poetry
For future generations from our here and now
Survival, war, poetry. What is it like to fight for your motherland with words and on the streets? Here is a message to transcend time and place.
Poems for the dawn
Here is truth that we need to hear and confront in this viral age. Gordon Munro finds it in new work by Ben Okri and Marianne Faithfull
Doses of compassion from the doctor-poet
“If it is our mission…to alleviate suffering as well as to preserve life …” The crystal-clear words of doctor-poet Gael Turnbull feel like a timely gift in our time of need.
On the threshold: songs and poems for a Covid-safe Christmas
Covid has closed the doors at least for now. But, there’s death-defying joy in Michael Marra’s song, a lockdown escape to be played loud and long. Here’s Frida Kahlo cutting an intoxicatingly exotic dash dancing…
Love and light: poetry and prose in the time of coronavirus
It’s abut humanity. Vision is the theme of #NationalPoetryDay 20-20 and our co-editor Fay finds solace and joy and sadness in poetry and prose written in the time of coronavirus
Strictly street dancing: a poem for a pandemic
Coronavirus brings powerful new poignancy to a remarkable poetry collection gathered by Edinburgh’s former Makar, Christine De Luca to celebrate “those who daily undertake some of the lesser-seen jobs in our city…night bus drivers, lollipop…
Remembering Edwin Morgan at 100
Edwin Morgan became Scotland’s first makar in 2004: a tribute to him on his centenary from his biographer. ‘He was an acrobat of words and identities. Perhaps his own identity as a gay man, risking…
Being 90: a poem for a pandemic
‘Perversely, in the wars evoked by politicians it was the flaming of youth untimely snuffed out. Such thoughts emerge from a new poem, written before the pandemic, the reflections of a man in his tenth…
Address to a coronavirus
“…the hale podium of panjandrums/ wha think they ken hoo tae run things…” including from their beds of isolation…with nods to Burns and the English Bard
Your country needs EU – a journey led by poets
Morning. Mourning? Brexit done? ‘It’s more like getting breakfast done, it starts again the very next day.’ We take a Sceptical journey led by poets.
Wha’s aboot oor Bubblyjock vote?
Twenny nineteen Brexit-split Parlia- ment orders a’ UK turkeys t’ vote Pejoratively said pr’aps, nae fun, ‘cept fer oor nationalists ye kin note. Three year, many mare years yet t’come, no unlike York pie’s fower…
