Reading Scotland with Billy Kay
30 April, free online
Billy Kay will explore a lifetime of working in the field of promoting #Scottish culture, both at home & abroad through his work in radio & TV. He will discuss the trials & tribulations of being a prominent advocate for his native language, #Scots, & the language's importance in his own sense of #identity
John Galt Society lecture 2024
Prof Caroline McCracken-Flesher, University of Wyoming
“The Strange Temporalities of Provost Pawkie: John Galt & The Provost’s Travels in Time”
3 May, Irvine – tickets £10
#Scottish #literature #18thcentury #19thcentury
https://thejohngaltsociety.com/2024/04/02/lecture-by-caroline-mccracken-flesher/
“William Shakespeare was a powerful influence on Robert Burns. If the latter exemplified certain Scottish literary and cultural traditions, he did so with Shakespeare in his DNA. In his letters, Burns turns to Shakespeare on several dozen occasions. I also count as many as 16 references to Shakespeare’s plays in his poetry.”
—Prof Gerard Carruthers on the links & commonalities between #RobertBurns & #Shakespeare
Now, boy, remember this is the great scene.
You’ll stand on a pedestal behind a curtain,
the curtain will be drawn, and then you don’t move
for eighty lines; don’t move, don’t speak, don’t breathe.
I’ll stun them all out there, I’ll scare them,
make them weep, but it depends on you…
—Edwin Morgan, “Instructions to an Actor”
#Scottish #literature #poetry #EdwinMorgan #Shakespeare #ShakespeareDay
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A girnin, greitin deil wis I –
I wis auld, and feelin aulder.
Syne the heatin system burst in Hell:
It wis cauld – and gettin caulder…
—James Robertson, “Beelzebub Resurfaces”
#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #EarthDay #EarthDay2024
https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/beelzebub-resurfaces/
…and outside
unnoticed the ghost-blue of juniper needle and berry
and the ghost-rising of smoke from the fires we
claimed we had not set…
—Sheila Black, “Climate (7) (Past Tense)”
It’s hard to think that the earth is one—
This poor sad bearer of wars and disasters
Rolls-Roycing round the sun with its load of gangsters,
Attended only by the loveless moon.
—Norman MacCaig, “Stars and Planets”
#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #EarthDay #EarthDay2024
https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/stars-and-planets/
Change, change — that’s what the terns scream
down at their seaward rocks;
fleet clouds and salt kiss —
everything else is provisional,
us and all our works…
—Kathleen Jamie, “Fianuis”
#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #EarthDay #EarthDay2024
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/58566/fianuis
Mars is braw in crammasy,
Venus in a green silk goun,
The auld mune shak’s her gowden feathers,
Their starry talk’s a wheen o’ blethers,
Nane for thee a thochtie sparin’,
Earth, thou bonnie broukit bairn!
– But greet, an’ in your tears ye’ll droun
The haill clanjamfrie!
—Hugh MacDiarmid, “The Bonnie Broukit Bairn”
#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #Scots #poem #poetry #EarthDay #EarthDay2024
https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/bonnie-broukit-bairn/
Alistair MacLean (1922–1987) – author of The Guns of Navarone, Ice Station Zebra, Where Eagles Dare, & many others – was born #OTD, 21 April, 1922. A native #Gaelic speaker, he grew up near Inverness. @NeilDrysdale tells the story of MacLean’s remarkable life
#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #thriller
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Marion Cleland Lochhead (1902–1985) was born #OTD, 19 April, in Wishaw. A founding member of Scottish PEN – alongside Hugh MacDiarmid, Edwin & Willa Muir, Helen Cruikshank, & others – Lochhead was a versatile figure of the #20thcentury #Scottish literary scene, writing #poetry, fiction, social history, biography, children’s folk-tales, & journalism.
Marion Lochhead, “Painted Things”
Published in Painted Things & Other Poems (Gowans & Grey, 1929)
