Assoc for Scottish Literature

“I am a man upon the land,
I am a selkie in the sea,
And when I’m far and far frae land
My hame is in the Sule Skerry”

—The Great Selkie of Sule Skerry (traditional)

22 March is #InternationalSealDay 🦭

🎨: Vernon Hill, “The Great Sealchie of Sule Skerrie”, in Ballads Weird & Wonderful (1912)

#Scottish #literature #folksong #folklore #selkie #poem #poetry #Scots #Scotslanguage #seal #seals

My son has birds in his head.

I know them now. I catch
the pitch of their calls, their shrill
cacophonies, their chitterings, their coos…

—“Daedalus”, by Alastair Reid (1926–2014) – born 100 years ago #OTD, 22 March
published in WEATHERING, @canongatebooks@bookish.community 1978

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#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #20thcentury

You’d know her house by the drawn blinds –
by the cormorants pitched on the boundary wall,
the black crosses of their wings hung out to dry…

—Robin Robertson, “At Roane Head”
in the London Review of Books, 14 August 2008

Today, 22 March, is International Seal Day 🦭

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v30/n16/robin-robertson/at-roane-head

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #folklore #seal #seals #selkie #InternationalSealDay

I found him wandering on the hill
one hot blue afternoon.
He looked as skinny as a nail,
as pale-skinned as the moon…

—Don Paterson, “The Poetry”
published in RAIN (Faber, 2009)

https://www.faber.co.uk/product/9780571255580-rain/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #WorldPoetryDay

heh Casey did a tell ye a goat
a couple a poems published
widizthatmean
widayyemean
dizthatmeanyegetmoneyfurrit…

—William Letford, “It’s aboot the labour”
published in BEVEL (Carcanet, 2012)

https://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?product=9781847771926

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #WorldPoetryDay

The thing about poetry is you have to keep doing it.
People have to keep making it.
The old stuff is no use
Once it’s old…

—Margaret, Tait, “Now”
from Poems, Stories and Writings (Carcanet, 2023)

https://www.carcanet.co.uk/9781800173798/poems-stories-and-writings/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #WorldPoetryDay

When I am reading
the literature of my people
I think,
We have no Homer

no poet as great as that,
at all as great as that,
in that way
in that marvellous way…

—Iain Crichton Smith, “When I am Reading”
published in NEW COLLECTED POEMS (Carcanet, 2011)

https://www.carcanet.co.uk/9781857549607/new-collected-poems/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #WorldPoetryDay

Poets need not be garlanded;
the poet’s head
should be innocent of the leaves of the sweet bay tree,
twisted. All honour goes to poetry…

—Liz Lochhead, “Poets Need Not”
published in A HANDSEL: New & Collected Poems (Birlinn, 2023)

https://birlinn.co.uk/product/a-handsel/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #WorldPoetryDay

a cop in a panda
wound down his window & asked us
what we had in our bags
to which we shouted POETRY!
in unison,
lifted
thick majestic photocopies
and POEMS OF THIRTY YEARS
by Edwin Morgan into the air
as he looked on in horror
and told us to be on our way
and not to do it again…

—Graham Fulton, “Poetry Reaper”

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/poetry-reaper/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #WorldPoetryDay

Tha i mar bharaille de sgadan saillte:
chan eil agad ach do chròg
a stobadh ann, agus dòrlach a thoirt a-mach,
reamhar is tiugh leis a’ bhuntàta…

—Aonghas Phàdraig Caimbeul, “Bàrdachd”
published in AIBISIDH, Polygon Books 2011

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

#Scottish #literature #Gaidhlig #Gaelic #poem #poetry #WorldPoetryDay

It’s for weddings
and funerals
and reading on the train
and for taking a person out of herself
and bringing her back more sane…

—Helena Nelson, “Poetry Forum”
published in DOWN WITH POETRY! (Happenstance, 2016)

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/poetry-forum/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #WorldPoetryDay

you don’t get prose in anapaestic dimeters
nobody publishes their first slim volume of prose
aristotle never wrote The Proses

—Tom Leonard, “100 Differences Between Poetry & Prose”

Today, 21 March, is World Poetry Day!

https://www.tomleonard.co.uk/online-poetry-and-prose/100-differences-between-poetry-and-prose.html

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #WorldPoetryDay

Is tu riamh an ceann do dhleastanais,
mu chòcaireachd, caoraich, leabhraichean;
a bheil fios an d’fhuair thu do dhìol
airson do dheataim is spàirn is sgìths?

—Meg Bateman, “Màthair”
from Soirbheas/Fair Wind, Polygon Books 2007

#Scottish #literature #Gaidhlig #Gaelic #poem #poetry #MothersDay

Tha a’ chlosach air ragachadh
mar gun robh e a’ snàmh,
spliadh is ceann air an togail,
sùil is bian
a’ deàrrsadh mar umha…

—Meg Bateman, “Dòbhran Marbh”
Published in THE GOLDEN TREASURY OF SCOTTISH VERSE, @canongate.co.uk 2021

Today, 3 March, is World Wildlife Day

https://canongate.co.uk/books/3267-the-golden-treasury-of-scottish-verse/

#Scottish #literature #Gaidhlig #Gaelic #WorldWildlifeDay #poem #poetry

“People need to hear a story like this now,” says Pinar Aksu … “We don’t always have a victory at the end of our stories, but hope is all we’ve got.”

