with side-whiskers almost to the tip of his chin, his left hand raised to touch his face. A ring is visible on the pinkie of his left hand.

120

Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 03/10/2026

Miss Instone said, “Children, you were all at the Fair yesterday, I’m sure. Out slates! Out slate pencils! Write a composition on the following – My Day at the Fair…” —George Mackay Brown, “The Horse Fair” from THE WRECK OF THE ARCHANGEL (1989) #BookWormSat #poem www.hachette.co.uk/titles/georg...

He gave me sixpence!
We went home in the cart, Daffodil
Danced all the way!
She struck many stars from a stone.
The fiddler! – I nearly forgot the fiddler.
The whole Fair
Seemed to go round his fiddle. I saw
A coal-black man stretched on a board of nails.
Three farmers,
Quoys and Grayarth and Longbreck,
Seemed like they had red patches sewn on their faces, coming out of
the whisky tent.
Daffodil
Whinnied at the stars, ‘What are you,
Nails or mayflowers?’
The moon was a skull.
Then the moon was bees and honey.
I woke up.
Old Da carried me out of the cart to our fire.

“Spelling and punctuation need special attention,” said Miss Instone. “Few of you, it seems, had a really enjoyable day.”

Sprinkling of water on eleven slates, rag rubbings, sighs.

Willie spat on his slate and wiped out that day with the sleeve of his gray jersey.

3186

Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 02/10/2026

Some of them are still making edits (“Authors’ Ghosts”, by Muriel Spark)

Authors’ Ghosts
Muriel Spark

I think that authors’ ghosts creep back‍‍
Nightly to haunt the sleeping shelves‍‍
And find the books they wrote.‍‍
Those authors put final, semi-final touches,‍‍
Sometimes whole paragraphs.‍‍

Whole pages are added, re-written, revised,‍‍
So deeply by night those authors employ‍‍
Themselves with those old books of theirs.‍‍

How otherwise‍‍
Explain the fact that maybe after years‍‍
Have passed, the reader‍‍
Picks up the book – But was it like that?‍‍
I don’t remember this . . . Where‍‍
Did this ending come from?‍‍
I recall quite another.‍‍

Oh yes, it has been tampered with‍‍
No doubt about it –‍‍
The author’s very touch is here, there and there,‍‍
Where it wasn’t before, and‍‍
What’s more, something’s missing –‍‍
I could have sworn . . .

010

Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 02/10/2026

We were turning that too heavy earth too long, Too long and at the wrong time – Days of rain had made a world of clay that clung To our spades, gripped like misery… —Wayne Price, “Allotment” from The Flight of the Turtle: New Writing Scotland 29 (ASL, 2011) #poem #poetry

Wayne Price
Allotment

We were turning that too heavy earth too long,
Too long and at the wrong time –
Days of rain had made a world of clay that clung

To our spades, gripped like misery. Why were we
Digging so long and so late?
It was autumn, it was night; I cannot see

My father beside me even in memory.
Why was it he would not stop
And scrape our spades’ steel faces clean on the heel

Of his black boot? What kept us from home? What
Use was I there, as if
With a toothpick to roll a weight that felt

The great drowned deadweight of the globe? The dark
Above and below was one
Clay that fastened leaf and root. Bright canopies of oak

And beech repeat themselves inside the soil;
Behind the eye the brain’s white
Branches work so hard to right the world. Who is still

In that allotment, speechless, boy or man in the dark?
Finding or burying I
Did as I now would: leaned blind into the work.

060

Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 01/10/2026

“Publishable?” Perhaps she’ll advise him where to sell Over a bottle of home-made later? Oh shit. She can tell This is going to be The Gig From Hell… —Liz Lochhead, “Hell for Poets” from A Handsel: New & Collected Poems (Polygon, 2023) #poem #poetry #NationalPoetryDay birlinn.co.uk/product/a-ha...

Liz Lochhead
HELL FOR POETS

It’s Hell for the poet arriving for the gig
Off the five thirty-three to meet the organiser
Who claps her in a car that reeks enough of dog to make her gag,
Tells her he’s looked at her work but he was none the wiser.
Call him old fashioned, but in the ‘little mag
He edits for his sins’ stuff rhymes – oh, he’s no sympathiser
With this modern stuff! Is it prose? What is it?
Perhaps the poet can enlighten him this visit?

– For which his lady-wife’s made up a futon hard as boulders
In the boxroom. ‘So much friendlier than an hotel!’
Will anyone turn up tonight? Shrug of his shoulders.
‘Even for McGough or Carol Ann Duffy tickets have not been going well.
Meanwhile: here’s his stuff.’ Each ode encased in plastic in three folders.
‘Publishable?’ Perhaps she’ll advise him where to sell
Over a bottle of home-made later? Oh shit. She can tell
This is going to be The Gig from Hell ...

But it’s real hell for real poets when love goes right
When the war is over and the blood, the mud, the Muse depart
Requited love, gratified desire ‘write white’
And suffering’s the sweetest source for the profoundest art.
Blue skies, eternal bliss, bland putti – Heaven might
Not be the be all and end all ... ? For a start
Hell itself’s pure inspiration to the creatively driven.
Hell was (f’rinstance) Dante’s idea of Hog Heaven.
Hell’s best! Virgil knew it too before him. Heigh ho!
Man calls himself a poet? St Peter’ll bounce him.
(Unless he’s maybe Milton – it’s Who You Know.)
Could end up in Hell with Burns? (Hear his rolling r’s announce him).
Could end up with Villon, Verlaine, the Rabelaisian Rimbaud,
With Don Juan, Don Whan – however you pronounce him –
Bunked up with Byron, still so mad, so bad, and so delic-
iously dangerous to know? Not a snowball’s chance, but oh, I wish.

070

Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 01/10/2026

would thi prisoner in thi bar please stand fur thi aforesaid crime uv writn anuthir poem awarded the certificate of safety by thi scottish education department … —Tom Leonard from GHOSTIE MEN, in INTIMATE VOICES: Selected Work 1965–1983 (Etruscan Books, 2003) #poem #poetry #NationalPoetryDay

Tom Leonard
From GHOSTIE MEN

would thi prisoner
in thi bar
please stand

fur thi aforesaid crime
uv writn anuthir poem
awarded the certificate of safety
by thi scottish education department

fit tay be used in schools
huvn no bad language
sex subversion or antireligion

I hereby sentence you
tay six munths hard labour
doon thi poetry section
uv yir local library
coontn thi fuckin metaphors

23511

Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 01/10/2026

When I found I’d lost you – not beside me, nor ahead, nor right nor left not your green jacket moving between the trees anywhere – I waited a long while before wandering on… —Kathleen Jamie, “Glamourie” from SELECTED POEMS (Picador, 2018) #NationalPoetryDay www.panmacmillan.com/authors/kath...

