Skip to content

Scottish Poetry Library

Register/Sign in
Shopping Bag Shopping Bag
Bringing people and poems together
  • Home
  • COVID-19
    • Re-Opening FAQ
  • Poetry
    • Poems
    • Poets
    • Our National Poet
    • Podcasts
    • Best Scottish Poems
    • Poetry and Mindfulness
    • Champions 2020
    • Posters
    • Publishers
  • Library
    • Become a borrower
    • Catalogue
    • Collections
    • Ask a librarian
    • Copyright enquiries
  • Learning
    • National Poetry Day 2019
    • National Poetry Day archive
    • SQA set texts
    • Learning resources
    • New to poetry?
    • Advice for poets
  • Events
    • Calendar
    • Exhibitions
    • Venue hire
    • List an event
  • Shop
    • National Poetry Day 2020
    • New Titles
    • Poetry Pamphlet Cards
    • Pocket Poets
    • Scottish Poetry
    • Help
  • About us
    • Our story
    • Our people
    • Our projects
    • Jobs
    • Our building
    • FAQs
    • Find us
  • Support us
    • Become a Friend
    • Donate
    • Easy Fundraising
  • Blog
Shopping BagShopping Bag
Ask a librarian
  • Home
  • >
  • Poetry
  • >
  • Claire Askew
  • >
  • Catalogue of my grandmother’s sayings
Donate Donate icon Ask a Librarian Ask a Librarian icon

Catalogue of my grandmother’s sayings

Claire Askew

A bloody good hiding
Another egg chipped
Bent as a nine-bob note
Blood and sand
Blood and stomach pills
Broad as it’s long
Brought up in the bottle and seen nowt but the cork
Could ride bare-arsed to London on them scissors
Could’ve written slut in the dust in that house
Dogs in the same street bark alike
Good clip under the lug’s what he needs
Like a blue-arsed fly
Ninepence to the shilling
Not as green as he’s cabbage-looking
Queer as Dick’s hatband
Six of one and half a dozen of the other
Twined as a bag of weasels
Well go to the foot of our stairs
Well our Amy Judith Sarah Christine Claire
What a right bag of washing
You want nowt with that I tell you
You want nowt with that


Claire Askew

From This Changes Things (Hexham: Bloodaxe Books, 2016), reproduced by permission of the author.

Tags:

alphabet Best Scottish Poems 2016 grandparents language list poems sayings wisdom

About this poem

This poem was included in Best Scottish Poems 2016. Best Scottish Poems is an online publication, consisting of 20 poems chosen by a different editor each year, with comments by the editor and poets. It provides a personal overview of a year of Scottish poetry. The editor in 2016 was Catherine Lockerbie.

Editor’s comment:

What energy and skill explode from Claire Askew’s work!  She is surely going to be major poetic voice very soon indeed, if not already.  This poem – one of many I could have chosen from her first book-length collection –  may at first look easy, an alphabetical  litany of sayings, but has such an ear and rhythm. The oddity and tradition of these familial sayings have the power of a bizarre nursery rhyme.  Her grandmother – who also features elsewhere in the book – leaps off the page as a force of nature and language.

Author’s note:

I think of this as a co-authored poem: my grandmother deserves at least as much credit for it as I do.  I’m not sure how she’d feel to know that her weird and wonderful sayings (and trust me, this is not an exhaustive list) have been catalogued in print, but I know she’d have had some choice words to say about it!  She died nearly a decade ago, but I thank her for continuing to supply me with inspiration, strength, and material for poems!  I’m really pleased to have this piece chosen for Best Scottish Poems, and pleased too that so many readers have been kind enough to tell me this is their favourite poem from This changes things.  My grandmother is an unlikely heroine, and a source of wisdom I have returned to throughout my life.  I’m happy to be able to share some of that wisdom with others.

Share this
Facebook
Twitter
Email

Learn more

Best Scottish Poems 2016

edited by Catherine Lockerbie
Find out more

Claire Askewb.1986

Claire Askew is a poet and writer living in Edinburgh; her first collection, This changes things, was published by Bloodaxe in 2016.
More about Claire Askew

Online Shop

Browse our range of poetry books, cards and gifts in our online shop.
Shop now
  • Newsletter signup
  • Accessibility
  • Terms & Conditions
  • Privacy Policy
Scottish Poetry Library
5 Crichton's Close, Canongate
Edinburgh EH8 8DT
Tel: +44 (0)131 557 2876
© Scottish Poetry Library 2021.
The Scottish Poetry Library is a registered charity (No. SCO23311).
City of Edinburgh logo Green Arts Initiative logo Creative Scotland logo
By leaves we live

The Scottish Poetry Library is staffed weekdays from 10am – 2pm and is providing a limited service including postal loans and Click & Collect. For details, click COVID-19 in the menu bar above. Dismiss