Fay Young
Bold Reekie: a poetry slam with a difference
Big words, bigger picture, fine detail. A grand scheme for poetry writ large on a scaffolding banner on a building site in Edinburgh’s Canongate reveals the more adventurous side of the capital city. If you…
Poetically challenged: satirical lines on party leaders
Corbynmania has spawned a book of dedicated poems but what of other political figures? Fay Young casts an acerbic and affectionate eye over other political poems, including Ron Butlin’s ode to Tony Blair.
Breaking dementia’s silence with poetry
On the day that the world is shown potential break-through drugs for treating Alzheimer’s, we show via Paula Jennings how poetry can break down the barriers with others experienced by dementia sufferers
In my country: a poem for refugee week
This week sees World Refugee Day marking the huge rise in people seeking asylum, escape, sanctuary around the globe in the face of increasingly savage local/regional wars. Here we look at how Jackie Kay evokes…
Sex and sensuality
One hundred years after the Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock was published Fay Young reflects on how Eliot’s poem fits our “deranged and unbalanced” 21st century.
Politics and a vote for love
WB Yeats would no doubt be celebrating with Colm Tóibín the outcome of the referendum on gay marriage in Ireland. And, says Fay Young, his message on love still applies to the North.
The Light Streams In
This week’s Poem of the Moment, courtesy of Scottish Poetry Library, brings a welcome flash of spring sunshine. In a country still rocked by political aftershocks, there’s relief in the imagery of The Light Streams…
No forelock-tuggers in parliament please
‘You campaign in poetry; you govern in prose,’ as the late former New York governor Mario Cuomo famously put it. A cynic might say the UK general election campaign has produced no poetry and precious…
Windpower to the people
Politicians of all colours have failed to inspire voters with a proper definition of what devolution could bring – a real transfer of power from our centralising government to genuine grassroots roll-your-sleeves-up activity. Enterprising communities…
Is Scotland the fairest of them all?
Scotland’s supposed moral superiority is too often unchallenged by media and politicians alike. Isn’t it time we took a long, hard look in the mirror?
Is Scotland brave enough to support a Fourth Plinth?
Hans Haacke’s statue, Gift Horse, in London’s Trafalgar Square invites questions about power and parliament. Could Scotland’s capital support a ‘fourth plinth’? Where would it be? Who would fund it? And would Scottish artists feel…