Poem of the Week: ‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers
11 May '21
International Nurses Day, May 12th, has special resonance in 2021. Our newest poetry collection, published in partnership with the Scottish Poetry...
Tea Time Treat
Poem of the Week: ‘A New Child: ECL’ by George Mackay Brown
13 Apr '21
Today marks 25 years since George Mackay Brown died on 13th April 1996 in Stromness, Orkney. But 2021 also sees the centenary of his birth. Polygon...
Poem for Holy Week: Pilate at Fortingall by Edwin Morgan
29 Mar '21
Edwin Morgan wrote a Good Friday poem about a man he met on a Glasgow bus at 3pm that day. You can feel the spring sunshine through the grimy windows...
Waking Up on Iona: Alistair Moffat goes In Search of Angels
27 Mar '21
Alistair Moffat roamed across Scotland’s western seaboard looking for traces of the saints who first brought Christianity to these shores....
Poem of the Week: from The Book of Iona edited by Robert Crawford
23 Mar '21
With Palm Sunday and Holy Week on the horizon, we turn west to The Book of Iona. This anthology, edited by Robert Crawford, is ‘given over to...
World Poetry Day Staff Picks: Our Favourite Scottish Poems
18 Mar '21
The act of choosing a favourite can be all about the moment in time, it’s to capture a feeling, mood or resonance rather than to designate a...
World Poetry Day: Somewhere / Today by Nadine Aisha Jassat
16 Mar '21
A cosmic alignment sees World Poetry Day coincide with the first day of Spring on Sunday 21st March 2021. That said, this week’s poem is a...
Convent Espionage: Women’s History Month III
15 Mar '21
Our third instalment of extracts for Women’s History Month is a double decker: early-modern prioresses and the very modern Muriel Spark. The...
Poem of the Week: Kishie Wife by Roseanne Watt
08 Mar '21
Roseanne Watt rewrites the myth of the bringer of fire in this short poem. In Shaetlan, kishie is a woven basket. In this instance, it is one worn on...
Poem of the Week: ‘Cannae Sleep’ by Michael Pedersen
02 Mar '21
Michael Pedersen’s 2017 poetry collection Oyster brims briny with poems on all subjects: love, life, travel, sex, Scotland, politics....
A Lesson in the Value of Perseverance: NASA and the Stirling Engine
23 Feb '21
In the week NASA’s Perseverance rover landed on Mars, Birlinn MD Hugh Andrew looks at another case of long-range perseverance with a NASA...
How to Be the Perfect Romantic Poet by Liz Lochhead
23 Feb '21
It’s 200 years since the death of John Keats in Rome on February 23rd, 1821. While Liz Lochhead’s poem about the Romantic poets playfully...
