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  • Best Scottish Poems 2009
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Best Scottish Poems 2009

Granite City Eclogue - by Roderick Watson

{ Poem }

Shines like frost quartz hard is worked with difficulty.
/ Perdurable. A source of…

from Aberdeen University 1945-9 - by Iain Crichton Smith

{ Poem }

I
/
/ The glitter of water and the wake…
/ Heading for University in Aberdeen.
/ It’s an autumn morning. I am seventeen.
/ Above the Isle of…

Ties - by Richard Price

{ Poem }

In wardrobes, ties hang like curing fish, patterns like smoke. (In restaurants, avoid kippers and sauce.)
/ ‘She said she wasn’t ready…

Spanish Shaving - by Tom Pow

{ Poem }

As light dims, I take my shaver outside
/ to trim my holiday beard. The grey drifts
/ down to tinder-dry grasses; the small…

Rain - by Don Paterson

{ Poem }

You can read this poem at www.donpaterson.com…

Lochinver - by Hugh McMillan

{ Poem }

Lochinver. The end of the track.
/ Black swallows black
/ and the storm howls like a dog.
/ At the quay, in orange fog,
/ a ship…

from the saga of fnc gull - by Alan MacGillivray

{ Poem }

VII
/
/ In which fnc gull makes his will and says his last goodbyes
/
/ weve been here afore big lad
/ mind a year or…

Aiberdeen Street - by Alastair Mackie

{ Poem }

I
/
/ Ye were hyne awa fae Nuremberg o the flags,
/ the death-crap o the purges; Il Duce’s
/ black-sarked legions heistin eagles…
/ Woolie’s guns and…

Hawthorn Queen - by Jane McKie

{ Poem }

It was one of those last swarms,
/ a blood-red immolation of ladybirds
/ so thick
/ the air appeared pixellated.
/
/ Traffic stopped.
/
/ My mother grasped my hand,…

Bonspiel - by Lorn Macintyre

{ Poem }

He saw the weather written on the pane
/ as he buckled on his gaiters,
/ shouldering the hammer to walk the lane
/ spooked with…

June the Second - by Tom Leonard

{ Poem }

it is dawn and my wife is coming to bed
/ and she has been watching a film about the life of…

Setting the Time Aside - by Alexander Hutchison

{ Poem }

“the sea is not salt enough”
/
/ 1
/
/ Gently, gently gets
/ things going, as you
/ well know, and here’s
/ the nub: the dust is up
/ afresh, and…

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