Kathleen Jamie
Glamourie

When I found I’d lost you –
not beside me, nor ahead,
nor right nor left not
your green jacket moving

between the trees anywhere –
I waited a long while
before wandering on. No wren
jinked in the undergrowth,

not a twig snapped.
It was hardly the Wildwood –
just some auld fairmer’s
shelter belt – but red haws

reached out to me,
and between fallen leaves
pretty white flowers bloomed
late into their year. I tried

calling out, or think
I did, but your name

shrivelled on my tongue,
so instead I strolled on

through the wood’s good
offices, and duly fell
to wondering if I hadn’t
simply made it all up. You,

I mean, everything,
my entire life. Either way,
nothing now could touch me
bar my hosts, who appeared

as diffuse golden light,
as tiny spiders
examining my hair ...
What gratitude I felt then –

I might be gone for ages,
maybe seven years! –
and such sudden joie de vivre
that when a ditch gaped

right there instantly in front of me
I jumped it, blithe as a girl –
ach, I jumped clear over it,
without even pausing to think.

0154

Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 01/10/2026

My boy is painting outer space, and steadies his brush-tip to trace the comets, planets, moon and sun and all the circuitry they run… —Don Paterson, “The Circle” published in RAIN, @faberbooks.bsky.social 2009 #poem #poetry #NationalPoetryDay www.faber.co.uk/product/9780...

060

Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 01/10/2026

To have got so far, alone Almost to the seventieth stone Is a wonder… —George Mackay Brown, “One Star in the West” published in Following A Lark (John Murray, 1996) Happy #NationalPoetryDay! The theme for 2026 is “Wonder” #poem #poetry

George Mackay Brown
One Star in the West

To have got so far, alone
Almost to the seventieth stone
Is a wonder.
There was thunder

A few miles back, a storm-shaken
Hill and sea, the bridge broken
(The bright fluent
Burn a bruised torrent.)

But all cleared, larks were singing
Again, the April rain ringing
Across the sown hills,
Among the daffodils.

The road winds uphill, but
A wonder will be to sit
On the stone at last –
One star in the west.

2153

Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 30/09/2026

Christmas Eve. The hour between tea and black-out. The stove reddens and snores in the gathering dusk. Five tin helmets hang in a row on the wall… —Flora Garry, “Ambulance Depot, 1942” published in FROM THE LINE: Scottish War Poetry 1914–1945 #poetry #poem #WW2 asls.org.uk/publications...

Flora Garry
Ambulance Depot, 1942

Christmas Eve. The hour between tea and black-out.
The stove reddens and snores in the gathering dusk.
Five tin helmets hang in a row on the wall,
Their little black pot-bellies gleam in the glow of the fire.
Painted on each is a large white capital A.
The telephone stands dumb on its shelf in the nook.
No ‘Air Raid Message’ comes through, Purple or Red.
The fading sky is void and cold and still
But for the friendly drone of a homing plane,
And the strident intermittent trumpeting
Of the arrowhead formations of the geese
Winging riverwards to seek the sheltering reeds.
In the gloom of the garage the empty vehicles wait,
While we sit here by the snoring stove, and knit.
We are making a Christmas toy, a communal gift,
A scarlet and yellow duck with a bear’s snout.

MacDonald is making the head. She had a son.
But his ship, ‘overdue must now be presumed lost’.
She carries on as before, brave and bright-eyed.
What can we say? We give her the easiest chair
And fuss with cups of tea and hand cigarettes.
Easier for everyone if she were less brave.

Roberts is making the body of the duck.
She is old. She comes of gentle-folk,
And speaks with an English voice, and avoids draughts.
But she’s good at the job and asks for no concessions.
There was someone, we’ve been told, in the last war.
He fell, leading his men, at Neuve Chapelle.
She likes being here, though we’re not quite her sort.
It’s something she can do towards settling an old score.

The wings of the duck are made by Clark and Smith
Whose make-up is protective colouration.
They are young. Each wears a wedding ring.
They live from mail to mail, they crouch by the map
And trace the African coast, spelling out names,
Bizerta, Tunis, Tripoli, Tangier,
Renowned in tales of antique chivalry;
Each word a sharp potential two-edged sword
Striking one day, perhaps, at the heart’s core.

Watson is making the two feet of the duck.
Leave’s postponed. No Christmas engagement now.
They must wait, a few weeks maybe,
Maybe for all time.
She knits, not lifting her head. Best leave her alone.
Shouldn’t the black-out be on? We draw the blinds,
Make up the fire—a shovel of dross will do—
Shut out the darkening night and the eerie gusts
Of wind assaulting the hut’s ramshackle roof,
Bearing the season’s first thin tentative snow.
‘Another cigarette? Have you heard this one?’
We laugh, a little too loud. Then silence lasts
A little too long. A muttered emotional curse!
Let’s have the wireless on and get the news.
(The news we’ve learned to hate, but dare not miss.)
A boy’s voice sings, high, clear and cruelly sweet:

As we watched at dead of night
Lo! we saw a wondrous light.
Angels singing peace on earth
Telling of the Saviour’s birth.

We are making a Christmas toy, a sort of duck,
A comical duck with the blunt, snub snout of a bear.
We are making a toy for some other woman’s child.
No one here has any child of her own.

010

Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 30/09/2026

Faar’s Baabie Jeanie’s loon? The aal wife hersel Stans treeshin hame the milkers at the ley park yett. Faa caas the mornin cairt an fordals neeps an strae, Wi waages up an risin an fee’d folk sae ull to get?… —“War: 1939–1945” by Flora Garry (1900–2000)—born #OTD, 30 Sep asls.org.uk/publications...

War: 1939-1945
by Flora Garry

‘Faar’s Baabie Jeanie’s loon? The aal wife hersel
Stans treeshin hame the milkers at the ley park yett.
Faa caas the mornin cairt an fordals neeps an strae,
Wi waages up an risin an fee’d folk sae ull to get?
Baabie Jeanie’s Jockie, faar’s he?

An yon swack hashin chiel in Willum Sinclair’s shop?
He heeld ye oot o langour, sae joco an kin’ly wi’t.
‘Noo, lassie’ to the grunnies: ‘Weel, dearie’ to the quines,
He’s a want ahin the coonter, Willum’s sic a strunge breet.
I miss a news wi yon lad. Faar’s he?

An Droggie’s clivver dother? She could mak her fadder’s peels.
Nae hoven wyme or clocher, nae beelin, hack or strain
Bit she could ease; an fin royt nackets tummelt greetin at their play
She’d rowe up their bleedit sair bits, sen them duncin furth again.
The bairns likit Chrissie. Faar’s she?

An Cyaarnadellie’s foreman? I’ the clear Spring nichts
He trystit wi the banker’s deemie up at the market place.
Noo, she’s skycin roun the gable-eyn, her leen, i the early gloam,
Wi a muckle cwyte aboot her an a graavit ower her face.
Cyaarnadellie’s foreman, faar’s he?’

