Rambling Readers

Assoc for Scottish Literature

Michael Pedersen on Robert Louis Stevenson
1 May, National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh – tickets £0–£10

Novelist & Edinburgh Makar Michael Pedersen, bestselling crime writer Val McDermid, filmmaker David Carrillo, & National Library curator Colin McIlroy explore the legacy of Robert Louis Stevenson

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/michael-pedersen-on-robert-louis-stevenson-tickets-1257980947879

#Scottish #literature #RobertLouisStevenson #RLS

Assoc for Scottish Literature

The boy is ten and today it is his birthday.
Behind him on the lawn
his mother and his little sister
unfurl a rainbow crayoned big and bright
on a roll of old wallpaper…

—Liz Lochhead, “The Spaces Between”
in A HANDSEL: New & Collected Poems (Birlinn, 2023)

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

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #covid #lockdown

The Spaces Between
Liz Lochhead

for Leslie McGuire

The boy is ten and today it is his birthday.
Behind him on the lawn
his mother and his little sister
unfurl a rainbow crayoned big and bright
on a roll of old wallpaper.
His father, big-eyed, mock-solemn, pantomimes ceremony
as he lights the ten candles on the cake.
Inside her living-room
his grandmother puts her open palm to the window.
Out in the garden, her grandson
reaches up, mirrors her, stretching fingers
and they smile and smile as if they touched
warm flesh not cold glass.

More than forty thousand years ago
men or women splayed their fingers thus
and put their hands to bare rock, they
chewed ochre, red-ochre, gritted charcoal and blew,
blew with projectile effort that really took it out of them,
their living breath.
Raw gouts of pigment
spattered the living stencil
that was each’s own living hand
and made their mark.
The space of absence
was the clean, stark picture of their presence
and it pleased them.
We do not know why they did it
and maybe they did not either but
they knew they must.
It was the cold cave wall
and they knew they were up against it.

The birthday boy is juggling.
He has been spending time in the lockdown learning
but though he still can’t keep it up for long
his grandmother dumb-shows most extravagant applause.
She toasts them all in tea
from her Best Granny in the World mug, winking
and licking her lips ecstatically as,
outdoors, they cut the cake,
miming hunger, miming
prayer for her hunger to be sated.
The slim girl dances
and her grandmother claps
and claps again, blinking tears.
Another matched high-five at her window.

Neither the blown candles or the blown kisses
will leave any permanent mark
– unless love does? –
on them on this the only afternoon
they will be all alive together on just this day the boy is ten.

Assoc for Scottish Literature

Fon chàrn, ghabh iad air falbh
gus an tug iad a-mach cliathach Beinn Ghulbain
ri marbh na h-oidhche…

—Rody Gorman, “Leabaidh Dhiarmaid is Gràinne”
published in Dreuchd an Fhigheadair / The Weaver’s Task: a Gaelic Sampler (Scottish Poetry Library, 2007)

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/leabaidh-dhiarmaid-grainne/

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

Leabaidh Dhiarmaid is Gràinne
Rody Gorman

Fon chàrn, ghabh iad air falbh
gus an tug iad a-mach cliathach Beinn Ghulbain
ri marbh na h-oidhche.

Rinn iad iad fhèin a shìneadh
air an druim-dìreach air lom na lice
mar gum biodh iad a’ dol fon sgithinn.

An uair sin, às dèidh dhaibh an gnothach
a dhèanamh, ’s ann a theirg iad às
(mas fhìor don t-seanchas).

Thàinig mi fhìn oirre gun fhiosta
’s an treud a’ cnàmh air a h-àrainn.

Bidh iad ga cleachdadh fhathast
aon turas an comhair na bliadhna
Didòmhnaich mar làrach-ìobairt,

fhathast ’na seasamh air chumadh
doras eadar dhà dharach
agus, air snaidheadh air gach taobh,
samhla naomh air choreigin.

