Taking a break from Brexit Fay Young finds subversive mischief in the poetry of Edinburgh Makars, as performed in Edinburgh’s Poetry Garden (aka St Andrew Square)
Books & Poetry
Why politicians need to take a bus ride to reality
In his short story, The Nummer 14 Bus, James Robertson evokes the daily struggle played out on a bus ride through Scotland’s affluent capital. It could be a bus ride in any UK city.
For love of life on land, sea and sky
Confronting hard facts, authors at the inaugural Tobermory Book Festival raise spirits even as they sound alarm bells. Fay Young finds both comfort and warning in the prose and poetry of Scottish writers gathering on Mull.
Apocalypse now and then…ten years after HBOS crash
The events leading up to the crash began in New York, 7 September 2008. A week later the shock waves engulfed Scotland’s oldest bank in Edinburgh.
Irish passport to poetry and peace
Travelling light, I’m sitting on the train when I remember that last minute packing left no time for this month’s Sceptical Scot poetry blogpost. A routine check of essential documents finds an answer. Irish passport to the rescue. [This post was first written, on the train to London, in June 2018 when Boris Johnson was […]
The prime that never comes: on Muriel Spark’s Miss Jean Brodie
‘School holds a fascination long after we leave it because it is so often the last time many people feel themselves emerging as individuals. By adulthood, the terms of who we are and what we decide to do are expected to be firmly set….And so when, in Edinburgh, we are asked: ‘what school did you go to?’ the question perhaps belies a deeper subtext: ‘who were you, before you made the choice?’
Remembering Bob Tait and the radical 60s
‘All I knew was that I was getting at least as much of an education from Bob as I was from the University. Bob was only four years older but he was a postgraduate student in philosophy, formidably well read, and in touch with the larger political world of which I was only distantly aware’ – a memoir of our late editorial board member
Poetry Tree and the turning seasons
‘Poetry readings were performed here for Refugee Week. Poetry postcards offered to passers by on National Poetry Day. Poetry twirled on willow stakes in the garden. Poetry projected on to the plinth of the Melville Monument and hung on buildings under construction around the square’. But no more…?
Mind the time? Football memories
“I come along with a confused man and leave with my husband.” Gordon Munro reviews Mind the Time, a poetry project using football memories to enhance the lives of people with dementia and those closest to them.
Making another world possible: a tribute to Word Power Books
A book lover pays tribute to Word Power Books, the Edinburgh independent bookseller whose closure was announced this week.