Best Scottish Poems 2022 Archives

livestream, hope street - by Julie Laing

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outside she flexes in her silver sequin sheath / and everyone watches her birl her arse to the / damp-beat-inside-behind the window’s neon

Late or Early - by Mary Wight

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The wind is dropping, near / silence, except blood surging / through veins, a scrabble / behind the skirting.

Job Description - by Alison Cohen

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This delicate work requires: / the capacity to hold fog in a spider’s web / whilst cleaning fear from the bedroom carpet;

In Suburbia (ii): Ways of Looking at Blossom - by Helen Boden

{ Poem }

across the park a blushing smudge

Yellow Circle - by Graham Fulton

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an a knew right away / it wiz a warnin / an thi wizard wiz tellin me / ti mend ma wickt ways

Fir Tom Leonard - by Jenni Fagan

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D’ye ever hink aboot the furthest part ay the desert in Egypt? / How there’s ridges ay sand – / that huvnae seen hoof or foot or bike or tortoise or bucket or spade,

Yon Hairy Stick - by Jo Gilbert

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Bit it maks the bairn lauch, an it reels ye in fer a closer swatch.

The Auld Fowks’ Hame - by Sheena Blackhall

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Daith causes a minor stooshie / Curtains hap the corp / The body’s wheeched awa upon a trolly / The unnertakkers are baith faist an skeely

Candles - by Tom Pow

{ Poem }

Early one morning, the faithful / slip into La petite église / between grey banks of rock.

Burning Coyotes - by Em Strang

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Above the burning hot scarlet, we’re running, / sloping between night clouds, / leaving behind our bodies as offerings.

Burned World - by Pippa Little

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Given four pandrops knotted in a hanky, / told not to go down the rutted, muddy, fox- / and tyre-imprinted track erased by rain

A visit to Braemar - by Judith Taylor

{ Poem }

and you took a pride in / never being the kind of passer-through / who carves their name on anything

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