The Bed of Diarmid and Grainne
Translator: Kathleen Jamie

I happened upon it by chance
as the flock grazed
high on Ben Bulben . . .

To think the old story was true!
—that by dead of night they’d cut and run,
scaled the sharp ridge, stripped
this stone bare as a mortuary slab,
laid themselves down . . .
and after their efforts, slept.

Fancy it still being up here—
ready for Sundays,
lying like a door between
twin oaks, each notched
with some sort of holy insignia.

Assoc for Scottish Literature replied to Project Gutenberg's status

@gutenberg_org

“not only is there no invocation of the free market […Adam Smith] plainly sees that government, not private industry, is the only force capable of effectively ‘erecting and maintaining’ the technically unprofitable but nevertheless indispensable ‘publick works’ and ‘publick institutions’ […] essential to every modern state.”

—Evan Gottlieb on the origins & legacy of Adam Smith’s “Invisible Hand”
https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2013/05/invisible-hand-over-fist-on-the-development-and-legacy-of-adam-smiths-famous-phrase/

#Scottish #literature #AdamSmith #economics #18thcentury

Project Gutenberg

#OTD in 1776.

Scottish political economist Adam Smith's book The Wealth of Nations, the first modern work in economics, was published.

It has become a fundamental work in classical economics, and has been described as "the first formulation of a comprehensive system of political economy".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations

Wealth of Nations at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3300

#books #literature #economy

The full title reads:

"An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations",
by Adam Smith, LL.D. and F.R.S.,
Formerly Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Glasgow.

The title is arranged in a centered layout, using a combination of capital and small capital letters, reflecting the typographic conventions of the time. Below the author’s name and credentials, the volume number (as the work was published in two volumes) is indicated.

At the bottom of the page is the publication information, which reads:

"London: Printed for W. Strahan; and T. Cadell in the Strand. MDCCLXXVI."

Assoc for Scottish Literature

Her hair is cut into that perfect slant –
An innovation circa ’64 by Vidal Sassoon.
She’s wearing C&A’s best effort at Quant
Ending just below the knicker-line, daisy-strewn…

—Liz Lochhead, “Photograph, Art Student, Female, Working Class, 1966”
Published in FUGITIVE COLOURS (Birlinn, 2016)

https://birlinn.co.uk/product/fugitive-colours/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #InternationalWomensDay #womenwriters

Soon: The Female Eunuch and enough
Will be enough. Thanks to newfound feminism and Greer,
Women’ll have the words for all this stuff,
What already rankles, but confuses her, will seem clear
And she’ll (consciously) be no one’s ‘bit of fluff’
Or ‘skirt’ or ‘crumpet’. She’ll know the rule is ‘gay’ not ‘queer’,
‘Ms’ not ‘Miss’ or ‘Mrs’ – she’ll happily obey it
And, sure as the Pill in her pocket, that’s how she’ll say it.

This photo’s saying nothing, is black and white, opaque.
A frozen moment, not a memory.
The boyfriend with the Pentax took it for the sake
Of taking it, a shot among many others, randomly,
To see how it would develop. Didn’t imagine it’d make
An image so typical it’d capture time so perfectly.
How does she feel? Hey, girl, did it feel strange
To be waiting for the a-changing times to change?

Photograph, Art Student, Female, Working Class
Liz Lochhead

Her hair is cut into that perfect slant –
An innovation circa ‘64 by Vidal Sassoon.
She’s wearing C&A’s best effort at Quant
Ending just below the knicker-line, daisy-strewn.
Keeping herself in tights could blow her grant
Entirely, so each precious pair is soon
Spattered with nail varnish dots that stop each run.
She’s a girl, eighteen – just wants to have fun.

She’s not ‘a chick’. Not yet. Besides, by then
She’ll find the term ‘offensive’. ‘Dollybird’ to quote
Her favourite mags, is what she aspires to when
Her head’s still full of Honey and Petticoat.
It’s almost the last year that, quite this blithely, men
Up ladders or on building sites wolf-whistle to note
The approval they’re sure she will appreciate.
Why not? She did it for their benefit, looks great.