‘Speir at the waarslin tides, the desert saans, the caal starlicht.
They ken far.’

150

Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 30/09/2026

“The use of Scots, apart from the relative ease of working up the right atmosphere, also helps (though dangerously) because of the verbal freedom it confers on a harassed translator” —Edwin Morgan on translating Mayakovsky #InternationalTranslationDay #poetry asls.org.uk/publications...

2: A note to the translation of Mayakovsky’s ‘Fiddle-Ma-Fidgin’

In the triptych by Hieronymus Bosch known as The Garden of Earthly Delights, the ‘Hell’ panel shows a man crucified on a harp, with the strings passing through his body, but his arms free, embracing it, in an extraordinary image of mingled pain, beauty, and yearning. In the same picture, this man is surrounded by much more grotesque images, where figures of desperation are doing things to and with various musical instruments

Which even to name wad be unlawfu’.

The poetry of Mayakovsky from his futurist period shows a similar conjunction of extreme yearning and coarsely grotesque asseverations, held together in a web of convincing fantasy where animate and inanimate react on one another. In the present poem (actual title The Violin and a Little Nervously, date 1914), written when Mayakovsky was twenty, the poet expresses in miniature the situation of his whole life: loneliness, desire to communicate and ‘contribute’, sympathy towards the outcast and the misunderstood. The potential desperation in this, however, finds voice through fantasy, fun, and caricature. A violin (the word is feminine in Russian) begins to ‘sing’ in such a personal and yearning way that the other instruments in the orchestra get annoyed with it and tell it to shut up until it can control itself; the poet bursts in on the orchestra and despite their ribald laughter embraces the […]

[…] violin and proposes to this ‘wooden bride’, which he sees as a kindred soul.

I wanted in my translation to bring out if I could the distinctive Mayakovskian mixture of grotesque high-jinks and underlying seriousness of purpose. To do this, I used Scots, trying to tap an enduring Scottish tradition of grotesque exaggeration or fantasy which is found in Dunbar and the ballads, Burns and MacDiarmid.

They’ll turn me in your arms, lady,
Into an esk and adder;
But haud me fast, and fear me not,
I am your bairn’s father.

The use of Scots, apart from the relative ease of working up the right atmosphere, also helps (though dangerously) because of the verbal freedom it confers on a harassed translator. What can only be weakly called ‘expressive’ words tumble from the Caledonian cornucopia: slunkert, daunert, glinkit, sprachlt, crunkelt, yowp and yowl, for which ‘slunk’, ‘wandered’, ‘glanced’, ‘sprawled’, ‘folded’, ‘bawl and howl’ are unimpressive equivalents. The temptation in this is to make the poem look more continuously vivid or ‘strange’ than it really is. Fortunately it is difficult to make Mayakovsky look over-vivid, as his diction employs every liberty the genius of Russian allows, but the method would work only with poets who were similarly inventive and uninhibited in their linguistic texture. I don’t look on Scots as a medium that can now be widely or thoughtlessly used in poetry, but against the argument that we have reached the stage where it should be given up altogether I would offer the evidence of my own experience in translating Mayakovsky (and add to it Sydney Goodsir Smith’s Scottish version of Blok’s The Twelve): Scots gets closer than English to the ‘barbarian lyre’ of the revolutionary spirit. If people can be persuaded to read it, it will give them a sensation they cannot at the moment get from English verse.

The Review 1, April/May 1962.

171

Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 29/09/2026

Joanna Baillie’s 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘍𝘢𝘮𝘪𝘭𝘺 𝘓𝘦𝘨𝘦𝘯𝘥 (1810): A Virtual Public Reading 21 Nov, online. Free A virtual public reading & discussion of Baillie’s “Highland play”, 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘍𝘢𝘮𝘪𝘭𝘺 𝘓𝘦𝘨𝘦𝘯𝘥 – an early example of the Scottish “National Drama” #C18 #theatre Zoom link: essex-university.zoom.us/j/93091876464

JOANNA BAILLIE'S THE FAMILY LEGEND (1810): A VIRTUAL PUBLIC READING
DATE AND TIME: SATURDAY, 21 NOVEMBER 2026, 6:00 - 9:00 PM (GMT)
LOCATION: ONLINE

Please join members of the Baillie Working Group for a virtual public reading of Baillie's The Family Legend, organised by Sarah Burdett and Diane Piccitto. Attendance is free.
Meeting link: https://essex-university.zoom.us/j/93091876464

With thanks to the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Literary Studies, University of Essex.

072

Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 29/09/2026

Behind us, Glencoe of the Slaughter, Achnacone, field of dogs, Achtriachan, where the water-bull lurks among thin fish tickled by weed, and the Great Herdsman of Etive over us like a black axe… —Alison Fell, “Rannoch Moor” in The Edinburgh Book of 20th-Century Scottish Poetry (EUP, 2005) #poem

Rannoch Moor
Alison Fell

Behind us, Glencoe of the Slaughter,
Achnacone, field of dogs,
Achtriachan, where the water-bull
lurks among thin fish tickled by weed,
and the Great Herdsman of Etive
over us like a black axe

To pace the moor, and mark it,
like a cat bruises the grass
for its bed,
or be claimed instead –
scars of burnt heather, dead
weariness, the sheep paths
misleading, and the bogs
pitted with white water

Slow steps mark the line
on the moor sour with struggle,
where darkness is brought to the brim,
and the bog-cotton bursts
like puffs of smoke
after a musket,
and the broken bleached roots
of the old forest
are white bones under
the petrol shimmer of methane

Slow march in the whine
of telegraph wires,
while the wind chops
at my breath,
and the peat mud sticks to my feet
like rafts

1285

Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 28/09/2026

If you see this, post a vampire that isn't Dracula.

A full-page panel from a graphic novel version of “Olalla” by Robert Louis Stevenson, adapted and scripted by Antonella Caputo and illustrated by Reno Maniquis for Graphic Classics Vol. 26: Vampire Classics (2017)

On a green hillside, beneath a blue sky and piles of white clouds, a pale woman wearing an ankle-length dress kneels at the foot of a tall wooden crucifix. Her eyes are closed and she leans her forehead against the base of the crucifix. Five ragged black birds fly past overhead.

270

Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 28/09/2026

Leave, leave your well-loved nest, Late swallow, and fly away. Here is no rest For hollowing heart and wearying wing… —Edwin Muir, “The Late Swallow” first published in One Foot in Eden (Faber, 1956) #poem #poetry www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/late-sw...

The Late Swallow
by Edwin Muir

Leave, leave your well-loved nest,
Late swallow, and fly away.
Here is no rest
For hollowing heart and wearying wing.
Your comrades all have flown
To seek their southern paradise
Across the great earth’s downward sloping side,
And you are alone.
Why should you cling
Still to the swiftly ageing narrowing day?
Prepare;
Shake your pinions long untried
That now must bear you there where you would be
Through all the heavens of ice;
Till falling down the homing air
You light and perch upon the radiant tree.

