Skip to content

Scottish Poetry Library

Register/Sign in
Shopping Bag Shopping Bag
Bringing people and poems together
  • Home
  • COVID-19
    • Re-Opening FAQ
  • Poetry
    • Poems
    • Poets
    • Poetry Ambassadors 2020
    • Best Scottish Poems
    • Podcasts
    • Poetry and Mindfulness
    • Our National Poet
    • Posters
    • Publishers
  • Library
    • Become a borrower
    • Catalogue
    • Collections
    • Ask a librarian
    • Copyright enquiries
  • Learning
    • National Poetry Day 2019
    • National Poetry Day archive
    • SQA set texts
    • Learning resources
    • New to poetry?
    • Advice for poets
  • Events
    • What’s On
    • Venue hire
  • Shop
    • Scottish Poetry
    • Poetry Pamphlet Cards
    • Pocket Poets
    • Scotland’s Makar
    • Help
  • About us
    • Our story
    • Our people
    • Our projects
    • Jobs
    • Our building
    • FAQs
    • Find us
  • Support us
    • Become a Friend
    • Donate
    • Easy Fundraising
  • Blog
Shopping BagShopping Bag
Ask a librarian
  • Home
  • >
  • Poetry
  • >
  • traces
Donate Donate icon Ask a Librarian Ask a Librarian icon

traces

from Finding My Grandparents In the Peloponnese - by Anna Crowe

{ Poem }

x
/
/ On one face, the cistern built by the Turks,
/ now holding only dust and darkness
/ below its stone vault, where Monemvasía’s
/
/ rocky…

Travelling South, Scotland, August 2012 - by John Burnside

{ Poem }

‘Necessity is not the mother of invention; play is.’
/ Ian D. Suttie
/
/ It gets late early out here
/ in the lacklustre places,
/ wind in…

‘Thug mise dhut biothbhuantachd’ - by Sorley MacLean / Somhairle MacGillEain

{ Poem }

Thug mise dhut biothbhuantachd
/ is dè thug thu dhòmhsa?
/ Cha tug ach saighdean
/ geura do bhòidhchid.
/ Thug thu cruaidh shitheadh
/ is treaghaid na dòrainn,
/ domblas an…

Slate - by Edwin Morgan

{ Poem }

There is no beginning. We saw Lewis
/ laid down, when there was not much but thunder
/ and volcanic fires; watched long seas…

Music, When Soft Voices Die - by Percy Bysshe Shelley

{ Poem }

Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
/ Are heap’d for the belovèd’s bed;
/ And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
/ Love itself…

Epitaph - by William Montgomerie

{ Poem }

For 2nd Officer James S. Montgomerie of the S.S. Carsbreck,
/ torpedoed off Gibraltar, 24th October 1941
/
/ My brother is skull and…

Nameless - by William Montgomerie

{ Poem }

Its light is in the grass,
/ Its yearning in the white gull’s cry
/ And…

Echo & Elixir 5 - by Khaled Mattawa

{ Poem }

Maybe love is a walk to astonishment.
/ Or a ship stranded on the shore of oblivion.
/ The infinity in the atom,
/ the treasures…

Springs - by Kathleen Jamie

{ Poem }

Full March moon and gale-force easters, the pair of them
/ sucking and shoving the river
/ back into its closet in the hills…

Abernethy - by Douglas Dunn

{ Poem }

Air-psalters and pages of stone
/ Inscribed and Caledonian
/ Under these leaf-libraries where
/ Melodious lost literature
/ Remembers itself! A white
/ Dove climbs on its Columban flight
/ In…

  • 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 2021.
The Scottish Poetry Library is a registered charity (No. SCO23311).
City of Edinburgh logo Green Arts Initiative logo Creative Scotland logo
By leaves we live

The Scottish Poetry Library is staffed weekdays from 10am – 2pm and is providing a limited service including postal loans and Click & Collect. For details, click COVID-19 in the menu bar above. Dismiss