Thanks to everyone who commented on my silly witches and egg shells post. Fascinating to hear that so many people have heard of this superstition. I've done a little googling research and here's what I've unearthed...


( Read more... )

This poem for Remembrance Day is not so much about war but about its aftermath. It was written by Iain Crichton Smith, a poet born and brought up on the same island in the Hebrides that I am from. Smith wrote in both Gaelic and English, this poem was originally written in Gaelic and you can hear a recording of the poet reading it here.

A' Dol ( Read more... )

Thanks to esmerelda_t (and my sister) for alerting me to this rather gorgeous poetry installation that is taking place around the UK. Peace Camp is a coastal installation curated by director Deborah Warner and actor Fiona Shaw who established:

"Eight murmuring, glowing encampments at some of our most beautiful and remote coastal locations. Designed to be ( Read more... )

When nodbear discovered Susan Pellew's astonishing letter admonishing her husband for bringing home stray tigers, baboons and monkeys it immediately recalled the previous report we had discovered of Pellew arriving at Plymouth and landing a cargo comprising "a beautiful male tiger, a tigercat, several sheep from the Cape of Good Hope, a land and sea ( Read more... )

( Read more... )

Something I promised to post earlier in the week...I've posted some of Edwin Morgan's poetry here before, this is probably one of his most famous pieces and it's still one of my favourites. It's also so very, very Glasgow :)

Trio
Coming up Buchanan Street, quickly, on a sharp winter evening ( Read more... )

For Remembrance Day...

The Permanence of the Young Men by William Soutar, 1898-1943.

No man outlives the grief of war ( Read more... )

This week sees the centenary of the birth of the Scottish poet Norman MacCaig, 14th November 1910 to 23 January 1996. This poem is a perfect illustration of his lyric style; spare, vivid and evocative. And I don't think I need to explain the image this poem evokes for me.

~ Small Boy ~He picked up a pebble ( Read more... )

I was hugely saddened to read about the death of the poet Edwin Morgan last week. Morgan was the last of a great generation of Scottish poets that included Iain Crichton Smith, Norman MacCaig, Sorley Maclean, George Mackay Brown and Sydney Goodsir Smyth.

( I'll breathe, and long past midnight, your last kiss. )