1134

Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 27/09/2026

“How explain that a work so singular and so enlightening … how explain that such a work should have failed to become famous?” —André Gide, in his Introduction to James Hogg’s THE PRIVATE MEMOIRS & CONFESSIONS OF A JUSTIFIED SINNER (1947 edition)

How explain that a work so singular and so enlightening, so especially fitted to arouse passionate interest both in those who are attracted by religious and moral questions, and, for quite other reasons, in psychologists and artists, and above all in surrealists who are so particularly drawn by the demoniac in every shape – how explain that such a work should have failed to become famous?

3185

Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 27/09/2026

Back here, the iron line crosses future, past: Then my father will surely be seen Trekking the sodden, lonely land, Weekenders, together – —Jackie Kay, “Rannoch Loop” published in BANTAM (Picador, 2017) #poem #poetry #hiking www.panmacmillan.com/authors/jack...

Rannoch Loop
by Jackie Kay

Back here, the iron line crosses future, past:
Then my father will surely be seen

Trekking the sodden, lonely land,
Weekenders, together –

Or trudging through the ancient pine woods,
The musk smell of red deer,

My father, here on the moor,
Years and years after he’s gone,

Held by the land’s callused hands.
Och – big hikes across time, lochs, bogs,

September weekend or Easter, far flung,
Doon by Loch Ericht, on the west side

To the old crofter’s burnt-out croft,
Still a magnificent doss, and he’ll doss there,

(Twelve men to the wee hoose)
And rest, rest, till finally refreshed.

072

Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 26/09/2026

“I should here explain, that the witches, when they take the shape of hares, charm away the power of pouther and lead; so that unless the gun be loaded with silver, it will not go off, or, if it does go off, it will not kill…” —John Galt, THE STEAM-BOAT (1821) #BookWormSat #C19

"Your Majesty has belike heard that there are certain mystical women in the world called witches. In the shire of Renfrew, we have had, both in time past and at present, no small trouble with their pranks, and it is as thoroughly believed among the country folk as the gospel, that the witches are in the practice of gallanting over field and flood after sun-set, in the shape of cats and mawkins, to dance the La Volta, with a certain potentate that I shall not offend your Majesty by naming.
"I should here explain, that the witches, when they take the shape of hares, charm away the power of pouther and lead; so that unless the gun be loaded with silver, it will not go off, or, if it does go off, it will not kill, especially in the hands of a young sportsman; and that the best antidote to their charm, is for the sportsman, when he is an experienced hand, to put a pair of silver sleeve-buttons in his fowling-piece. When he does this, and fires with effect, it is said, and the fact is often well attested, the hare will never be seen again; […]

[…] but beyond the next hedge, some dubious carlin will, in all human probability, be found riddled in the hips, saying her prayers backwards. What I have to tell is an undoubted proof of this, for it happened to myself in the presence of the late Logan of that ilk, a man of singular piety, and one of the best shots in the shire of Ayr.
"Being staying with him, we one day went out to shoot. It was in the afternoon. We started nothing, and we staid late, not very content, as your Majesty may well think, with such profitless sport. But I trow we have both had cause to remember long that afternoon; for in the gloaming, as we were coursing with our dejected dogs, the which were as disappointed as ourselves, we start-ed, as we thought, a hare out of a whin bush. It ran before us, in every gesture, lith, and limb, just like a hare, and the dogs pursued it as if it had been nothing less natural. We followed, never doubting that it was a hare.
"A fine har'st evening had set in, and the new moon, the sickle of Time, betokened, in the west. ern heavens, that Nature was binding up the sheaves of our days; but, nevertheless, we followed our game, never suspecting that it was any […]

1326

Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 26/09/2026

April, the last full fixture of the spring: “Feet, Scottish, feet!” – they rucked the fear of God Into Blackheath… —“London Scottish”, by Mick Imlah (1956–2009) – born #OTD, 26 September from THE LOST LEADER (Faber, 2008) #poem #poetry #rugby #WW1 www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/london-...

London Scottish
Mick Imlah

April, the last full fixture of the spring:
‘Feet, Scottish, feet!’ – they rucked the fear of God
Into Blackheath. Their club was everything:
And of the four sides playing that afternoon,
The stars, but also those from the back pitches,
All sixty volunteered for the touring squad,
And swapped their Richmond turf for Belgian ditches.
October: mad for a fight, they broke too soon
On the Ypres Salient, rushing the ridge between
‘Witshit’ and Messines. Three-quarters died.

Of that ill-balanced and fatigued fifteen
The ass selectors favoured to survive,
Just one, Brodie the prop, resumed his post.
The others sometimes drank to ‘The Forty-Five’:
Neither a humorous nor an idle toast.

1134

Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 26/09/2026

If you can catch a hare and look into its eye, you will see the whole world… —Anna Crowe, “A Calendar of Hares” from A SECRET HISTORY OF RHUBARB (Mariscat, 2004) #BookWormSat #poem #poetry annacrowepoet.com/2021/04/21/a...

A Calendar of Hares
Anna Crowe

for Valerie Gillies

1. At the raw end of winter
the mountain is half snow, half
dun grass. Only when snow
moves does it become a hare.

2. If you can catch a hare
and look into its eye,
you will see the whole world.

3. That day in March
watching two hares boxing
at the field’s edge, she felt
the child quicken.

4. It is certain Midas never saw a hare
or he would not have lusted after gold.

5. When the buzzard wheels
like a slow kite overhead
the hare pays out the string.

6. The man who tells you
he has thought of everything
has forgotten the hare.

7. The hare’s form, warm yet empty.
Stumbling upon it, he felt his heart
lurch and race beneath his ribs.

8. Beset by fears, she became
the hare who hears
the mowers’ voices growing louder.

9. Light as the moon’s path over the sea,
the run of the hare over the land.

10. The birchwood a dapple
of fallen gold: a carved hare
lies in a Pictish hoard.

11. Waking to the cry of a hare
she ran and found the child sleeping.

12. November stiffens
into December: hare and grass
have grown a thick coat of frost.

24711

Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 25/09/2026

Poetry & Music at Corbenic Cafe 6 Oct, Dunkeld. £10 – book with corbenicpoetry@gmail.com Join @taylor-strickland.bsky.social for #poetry, music & discussion with @medhawrites.bsky.social & Pip Osmond-Williams, both recipients of the @scottishbooktrust.bsky.social’s New Writers Award for Poetry

POETRY & MUSIC at Corbenic Café
WORDS SONGS REFRESHMENTS
6 OCT - 7 PM - SPACE IS LIMITED
RSVP: CORBENICPOETRY@GMAIL.COM
TICKETS ARE £10

TAYLOR STRICKLAND (HOST)
PIP OSMOND-WILLIAMS
MEDHA SINGH

19 BRIDGE ST, DUNKELD, PH8 OAH

094

Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 25/09/2026

“If you are remembering this presentation, you are probably resimulated. This is not the same as being resurrected. You may remember dying. Do not worry: Like all your other memories, it is a fabrication.” —Charles Stross, 𝘈𝘤𝘤𝘦𝘭𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘰 (2005) #Booksky #scifi 💙📚 www.hachette.co.uk/titles/charl...

