Skip to content

Scottish Poetry Library

Register/Sign in
Shopping Bag Shopping Bag
Bringing people and poems together
  • Home
  • Poetry
    • Poets
    • Poems
    • Film
    • Makar – National Poet
      • Our Waking Breath: A Poem-letter from Scotland to Ukraine
      • A Woman’s A Woman
      • The story of the Makar – National Poet of Scotland
    • Best Scottish Poems
    • Poetry Ambassadors
      Tosgairean na Bàrdachd
      • Poetry Commissions: Walter Scott 250
        Coimiseanan Bàrdachd: Walter Scott 250
      • Poetry Ambassadors 2021
    • Podcasts
  • Library
    • Become a borrower
    • Catalogue
    • Collections
    • Ask a librarian
    • Copyright enquiries
  • Learning
    • SQA set texts
    • Learning resources
    • Designing sensory poetry activities
    • Children’s poems in Scots
    • National Poetry Day archive
    • New to poetry?
    • Advice for poets
  • Events
    • What’s On
    • Meeting rooms and venue hire
    • Exhibitions
  • Shop
    • Poetry Highlights
    • Entropie Books
    • Stichill Marigold Press
    • Poems for Doctors, Nurses & Teachers
    • Scottish Poetry
    • Poetry Pamphlet Cards
    • Help
  • About us
    • Our story
    • Our people
    • Company Papers & Policies
    • Our projects
    • Our building
    • FAQs
    • Find us
  • Support us
    • Become a Friend
    • Donate
  • Blog
Shopping BagShopping Bag
Ask a librarian
  • Home
  • >
  • Poetry
  • >
  • existence
Donate Donate icon Ask a Librarian Ask a Librarian icon

existence

The Grass Boat - by Imogen Forster

{ Poem }

We’ve been playing unobserved
in the old brickyard, a place abandoned
to its toy-town railway, rusty iron tubs.

Clearing The Loft - by Norman Kreitman

{ Poem }

Dismay is waiting behind the door,where across the floor, footprints like hieroglyphschronicle the history of past defeats.Dead clothes, the skin of our former selves,still tumble from broken cases, cratessplit their sides with the books, a three-legged chair,bewildered, leans in the corner where a viper’s nestof jerseys entwines a broken lamp –all the high spume and […]

Life - by Julie Johnstone

{ Poem }

Handbound volume

Remote glen-dwellers - by Angus Martin

{ Poem }

Of this monstrously tormented world, we know too much that puts our minds wrong and besides we cannot change it; better perhaps the ignorance of remote glen-dwellers in historyfor whom the news was locala trickling of small events all comprehensible and surelike the sun going down predictably behind a hill that was always there asleep […]

For as Long as - by Alan Young

{ Poem }

For as long
/ As the sun appears…

A Birthday - by Edwin Muir

{ Poem }

I never felt so much
/ Since I have felt at all
/ The tingling smell and touch
/ Of dogrose and sweet briar,
/ Nettles against the…

Full Stretch - by Tom Pow

{ Poem }

and this is where you are watching me before the fire and I am
/ lying with the death-stillness on me…

‘We used to think the universe was made…’ - by J.O. Morgan

{ Poem }

We used to think the universe was made
/ of tiny invisible pin-points of energy, jostling
/ and tumbling and buzzing together, and so,
/ by…

Physics for the unwary student - by Pippa Goldschmidt

{ Poem }

Imagine that you are trying to balance on the surface of an expanding balloon.

This is it (AJ) - by Alan Jackson

{ Poem }

This ground this dream these myths
/ This time this place this river
/ We broken people, this ugliness, this empty,
/ Not…

Seivin Verses for GMB - by William Hershaw

{ Poem }

They are fermin the fower winds:
/ Five grey- stemmed daffodils
/ on the hill abuin Eynhallow
/ that whirlmagig air intil pouer.
/
/ Aa Simmerdim on Flotta…

Borders - by Stuart A. Paterson

{ Poem }

That sound outside, near Sandyhills bridge,
/ along Barnhourie Burn, a high wild wailing
/ winding down to a long low growl of echo,
/ has…

1 2 3 Next
  • 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 2022.
The Scottish Poetry Library is a registered charity (No. SCO23311).
City of Edinburgh logo Green Arts Initiative logo Creative Scotland logo
Scottish Poetry Library