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...
Tea Time Treat
March is Women’s History Month: ‘Who Do You Think You Are’ by Janice Galloway from Scotland: Her Story
02 Mar '21
March is Women’s History Month, with International Women’s Day taking place on 8th March. Rosemary Goring’s anthology, Scotland:...
It’s Pie Week: Start with a Savoury Slice from The Claire MacDonald Game Cookbook
02 Mar '21
March has finally begun, the days are getting longer, and perhaps best of all, this week is British Pie Week. With so many delicious options both...
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 Day Like Any Other
26 Feb '21
An Extract From Chapter 2. Tonto Was a Woman They’d met, George and Anna, when they were nine years old. George’s family had not long moved to a...
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...
Easy Kale, Tomato and Cashew Nut Stir-up
22 Feb '21
As well as its significance as a period of fasting in the Christian calendar, Lent is often used as an opportunity to abstain from something we...
Extract from Hedy’s War by Jenny Lecoat
22 Feb '21
Hedy’s War by Jenny Lecoat is a gripping WWII novel based on the true story of Hedwig Bercu, a Jewish girl who finds herself on Jersey when...
Jimmy in Paris, 1948
16 Feb '21
To celebrate publication of the new edition of James Campbell’s essential biography of James Baldwin, Talking at the Gates, here is an extract...
The Light Comes Back: ‘The white bird’ by Norman MacCaig
16 Feb '21
‘Every year, in the third week of February,’ Kathleen Jamie writes in her collection Sightlines, ‘there is a day, or, more usually...
Poem of the Week: Landscape with the Fall of Icarus by Jim Carruth
01 Feb '21
Jim Carruth is Glasgow’s Poet Laureate, but don’t let images of that city dominate your sense of his work. He’s also the poet of...