Nor does she object. Wouldn’t think she has the right.
Though when that lech of a lecturer comments on her tits
To a male classmate, openly, she might
Feel – quick as a run in nylon – that it’s
Not what ought to happen, is not polite,
She’ll burn, but smile, have no word that fits
The insult, can’t subject it to language’s prism.
In sixty-six there’s plenty sex, but not ‘sexism’.

Assoc for Scottish Literature

Scandinavia 1880s
In the grave a warrior
with generous grave goods,
shields, an axe, a spear, a sword…

—Vivien Jones, “BJ 581 in Birka, or, Androcentrism in Archaeology”
Published in The Poets’ Republic 9

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/bj-581-in-birka/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #archaeology #InternationalWomensDay

Vivien Jones
BJ 581 in Birka
or
Androcentrism in Archaeology

Scandinavia 1880s
In the grave a warrior
with generous grave goods,
shields, an axe, a spear, a sword,
a bow with weighty arrows,
a stallion, a mare,
some game pieces
a strategist then.

1970s
Osteological analysis
identifies the bones
are female.

Was she then a lover,
a wife, a sister, cousin, aunt?
Was she laid there in jest,
as a punishment, as an example?
Was she in receipt of inherited wealth?

2017
American Journal of Physical Anthropology

after intensive DNA Analysis
‘The results call for caution against generalizations
regarding social orders in past societies,’
lead researcher, Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson

In my heart and mind today

Let her have been a sturdy woman,
scarred, broken-nosed, gap-toothed,
breasts bound for comfort in a fight,
no blonde plaits, no horned helmet,
a great belcher and farter,
a screamer in sex, childbirth and battle,
with thighs to grip a horse rather than a man.

Let the warrior describe the woman.

Assoc for Scottish Literature

I didna speak
whan it bleetert doon.
Ma man wis gey taen up wi’ getting us
sortit, an’ it wis fell lang afore we had
the bastes in an’ the fowl settled…

—Eunice Buchanan, “Wife to Noah”
published in MARKINGS 30 (2010)

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/wife-noah/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Scots #Scotslanguage #InternationalWomensDay

Wife to Noah
Eunice Buchanan

I didna speak
whan it bleetert doon.
Ma man wis gey taen up wi’ getting us
sortit, an’ it wis fell lang afore we had
the bastes in an’ the fowl settled.

I didna speak
whan the watters spewed
ower ma rigs o’ corn an’ doon the street
intae ma hoose amangst ma rugs
an’ the bonny things I had fae ma mither.

I didna speak
whan I heard ma frien
Becca battrin at the howe o’ wir boat,
her bairn in her airms, yowlin like een
o’ the damned o’Hell. We had linkit
doon the years fae bairnie tae wife.
Ma bonny hinnie, weel-hertit Becca.
I clappit ma haunds tae ma lugs
an’ flung ma airms aboot ma laddies,
but still I didna speak

I didna speak
whan the lift grew black an’ blacker
an’ there wis naither muin nor sun an’ the cries
that had been aa aboot us wir smoored.
Nae soond on that black sea but the doonfa, the dreep,
the plowt, the pish-oot o’ grey watter on grey watter.

I canna speak
o’ the things on the watter
as the days drave on – swollen an’ blae,
wi the sea-maws skirlin an’ pickin, skirlin an’ pickin.
Syne whan the well-heid dried an’ the watters sank,
the laund, oor bonny laund, slaich an’ slairy
wi’ black glaur,
an’ oorsels alane.

But whan I gang the low road on the hinmaist day
an’ I climb the steps for my tryst wi’ God
I will look the Almichty in the face –
an’ I will hae ma say.