He can't wait to see what his mother will do when she meets her father in the
flesh, after all this time.

Welcome to Saturn, your new home world. This FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) memeplex is designed to orient you and explain the following:

• How you got here
• Where 'here' is
• Things you should avoid doing
• Things you might want to do as soon as possible
• Where to go for more information.

If you are remembering this presentation, you are probably resimulated. This is not the same as being resurrected. You may remember dying. Do not worry: Like all your other memories, it is a fabrication. In fact, this is the first time you have ever been alive. (Exception: If you died after the singularity, you may be a genuine resurrectee. In which case, why are you reading this FAQ?)

HOW YOU GOT HERE:
The center of the solar system - Mercury, Venus, Earth's Moon, Mars, the asteroid belt, and Jupiter - have been dismantled, or are being dismantled, by weakly godlike intelligences. INB: Monotheistic clergy and Europeans who remember living prior to 1600, see alternative memeplex 'in the beginning.'] A weakly godlike intelligence is not a supernatural agency but the product of a highly advanced society that learned how to artificially create souls [late twentieth century: software] and translate human minds into souls and vice versa. [Core concepts: Human beings all have souls. Souls are software objects. Software is not immortal.]
Some of the weakly godlike intelligences appear to cultivate an interest in their human antecedents - for whatever reason is not known. (Possibilities include the study of history through horticulture, entertainment through live-action role-playing, revenge, and economic forgery.) While no definitive analysis is possible, all the resimulated persons […]

[…] to date exhibit certain common characteristics: They are all based on well-documented historical persons, their memories show suspicious gaps [see: smoke and mirrors], and they are ignorant of or predate the singularity [see: Turing Oracle, Vinge catastrophe].
It is believed that the weakly godlike agencies have created you as a vehicle for the introspective study of your historical antecedent by backward-chaining from your corpus of documented works, and the back-projected genome derived from your collateral descendants, to generate an abstract description of your computational state vector. This technique is extremely intensive see: expTime-complete algorithms, Turing Oracle, time travel, industrial magic] but marginally plausible in the absence of supernatural explanations.
After experiencing your life, the weakly godlike agencies have expelled you. For reasons unknown, they chose to do this by transmitting your upload state and genome/proteome complex to receivers owned and operated by a consortium of charities based on Saturn. These charities have provided for your basic needs, including the body you now occupy.
In summary: You are a reconstruction of someone who lived and died a long time ago, not a reincarnation. You have no intrinsic moral right to the identity you believe to be your own, and an extensive body of case law states that you do not inherit your antecedent's possessions. Other than that, you are a free individual.
Note that fictional resimulation is strictly forbidden. If you have reason to believe that you may be a fictional character, you must contact the city immediately. [ See: James Bond, Spider Jerusalem.] Failure to comply is a felony.

WHERE YOU ARE:
You are on Saturn. Saturn is a gas giant planet 120,500 kilometers in diameter, located 1.5 billion kilometers from Earth's sun. [NB: Europeans who remember living prior to 1580, see alternative memeplex 'the flat Earth - not'.] Saturn has been partially terraformed by posthuman […]

2111

Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 25/09/2026

Glasgow, late September and the city I spoke of in another country (its fierce sandstone burning, its bombast of finials built on the heads of slaves… —Gerrie Fellows, “Dream Cities” from The Body in Space (Shearsman, 2014) a #poem for #WorldDreamDay www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/dream-c...

Dream Cities
by Gerrie Fellows

I
Glasgow, late September and the city I spoke of
in another country (its fierce sandstone
burning, its bombast of finials built on the heads of slaves
the monumental tower blocks of a later order
catching fire from the west as a plane comes in)
has become in two months
a dream a nostalgia

For it is litter not grandeur
a muddied disturbance in a dirty river
a sullen reflection sliced by concrete
(the monumental pillars
and glorious boulevards of a later order)

Against the vivifying light
of the south the suburban avenues
of a world of space it is rain
rain and old world pallor

and beyond it
on the high points of Aonach Mor and Ben Nevis
(so early a door closing and opening)
the first snows of the winter

II
Early November and the city I parted from
in two months has become a dream technicolour
not quite Auckland or Christchurch
but a dream place of skyscrapers and heady blossom
stern waxy magnolia silk of almond and crab apple
A dream place but Christchurch as it was then
in mid-September Jane driving me to the airport
past gardens reeking with nectar

for there Spring has continued without me

And here I wake no longer at home

060

Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 25/09/2026

Lying asleep walking Last night I met my father Who seemed pleased to see me. He wanted to speak. I saw His mouth saying something But the dream had no sound… —W.S. Graham, “To Alexander Graham” in Collected Poems 1942–1977 A #poem from #WorldDreamDay www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48732/...

To Alexander Graham
by W. S. Graham

Lying asleep walking
Last night I met my father
Who seemed pleased to see me.
He wanted to speak. I saw
His mouth saying something
But the dream had no sound.

We were surrounded by
Laid-up paddle steamers
In The Old Quay in Greenock.
I smelt the tar and the ropes.

It seemed that I was standing
Beside the big iron cannon
The tugs used to tie up to
When I was a boy. I turned
To see Dad standing just
Across the causeway under
That one lamp they keep on.

He recognised me immediately.
I could see that. He was
The handsome, same age
With his good brows as when
He would take me on Sundays
Saying we’ll go for a walk.

Dad, what am I doing here?
What is it I am doing now?
Are you proud of me?
Going away, I knew
You wanted to tell me something.

You stopped and almost turned back
To say something. My father,
I try to be the best
In you you give me always.

Lying asleep turning
Round in the quay-lit dark
It was my father standing
As real as life. I smelt
The quay’s tar and the ropes.

I think he wanted to speak.
But the dream had no sound.
I think I must have loved him.

1288

Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 25/09/2026

While he was yet a student, there came to him a dream-adventure which he has no anxiety to repeat; he began, that is to say, to dream in sequence and thus to lead a double life… —Robert Louis Stevenson’s “A Chapter on Dreams”, via @gutenberg.org #C19 #WorldDreamDay www.gutenberg.org/files/30990/...