The award-winning EVERYBODY TO KENMURE STREET premieres at the Glasgow film festival, 25 February

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/feb/24/power-pyjamas-everybody-to-kenmure-street-glasgow-immigration

#Scottish #film #cinema #KenmureStreet #Scotland #Glasgow

It’s not the crack you expect.
It’s more a soft whump,
then an elegant leaving, like
a grand piano dropped
from a silent-movie window…

—Karen Ashe, “The Sound of an Iceberg Calving”
in SOUND OF AN ICEBERG: New Writing Scotland 37 (ASL, 2019)

https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/newwriting/nws37/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #globalwarming #environment

Islands Matter Public Seminar: Faroese & Shetlandic Folklore
26 February, free online

Prof Jóan Pauli Joensen (University of the Faroe Islands) on “Water Beings in the Faroese Folklore – Tradition & Change” & Prof Andrew Jennings (UHI Institute for Northern Studies) on “From Fetlar to Foula – The Norse Roots of Shetland Folklore”

https://www.uhi.ac.uk/en/research-enterprise/cultural/institute-for-northern-studies/events/islands-matter-public-seminar---faroese--shetlandic-folklore.html

#Scottish #Scotland #Shetlandic #Faroese #Shetland #Faroes #folklore #Norse

Sorrow remembers us when day is done.
It sits in its old chair gently rocking
and singing tenderly in the evening…

—Iain Crichton Smith, “When Day is Done”
published in DEER ON THE HIGH HILLS (Carcanet, 2021)

https://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?product=9781800170940

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #20thcentury #IainCrichtonSmith #sorrow #grief #grieving

The Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh and the School of English, University of St Andrews are offering a Joseph Bell Writer’s residency. The residency is open to writers or researchers in fiction, non-fiction, poetry, drama, screenplay, literary and/or historical scholarship, life-writing and medical humanities.

Closing date: 12 noon, 6 March 2026

https://www.vacancies.st-andrews.ac.uk/Vacancies/W/7234/0/464724/889/joseph-bell-writer-in-residence-at-the-royal-college-of-surgeons-of-edinburgh-and-the-school-of-english-university-of-st-andrews

#Scottish #literature #writers #medicalhumanities #fiction #nonfiction #poetry #drama #screenplay #screenwriting

Escape to the tailored suit,
the pan-loaf speech,
the benefits of higher education…

—“Kailyard & After” by William Neill (1922–2010), b. #OTD, 22 Feb. He wrote poetry in all three of Scotland’s languages & was an active campaigner for Scots & Gaelic

A 🎂 🧵

1/4

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

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Scots #Scotslanguage #minoritylanguage

At times, in those last few months,
he would think of a word
and he had to remember the tree, or the species of frog,

the sound denoted…

—John Burnside, “The Last Man to Speak Ubykh“
published in the London Review of Books, August 2002

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v24/n16/john-burnside/the-last-man-to-speak-ubykh

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #MotherLanguageDay #UNESCO #linguistics

“An entire system of comharran – Gaelic navigational marks – surrounds the islands… A wealth of knowledge about the creatures which populate these fishing grounds is also encoded within the Gaelic language.”

—Alastair Cole: How Scottish Gaelic is helping protect Scotland’s seas

https://theconversation.com/how-scottish-gaelic-is-helping-protect-scotlands-seas-155660

#Scotland #Gaidhlig #Gaelic #MotherLanguageDay #UNESCO #fishing #fishingindustry #Hebrides #language #minoritylanguage

Nam sheasamh thall aig geat a’ phreiridh,
feur glan fom bhotannan,
lamhan fuar nam phocaidean,
faileadh an dup
gu fann
gu neo-chinnteach
a’ nochdadh mu mo chuinnlean…

—Anne Frater, “Aig an Fhaing”

Today, 21 February, is UNESCO International Mother Language Day

https://www.unesco.org/en/days/mother-language

#Scottish #literature #Gaidhlig #Gaelic #poem #poetry #language #minoritylanguage #MotherLanguageDay #UNESCO

Subverting the Script: Alan Bissett on Class, Masculinity, & the Telling of Tales

Playwright, novelist & performer Alan Bissett speaks to Scott Cassidy on The Creative Resistance podcast about class, masculinity, & the telling of tales.

https://thecreativeresistancepodcast.substack.com/p/subverting-the-script-alan-bissett

#Scottish #literature #class #masculinity #AlanBissett #podcast

Iain M. Banks (1954–2013) was born #OTD, 16 Feb: a 🎂 🧵
1/13

“Iain Banks… is a novelist who has his own ‘double’, an author for whom the idea of a split writing persona is emphatically not out of place”

—“Reading Double, Writing Double: The Fiction of Iain (M) Banks” – a 2010 article on Banks’s genre-busting career

@bookstodon@a.gup.pe

https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2010/11/reading-double-writing-double-the-fiction-of-iain-m-banks/

#Scottish #literature #fiction #sciencefiction #IainBanks #IainMBanks #TheCulture

Snaw is bluffertin’ the toun,
Gurly wunds are roustin’ roun’,
Peety fowk in broken shoon
This winter nicht…

—Helen Burness Cruickshank (1886–1975), “Song of Pity for Refugees”
published in Collected Poems (Reprographia, 1971)

#Scottish #literature #Scots #Scotslanguage #poem #poetry #refugees #winter

Up there on that bare hill
you wouldn’t dare dream
of a summer day, of grain
ripening in the hot sun,
of the kiss of a soft wind
on the back of your neck…

—Deborah Moffatt, “That Bare Hill”
published in Crannóg Magazine

https://crannogmagazine.com/that-bare-hill/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry