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  • Best Scottish Poems 2005
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Best Scottish Poems 2005

Dream Calendar - by Raymond Friel

{ Poem }

/ Red neon burns
/ on brickwork: Tyres & Exhausts.
/
/ As if we didn’t know.
/
/ The hunt’s livener
/ outside the Tontine.
/
/ A trail of port in the…

A Calendar of Hares - by Anna Crowe

{ Poem }

/ At the raw end of winter
/ the mountain is half snow, half
/ dun grass. Only when snow
/ moves does it become a hare.
/
/ If…

What is difference? - by Fiona Wilson

{ Poem }

It
/ is a jet-
/ black fan from Galicia and it
/ opens with a hard lacq-
/ uered snap. Look. One side is painted,
/
/ a
/ sudden start
/ of…

The Words - by Gael Turnbull

{ Poem }

… no by breid alane but by ilka wurd …
/
/ There’s this need to make utterance …

Miniature Delights - by Anne Ryland

{ Poem }

You in your new cranberry sweater, glasses askew
/ reading about James Bond then Elgar.
/
/ Being nobody, at home with all the lamps…

Lament - by Walter Perrie

{ Poem }

So you are going away
/ damn you
/ and me to stay
/ to face
/ November and December
/ all alone
/ north wind blowing
/ rough sea flowing through
/ green days of…

Violets - by Donny O’Rourke

{ Poem }

Lingering like the last of the light
/ in the Schlossgarten at Erlangen
/ suddenly seeing a bed of them by the fountain
/ I remembered…

For the Opening of the Scottish Parliament, 9 October 2004 - by Edwin Morgan

{ Poem }

Open the doors! Light of the day, shine in; light of the mind, shine out!
/ We have a building which is…

For January - by Peter Manson

{ Poem }

Blast drafts rapid ease in stone
/ a man harps lame in the tongue
/ repeating place-holder words
/ forgotten as uttered
/ by an ear sewn back…

Entrance - by James McGonigal

{ Poem }

¾ of a century gone
/ and the place and the men
/ under ground how can
/ I say what in truth
/ that work was? Picture
/
/ the…

touching your face - by Tom Leonard

{ Poem }

with that
/ silence
/
/ it creates
/ allowing
/
/ and
/ trusting
/
/ the allowed;
/ all that’s
/
/ been said
/ and is saying
/
/ this time
/ breath
/
/ held
/ between us
/
/ each time
/ familiar
/
/ each time
/ new…

Baines His Dissection - by David Kinloch

{ Poem }

i.m. Sir John Finch (1626-1682) and Sir Thomas Baines (1622-1680)
/
/ For Donny O’Rourke
/
/
/ 1 A Procession
/
/ For hours now: a little scraping…

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