Well, in his dream-life he passed a long day in the surgical theatre, his heart in his mouth, his teeth on edge, seeing monstrous malformations and the abhorred dexterity of surgeons. In a heavy, rainy, foggy evening he came forth into the South Bridge, turned up the High Street, and entered the door of a tall land, at the top of which he supposed himself to lodge. All night long, in his wet clothes, he climbed the stairs, stair after stair in endless series, and at every second flight a flaring lamp with a reflector. All night long he brushed by single persons passing downward—beggarly women of the street, great, weary, muddy labourers, poor scarecrows of men, pale parodies of women—but all drowsy and weary like himself, and all single, and all brushing against him as they passed. In the end, out of a northern window, he would see day beginning to whiten over the Firth, give up the ascent, turn to descend, and in a breath be back again upon the streets, in his wet clothes …

041

Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 25/09/2026

From breakfast on through all the day At home among my friends I stay, But every night I go abroad Afar into the land of Nod… —Robert Louis Stevenson, “The Land of Nod” from A CHILD’S GARDEN OF VERSES (1885) Today, 25 Sept, is #WorldDreamDay #C19 #poem #poetry #dreams #kidlit #Booksky 💙📚

The Land of Nod
by Robert Louis Stevenson

From breakfast on through all the day
At home among my friends I stay,
But every night I go abroad
Afar into the land of Nod.

All by myself I have to go,
With none to tell me what to do —
All alone beside the streams
And up the mountain-sides of dreams.

The strangest things are there for me,
Both things to eat and things to see,
And many frightening sights abroad
Till morning in the land of Nod.

Try as I like to find the way,
I never can get back by day,
Nor can remember plain and clear
The curious music that I hear.

Pen and ink illustration by Charles Robinson (1870–1937) to Stevenson’s poem "The Land of Nod". The image is tall and thin; the right side is dominated by a black crag (or possibly a strange tree-trunk), in front of which, in the bottom right-hand corner, stand two fantastical bird-like creatures with scruffy feathers and outsized, beaked heads. Although not overtly threatening or frightening, they are unsettling in their appearance. Behind them, a small child, head bowed, toils up-slope with the aid of a staff. Strange, twisted outcrops and buildings are in the background, and in the distance another child can be seen floating serenely on a cloud. In the top left-hand corner, a giant, long-nosed face peers over the top of the cliff.

Caption: "Up the mountain sides of dreams"

1192

Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 24/09/2026

“The Subway Budgie”, “The Subway Cat”, “The Subway Giraffe” and “The Subway Piranhas”, all by Edwin Morgan:

Four posters, in green, purple, orange and red:

THE SUBWAY BUDGIE by Edwin Morgan
Spirit of the place,
mascot of the enterprise,
lurking in the tunnels,
flashing past windows
or riding on the roof,
perky yet shy,
talkative but elusive,
she's a ball of gold
like a light's reflection,
a chatterbox
you think you heard
but turn your paper
and shake your head
as the train gathers speed.
The guard is her friend
and drops a few crumbs.
She picks, pecks, turns,
a magic bird,
a clockwork orange.

THE SUBWAY CAT by Edwin Morgan
the subway cat
just loves to sing.
You cannot miss him
as he struts on the platform
in his red leather boots,
inflating his chest
and stroking his whiskers,
gets the key on his moothie
and renders his favourites,
'O Flower of Cessnock'
and 'Hillhead the Brave'.
Girls come to pat him,
boys shake his paw,
and once he was kidnapped
by an impresario
from Bakerloo
but he sprang his basket
and soon he was back
to yodel at West Street
and dance at Cowcaddens.

THE SUBWAY GIRAFFE by Edwin Morgan
The subway giraffe
keeps its head down.
It has a special joint
in its neck. Its mother
is known to have been friendly
with an excavator.
It feeds on old tickets,
a cold chip or two,
makes do with cigarette-ends
but shivers with pleasure
at a scatter of rings
torn off from cans,
smacks its lips
as the metal rattles
down to its stomach.
The neighbours nod wisely:
Favours his da.

THE SUBWAY PIRANHAS by Edwin Morgan
Did anyone tell you
that in each subway train
there is one special seat
with a small hole in it
and underneath the seat
is a tank of piranha-fish
which have not been fed
for quite some time.
The fish become quite agitated
by the shoogling of the train
and jump up through the seat.
The resulting skeletons
of unlucky passengers
turn an honest penny
for the transport executive,
hanging far and wide
in medical schools.

000

Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 24/09/2026

Have you ever read “If Gray Had Had to Write His Elegy in the Cemetery of Spoon River Instead of That of Stoke Poges”, by J.C. Squire, based on Edgar Lee Masters’ 1915 𝘚𝘱𝘰𝘰𝘯 𝘙𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘈𝘯𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘰𝘨𝘺? (It continues beyond this screenshot, online via @gutenberg.org) www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/7...

No. 6. IF GRAY HAD HAD TO WRITE HIS ELEGY IN THE CEMETERY OF SPOON RIVER INSTEAD OF IN THAT OF STOKE POGES

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The whippoorwill salutes the rising moon,
And wanly glimmer in her gentle ray,
The sinuous windings of the turbid Spoon.

Here where the flattering and mendacious swarm
Of lying epitaphs their secrets keep,
At last incapable of further harm
The lewd forefathers of the village sleep.

The earliest drug of half-awakened morn,
Cocaine or hashish, strychnine, poppy-seeds
Or fiery produce of fermented corn
No more shall start them on the day’s misdeeds.

For them no more the whetstone’s cheerful noise,
No more the sun upon his daily course
Shall watch them savouring the genial joys,
Of murder, bigamy, arson and divorce.

Here they all lie; and, as the hour is late,
O stranger, o’er their tombstones cease to stoop,
But bow thine ear to me and contemplate
The unexpurgated annals of the group.

There are two hundred only: yet of these
Some thirty died of drowning in the river,
Sixteen went mad, ten others had D.T.’s
And twenty-eight cirrhosis of the liver.

Several by absent-minded friends were shot,
Still more blew out their own exhausted brains,
One died of a mysterious inward rot,
Three fell off roofs, and five were hit by trains.

172

Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 24/09/2026

Blows the wind to-day, and the sun and the rain are flying, Blows the wind on the moors to-day and now, Where about the graves of the martyrs the whaups are crying, My heart remembers how! —Robert Louis Stevenson, “To S. R. Crockett (In Reply to a Dedication)” #poem #poetry #C19

Robert Louis Stevenson
To S. R. Crockett
(In Reply to a Dedication)

Blows the wind to-day, and the sun and the rain are flying,
Blows the wind on the moors to-day and now,
Where about the graves of the martyrs the whaups are crying,
My heart remembers how!

Gray recumbent tombs of the dead in desert places,
Standing stones on the vacant wine-red moor,
Hills of sheep, and the howes of the silent vanished races,
And winds, austere and pure:

Be it granted me to behold you again in dying,
Hills of home! and to hear again the call;
Hear about the graves of the martyrs the peewees crying,
And hear no more at all.