Assoc for Scottish Literature

All our lives, in every city,
out of every landscape
the waters of the Alhambra
have been murmuring to us…

—Imtiaz Dharker, “Women Bathing”
from The Terrorist At My Table (Bloodaxe Books, 2006)

https://www.bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/product/the-terrorist-at-my-table-837

#Scottish #literature #poetry #poem #InternationalWomensDay #womenwriters

Women Bathing
by Imtiaz Dharker

All our lives, in every city,
out of every landscape
the waters of the Alhambra
have been murmuring to us.
From fountains, from watercourses,
from the secret pools in courtyards,
voices calling across centuries.

The other women are bathing
in the moonlight.

‘Come,’ they say, ‘Come out of the day’s heat,
out of shaded rooms, let’s escape and slip away,
let the veils fall, one by one.
Slide into the pools that lie like mirrors of the sky,
and let the moon wash over our bodies.’

Bodies lush, generously-hipped.
Bodies like pomegranates,
bursting with promises.

Assoc for Scottish Literature

she wants to strip the willow
she desires the keys
to the National Library
she is beckoning
the lasses
in the awestruck crowd …

—Kathleen Jamie, “The Queen of Sheba”
First published in THE QUEEN OF SHEBA, Bloodaxe Books 1994
(these pages from New Scottish Poetry, Heinemann 2001)

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #InternationalWomensDay #womenwriters

KATHLEEN JAMIE
The Queen of Sheba

Scotland, you have invoked her name
just once too often
in your Presbyterian living rooms.
She’s heard, yea
even unto heathenish Arabia
your vixen’s bark of poverty, come down
the family like a lang neb, a thrawn streak,
a wally dug you never liked
but can’t get shot of.

She’s had enough. She’s come.
Whit, tae this dump? Yes!
She rides first camel
of a swaying caravan
from her desert sands
to the peat and bracken
of the Pentland hills
across the fit-ba pitch
to the thin mirage
of the swings and chute; scattered with glass.

Breathe that steamy musk
on the Curriehill Road, not mutton-shanks
boiled for broth, nor the chlorine stink
of the swimming pool where skinny girls
accuse each other of verrucas.
In her bathhouses women bear

warm pot-bellied terracotta pitchers
on their laughing hips.
All that she desires, whatever she asks
She will make the bottled dreams
of your wee lasses look like sweeties.

Spangles scarcely cover
her gorgeous breasts, hanging gardens
jewels, frankincense; more voluptuous
even than Vi-next-door, whose
high-heeled slippers
keeked from dressing gowns
like little hooves, wee tails
of pink fur stuffed in the cleavage of her toes;
more audacious even than Currie Liz
who led the gala floats
through the Wimpey scheme
in a ruby-red Lotus Elan
before the Boys’ Brigade band
and the Brownies’ borrowed coal-truck;
hair piled like candy-floss;
who lifted like hands from the neat wheel
to tinkle her fingers
at her tricks
among the Masons and the elders and the police.

The cool black skin
of the Bible couldn’t hold her,
nor the atlas green
on the kitchen table,
you stuck with thumbs
and split to fruity hemispheres –
yellow Yemen, Red Sea, Ethiopia. Stick in
with the homework and you'll be
cliver like yer faither.
but no too cliver,
no above yersel.

See her lead those great soft camels
widdershins round the kirk-yaird,
smiling
as she eats
avocados with apostle spoons
she’ll teach us how. But first

she wants to strip the willow
she desires the keys
to the National Library
she is beckoning
the lasses
in the awestruck crowd ...

Yes, we'd like to
clap the camels,
to smell the spice,
admire her hairy legs and
bonny wicked smile, we want to take
PhDs in Persian, be vice
to her president: we want
to help her
ask some Difficult Questions

she’s shouting for our wisest man
to test her mettle:

Scour Scotland for a Solomon!

Sure enough: from the back of the crowd
someone growls:
whae do you think y’ur?

and a thousand laughing girls and she
draw our hot breath
and shout:

THE QUEEN OF SHEBA!

