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  • Best Scottish Poems 2008
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Best Scottish Poems 2008

Surprise, Surprise - by Alexander Hutchison

{ Poem }

MacSween the corner butcher with confidence displays
/ for denizens of the city – ‘of toons the a per se’
/ a vegetarian haggis,…

Setting Out - by Robin Fulton Macpherson

{ Poem }

The gravestones still weigh the same.
/ No-one has altered the dates.
/
/ No-one asks why I’ve come back
/ again. To see not graves but
/
/ that…

Precious - by Tamara Fulcher

{ Poem }

Dressing yourself, you have found leopard-print tights
/ can be made to match a tiger-print top and ruby slippers,
/ absolutely flat; that you…

Two letters to Horace - by Sally Evans

{ Poem }

1.
/
/ Dear Quintus Horatius Flaccus,
/ may I have a poem?
/ We run this little magazine.
/ It would be a good advertisement
/ for your books.
/ Our…

The Look - by Carol Ann Duffy

{ Poem }

The heron’s the look of the river.
/ The moon’s the look of the night.
/ The sky’s the look of forever.
/ Snow is the…

Nightshift at the Plug Mill - by John Burnside

{ Poem }

Four hours into the dark I’d fall asleep
/ for seconds, then wake to the scream
/ of gears, as the belt started up
/ and…

I am the moon, and you are the man on me - by Claire Askew

{ Poem }

Tonight, I am white and full.
/ My surface is all curves
/ and craters, but you don’t mind.
/ You have travelled alone through the…

Hedgehog, Hamnavoe - by Jen Hadfield

{ Poem }

Flinching in my hands
this soiled and studded but good heart,
which stippling my cupped palms, breathes

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