140

Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 24/09/2026

SR Crockett (1859–1914) was born #OTD, 24 Sep. A bestselling author of 60+ novels, he fell from fashion, his books dismissed as “kailyard”. But Tolkien cites Crockett as an inspiration, & in VIDA, or THE IRON LORD (1907) he possibly wrote the first car chase in fiction #C19 💙📚 1890s.ca/crockett_bio/

Samuel Rutherford Crockett. Photograph by Elliott & Fry. The Critic, September 1905. P. 200. Wikimedia Commons. Crockett is bearded, and wears a jacket buttoned all the way up to his neck. His left hand rests in his jacket pocket and he is holding a book, casually, in his right. The photograph is in black and white.

2124

Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 24/09/2026

“The Harvest Old Wife (a Chailleach).—In harvest, there was a struggle to escape being the last done with the shearing… The fear entertained was that of having the ‘famine of the farm’ (gort a bhaile), in the shape of an imaginary old woman (cailleach), to feed till next harvest” #FolkloreThursday

From Superstitions of the Highlands & Islands of Scotland, Collected Entirely from Oral Sources, by John Gregorson Campbell (1900)

The Harvest Old Wife (a Chailleach).—In harvest, there was a struggle to escape being the last done with the shearing, and when tillage in common existed, instances were known of a ridge being left unshorn (no person would claim it) because of it being behind the rest. The fear entertained was that of having the ‘famine of the farm’ (gort a bhaile), in the shape of an imaginary old woman (cailleach), to feed till next harvest. Much emulation and amusement arose from the fear of this old woman; and from it arose the expression, “Better is a mercy-leap in harvest than a sheaf additional” (’As fearr leum-iochd a’s t’ fhogaradh na sguab a bharrachd). The cum-iochd, or mercy-leap, is where a rocky mound or a soft spot, where no corn grows, occurs in a ridge. Its occurrence was a great help to the shearing being done.

The first done made a doll of some blades of corn, which was called the ‘old wife,’ and sent it to his nearest neighbour. He in turn, when ready, passed it to another still less expeditious, and the person it last remained with had the ‘old woman’ to keep for that year. The old wife was known in Skye as the Cripple Goat (a Ghobhar Bhacach).

The fear of the Cailleach in harvest made a man in Saor-bheinn, in the Ross of Mull, who farmed his land in common with another, rise and shear his corn by moonlight. In the morning he found it was his neighbour’s corn he had cut.

2199

Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 24/09/2026

“In Gaelic tradition, the last sheaf or sguab mu dheireadh…was crafted into a superstitious charm, which could take the form of a simple plait of straws tied up with ribbon, or may be crafted into a corn dolly and even clothed.” #FolkloreThursday www.tobarandualchais.co.uk/blog/a-rich-...

Corn dollies collected by anthropologist Robert Craig Maclagan (1839 – 1919). Left Cailleach from Islay; right Maighdean Bhuana from Argyllshire

The dollies are a little bit flattened, and shown side by side within a brown frame. They are made of snips of cloth – some quite fine – and ribbon, placed like skirts around a small bundle of oats or barley with the seeds still on. The dolly on the left has two little tufts poking out of the bottom of its skirt, presumably representing feet.

23512

Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 23/09/2026

Yestreen I heard a birdie sing Inbye a bonnie beech tree hedge As if it didnae ken nor care Autumn wis hidin in the sedge… —Sheena Blackhall, “Autumn XI” #poem #poetry www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/autumn-...

Autumn IX
Sheena Blackhall

Yestreen I heard a birdie sing
Inbye a bonnie beech tree hedge
As if it didnae ken nor care
Autumn wis hidin in the sedge

The daith o leaves is roon the neuk
It peints them yalla, reid an broon
An doon they’ll drap like faain rain
In waesome Autumn’s dowie croon

Sic cheenges cam tae great an sma
First ae grey hair, a nippin knee
The stert o auld age: clawin cleuks
That herald yer mortality

Autumn draws near, like cat wi moose
It winna stop, nor else devaul
A jeelin in a body’s banes
A cheenge, the turn frae warm tae caul

Noo blawin in the win, dry leaves
Like Simmer’s ghaists, ethereal
This is the Sizzen o the scythe
The nichts draw in, a mournin pall

3176

Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 23/09/2026

John Barleycorn was a hero bold, Of noble enterprise, For if you do but taste his blood, ’Twill make your courage rise… —Robert Burns, “John Barleycorn: A Ballad”. Based on “the old song that goes by this name”, it celebrates the harvest – & the whisky from the grain #WyrdWednesday #poem #C18

John Barleycorn: A Ballad
Tune: Lull Me Beyond Thee
First printed in the Edinburgh edition, 1787.
(This is partly composed on the plan of an old song known by the same name. R.B.)

There was three kings into the east,
Three kings both great and high,
And they hae sworn a solemn oath
John Barleycorn should die.

They took a plough and plough’d him down,
Put clods upon his head,
And they hae sworn a solemn oath
John Barleycorn was dead.

But the cheerful Spring came kindly on,
And show’rs began to fall;
John Barleycorn got up again,
And sore surpris’d them all.

The sultry suns of Summer came,
And he grew thick and strong,
His head weel arm’d wi’ pointed spears,
That no one should him wrong.

The sober Autumn enter’d mild,
When he grew wan and pale;
His bending joints and drooping head
Show’d he began to fail.

His colour sicken’d more and more,
He faded into age;
And then his enemies began
To show their deadly rage.

They’ve taen a weapon long and sharp,
And cut him by the knee;
Then ty’d him fast upon a cart,
Like a rogue for forgerie.

They laid him down upon his back,
And cudgell’d him full sore;
They hung him up before the storm,
And turn’d him o’er and o’er.

They filled up a darksome pit
With water to the brim,
They heaved in John Barleycorn,
There let him sink or swim.

They laid him out upon the floor,
To work him farther woe,
And still, as signs of life appear’d,
They toss’d him to and fro.

They wasted, o’er a scorching flame
The marrow of his bones;
But a Miller us’d him worst of all,
For he crush’d him between two stones.

And they hae taen his very heart’s blood,
And drank it round and round;
And still the more and more they drank,
Their joy did more abound.

John Barleycorn was a hero bold,
Of noble enterprise,
For if you do but taste his blood,
’Twill make your courage rise.

’Twill make a man forget his woe;
’Twill heighten all his joy;
’Twill make the widow’s heart to sing,
Tho’ the tear were in her eye.

Then let us toast John Barleycorn,
Each man a glass in hand;
And may his great posterity
Ne’er fail in old Scotland.

Composition is generally dated to around 1785, although Kinsley believes it was written earlier. In the FCB Burns writes, ‘John Barleycorn.—A Song, to its own Tune. I once heard the old song that goes by this name, sung; and being very fond of it, and remembering only two or three verses of it viz the lst, 2nd and 3rd, with some scraps which I have interwoven here and there in the following piece’, June 1785. Kinsley probably over-stresses the importance of the myth of the Corn Spirit still prevalent in the 18th century as the ‘kernel’ theme of this song, the notion that the ‘old man of vegitation’ is driven out of the corn at threshing time to inhabit the fields, then returns to be the spirit of the next crop (Vol. III, p. 1017). Low is probably right in assuming Burns had read or heard the chapbook song of 1781, the allegory of drink titled The Whole Trial and Indictment of Sir John Barleycorn, Knt., A Person of Noble Birth and Extraction... Being Accused of Several Misdemeanours.. killing some, wounding others, and bringing thousands to Beggary (p. 82).