Assoc for Scottish Literature

Edwin Only Helped

Women Writers of the Scottish Literary Renaissance: handmaids, midwives, mothers, mistresses, cooks, nannies, & skivvies to that literary revolution. Oh, & contributors, too. Let’s not forget about their own writing! Again…

🖼️ Jacky Fleming

https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2020/12/edwin-only-helped/

#InternationalWomensDay #Scottish #literature #20thcentury #WomenWriters

A cartoon by Jackie Fleming, from The Trouble With Women. A bespectacled man with unruly, curly hair and a beard, wearing a frock coat, bends over and examines a tiny object on a low table, using a comically oversized magnifying glass. The handwritten text above reads:

In the Olden Days there were no women which is why you don't come across them in history lessons at school. There were men and quite a few of them were Geniuses.

Assoc for Scottish Literature

THE TRYAL

A staged reading of Joanna Baillie’s 1798 comedy THE TRYAL. The text has been modified for the stage: it has been shortened overall but there is also a scene added to clarify the plot.

@litstudies

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3ksanlDElU

#Scottish #literature #18thcentury #drama #theatre #romanticism #womenwriters

Bytes Europe

A fountain of imagination: These Italian treasures inspired the world’s literary greats https://www.byteseu.com/807975/ #Books #Italy #literature #TourOfItaly #TravelDestinations #writer

Assoc for Scottish Literature

An Evening of Poetry in Czech, English, & Gaelic
14 March, Glasgow – free

Petr Hruška will launch the English edition of his prize-winning collection I Caught Sight of My Face (trans. Joshua Mensch). Petr will be joined by Scottish poets Rob A. Mackenzie & Gerald Mangan, & by Czech poet Petra Johana Poncarová who writes in Gaelic.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/an-evening-of-poetry-in-czech-english-and-gaelic-tickets-1267881370309

#Scottish #Czech #literature #poetry #Gaelic #Gaidhlig

Assoc for Scottish Literature replied to Assoc for Scottish Literature's status

“Henry Cunningham, Esq. of Boquhan, was a gentleman of Stirlingshire, who, like many exquisites of our own time, united a natural high spirit and daring character with an affectation of delicacy of address and manners amounting to foppery…”

—From Walter Scott’s 1829 Introduction to ROB ROY

5/5

#Scottish #literature #history #SirWalterScott #romanticism #duel #sword #cinema #film #AlanSharp

… Boquhan's supposed effeminacy, or because he thought him a safe person to fix a quarrel on (a point which Rob's enemies alleged he was wont to consider), insulted him so grossly that a challenge passed between them. The goodwife of the clachan had hidden Cunningham's sword, and while he rummaged the house in quest of his own or some other, Rob Roy went to the Shieling Hill, the appointed place of combat, and paraded there with great majesty, waiting for his antagonist. In the meantime, Cunningham had rummaged out an old sword, and, entering the ground of contest in all haste, rushed on the outlaw with such unexpected fury that he fairly drove him off the field, nor did he show himself in the village again for some time. Mr. MacGregor Stirling has a softened account of this anecdote in his new edition of Nimmo's Stirlingshire; still he records Rob Roy's discomfiture.

Henry Cunningham, Esq. of Boquhan, was a gentleman of Stirlingshire, who, like many exquisites of our own time, united a natural high spirit and daring character with an affectation of delicacy of address and manners amounting to foppery.* He chanced to be in company with Rob Roy, who, either in contempt of …

* footnote to "foppery": His courage and affectation of foppery were united, which is less frequently the case, with a spirit of innate modesty. He is thus described in Lord Binning's satirical verses, entitled "Argyle's Levee:"

"Six times had Harry bowed unseen,
Before he dared advance;
The Duke then, turning round well pleased,
Said, 'Sure you've been in France!
A more polite and jaunty man
I never saw before:'
Then Harry bowed, and blushed, and bowed,
And strutted to the door."

See a Collection of original Poems, by Scotch Gentlemen, vol. ii. p. 125.