2145

Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 22/09/2026

The moon is thin and poised like a curlew’s beak— all bone. Hanging over the ocean, the abbey. We watch the sea birds being swept by the wind and I try to tell you about all my life you’ve missed… —Roshni Gallagher, “The Whitby” #poem #poetry www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/the-whi...

The Whitby
Roshni Gallagher

The moon is thin and poised like a curlew’s beak—
all bone. Hanging over the ocean, the abbey.
We watch the sea birds being swept by the wind
and I try to tell you about all my life you’ve missed.
There are still so many sentences I can’t reach.

I know that out on the water, welcomed home,
is a replica of the ship they took my ancestors in—
to sugar plantations for former slave owners.
The Whitby, sailing from India to the Caribbean,
a stale silence blowing in off the water to greet her.

Coming back here is like mutely looking down
on my own odd body as it moves without me.
Nothing is familiar. This loved, blank cliff
is a memorial stone with the names bleached out.

1226

Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 22/09/2026

Taobh a-muigh na h-uinneag-sa tha an canal cho trang sa bhitheas e. Tha na lachan, na cearcan-uisge ’s na faoileagan uile cha mhòr air fàs a-nis… —Pàdraig MacAoidh, “Crann-cuinnse” #poem #poetry www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/crann-c...

Crann-cuinnse
Pàdraig MacAoidh

Taobh a-muigh na h-uinneag-sa
tha an canal cho trang sa bhitheas e.
Tha na lachan, na cearcan-uisge
’s na faoileagan uile cha mhòr air fàs a-nis,
na h-iteagan aca laidir is grinn gu leòr
gus teicheadh air sgiath. Tha am bliadhna
a’ tionndadh, ma-thà, agus sluagh nam fèisean
a’ lìonadh nan treànaichean ’s nan itealan
agus a’ toirt dhachaigh an cuid dannsa
agus gaireachdainn, ceòl agus dìbhearsain.
Measgachadh de leantainneachd
agus caochladh – na bhios a’ ruith agus a’ stad.
Dè dhèanamaid leis a’ chaochladh seo,
a’ chlach, an uisge, an fhoghair san adhar?
Cò aig a tha fios? Ach seall –
tha na druidean-dubha air tilleadh, a’ lìonadh
a’ chrainn-cuinnse, a’ feitheamh air biadh.

Quince Tree
Peter Mackay

Outside the window the canal
is as busy as it ever is. The ducks,
the waterhens, the seagulls are all fledged,
their wings strong, elegant enough
to take flight. The year is turning, then,
and the crowds from the festivals
fill the trains and planes, taking home
their dancing and laughter, music and distraction.
A mix of continuity and flux, what flows
and what remains. What should we do
with this change, these cycles, this stone
and water, this autumn in the air?
Who knows? It doesn’t really matter.
Look, the starlings have returned,
filling the quince tree, waiting to be fed.

052

Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 21/09/2026

“It is the Highlanders’ war clarion, the tune that is played before battle, the wild music that is supposed to quicken the blood of the mountain man and freeze the foe in his tracks…” —George MacDonald Fraser, “Johnnie Cope in the morning”

Now, "Johnnie Cope" is one of the most magnificent sounds ever to issue from musical instruments. It is the Highlanders' war clarion, the tune that is played before battle, the wild music that is supposed to quicken the blood of the mountain man and freeze the foe in his tracks. It commemorates the day two-and-a-quarter centuries ago when the broadswords came whirling out of the mist at Prestonpans to fall on Major-General John Cope's redcoats and cut them to ribbons in something under five minutes. I once watched the Seaforths go in behind it against a Japanese-held village, and saw for the first time that phenomenon which you really can't appreciate until you have seen it – the unbelievable speed with which Highland troops can accelerate a slow, almost leisurely advance into an all-out charge. And I've heard it at military funerals, after "Lovat's Lament" or "Flowers of the Forest", and never failed to be moved by it. Well played, it is a savage, wonderful sound, unlike any other pipe march – this, probably, because it doesn't truly belong to the Army, but to the fighting tails of the old clansmen before the government had the sense to get them into uniforms.

—George MacDonald Fraser, "Johnnie Cope in the morning", in McAuslan in the Rough, 1974

131

Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 21/09/2026

The Battle of Prestonpans was fought #OTD, 21 September 1745, & was a stunning victory for the (largely Highland) Jacobite army. The song “Johnnie Cope”, composed soon afterwards, exists in numerous versions & arrangements – including one by Beethoven – but it is originally a pipe tune #C18 #music

Jonnie Cope

Second Set

To the foregoing air

Cope sent a challenge frae Dunbar,
Sayin “Charlie meet me an’ ye daur;
An’ I’ll learn ye the airts o’ war,
If ye’ll meet me in the morning.”
Hey! Johnnie Cope, are ye waukin’ yet?
Or are your drums a-beating yet?
If ye were waukin’ I wad wait,
Tae gang tae the coals i’ the morning.

When Charlie looked the letter upon,
He drew his sword its scabbard from,
“Come, follow me, my merry men,
And we’ll meet Johnnie Cope i’ the morning.”
Hey! Johnnie Cope, &c.

“Now Johnnie, be as gude’s as your word,
Come, let us try baith fire and sword,
And dinna flee like a frighted bird,
That’s chas’d frae its nest i’ the morning.”
Hey! Johnnie Cope, &c.

When Johnnie Cope he heard o’ this,
He thought it wadna be amiss
To have a horse in readiness,
To flee awa i’ the morning.
Hey! Johnnie Cope, &c.

“Fy now, Johnnie, get up an’ rin;
The Highland bagpipes make a din,
It’s best to sleep in a hale skin,
For ’twill be a bluidie morning.”
Hey! Johnnie Cope, &c.

When Johnnie Cope to Dunbar came,
They speer’d at him, “Where’s a’ your men?”
“The de’il confound me gin I ken,
For I left them a’ this morning.”
Hey! Johnnie Cope, &c.

“Now Johnnie, troth ye wasna blate,
Tae come wi’ the news o’ your ain defeat,
And leave your men in sic a strait,
Sae early in the morning.
Hey! Johnnie Cope, &c.

“I’faith”, quo’ Johnnie, “I got a fleg
Wi’ their claymores an’ philabegs,
If I face them again, deil break my legs,
So I wish you a gude-morning.”
Hey! Johnnie Cope, are ye waukin’ yet?
Or are your drums a-beating yet?
If ye were waukin’ I wad wait,
Tae gang tae the coals i’ the morning.

242