Association for Scottish Literature
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asls.org.uk
Association for Scottish Literature
@asls.org.uk
Educational charity promoting the reading, writing, teaching & study of Scotland's literature & languages, past & present.

https://asls.org.uk
Coming soon to a bookshop near you: a new edition of Alan Sharp’s A GREEN TREE IN GEDDE (first published in 1965, & its author likened to Joyce & Lawrence). Watch this space …
January 12, 2026 at 2:15 PM
“Henry Cunningham, Esq. of Boquhan, was a gentleman of Stirlingshire, who, like many exquisites of our own time, united a natural high spirit and daring character with an affectation of delicacy of address and manners amounting to foppery…”
#C17 #C18
5/5
—Walter Scott’s 1829 Introduction to ROB ROY
January 12, 2026 at 2:15 PM
Sharp’s ROB ROY also includes John Hurt’s fantastic turn as James Graham, Marquess of Montrose, & Tim Roth as the vicious dandy Archibald Cunningham. Although Archie is fictional (& English, despite the name), he is based on a real Scot who defeated Rob Roy in a duel: Henry Cunningham of Boquhan
4/5
January 12, 2026 at 2:15 PM
Dear Ann, wherever you are
Since you lately learnt to die,
You are this unsetting star
That shines unchanged in my eye…

Born in Kirkwall, Ann Scott-Moncrieff was a friend of the Orkney poet & translator Edwin Muir, who wrote this poem for her when she died.
#womenwriters #C20th
7/7
January 11, 2026 at 4:39 PM
‘The air of an early muse’: The Visionary Fictions of Ann Scott-Moncrieff
Linden Bicket, SCOTTISH LITERARY REVIEW 16/2, 2024

Available online via @projectmuse.bsky.social (institutional subscription required)
#womenwriters #C20th
6/7
muse.jhu.edu/pub/243/arti...
January 11, 2026 at 4:39 PM
AUNTIE ROBBO was, however, published in the USA. Even though (or because) it came with the warning that here was a book “without a shadow or suspicion of a moral”, it sold well & was eventually printed in the UK, first by Constable (1959) & then by Puffin (1962)
#kidlit
3/7
January 11, 2026 at 4:39 PM
“I mean they were mostly fighting in places that didn’t belong to them, weren’t they?”

The essential elements of English history are neatly summarised in AUNTIE ROBBO, Ann Scott-Moncrieff’s children’s novel that was rejected as being “too Scottish” by London publishers in 1941…
#kidlit
2/7
January 11, 2026 at 4:39 PM
I sit in my moulded black chair
near to Matisse’s ‘Draped Nude’ (1936).

Sometimes someane touches a canvas
and I staun up, which is usually enough…

—Duncan Glen,“Twa Warlds”
in The Edinburgh Book of 20th-Century Scottish Poetry (2005)
#poem #poetry
2/3
edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-the-edi...
January 11, 2026 at 3:03 PM
The laverock rises owe blin waas
At ane wi the great North wun
At the heid o hecht…

—“The Heid o Hecht” by Duncan Glen, born #OTD, 11 Jan, 1933. Starting out as an apprentice printer he was a poet, designer, editor, publisher, & academic
#poem #poetry
1/3
asls.org.uk/publications...
January 11, 2026 at 3:03 PM
Lourd on my hert as winter lies
The state that Scotland’s in the day.
Spring to the North has aye come slow
But noo dour winter’s like to stay
For guid,
And no’ for guid!

—Hugh MacDiarmid, “Lourd on My Hert”
SELECTED POETRY (New Directions, 1993)
#BookWormSat #poem
www.ndbooks.com/book/selecte...
January 10, 2026 at 4:07 PM
Reading Scotland’s Witches
20 Jan, 6–7:30 German time (5–6:30 GMT)
Free online

Dr Cordula Lemke looks at witchcraft in Scottish literature, & how Geillis Duncan – one of the first Scottish witches to die – is remembered in literature & popular culture today
www.scotland.uni-mainz.de/reading-scot...
January 10, 2026 at 3:27 PM
Let Wilkes and Churchill rage no more,
Tho’ scarce provision, learning's good:
What can these hungries next explore,
Even Samuel Johnson loves our food.

—Robert Fergusson (1750–1774), “To Dr Samuel Johnson: Food for a New Edition of his Dictionary”
#poem #poetry #C18th #food #SamuelJohnson
January 10, 2026 at 3:19 PM
White stones shaped like hearts:
you can tell they were chosen.

In the winter garden
they gleam on bare ground…

—Sheenagh Pugh, “Gardening”
published in A Little Touch of Cliff in the Evening: New Writing Scotland 30 (ASL, 2012)
#poem #poetry
January 9, 2026 at 2:03 PM
January 9, 2026 at 2:12 AM
Snaw is bluffertin’ the toun,
Gurly wunds are roustin’ roun’,
Peety fowk in broken shoon
This winter nicht…

—Helen Burness Cruickshank (1886–1975), “Song of Pity for Refugees”
published in Collected Poems (Reprographia, 1971)
#Scots #poem #poetry
January 8, 2026 at 5:04 PM
This was the year before the year
that collapsed on us, a roof brought down by snow.
The year of riding through abandoned stations
on the riverside line that never crossed the river…

—Pippa Little, “This Was the Year”
from OVERWINTERING, @carcanet.bsky.social 2012
www.carcanet.co.uk/978190618806...
January 8, 2026 at 2:30 PM
“As the home of Aberdeen Angus, Ayrshire bacon, & haggis, Scotland has an especially meaty reputation”

—From BUDDHA DA, DUCK FEET, THE PANOPTICON, TRAINSPOTTING, & more: Gina Lyle looks at vegetarianism in contemporary Scottish fiction
#BookologyThursday
💙📚
www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2024/11/vege...
January 8, 2026 at 2:10 PM
it wis January
and a gey dreich day
the first day Ah went to the school…

—Liz Lochhead, “Kidspoem/Bairnsang”
published in A CHOOSING: The Selected Poems of Liz Lochhead (Polygon, 2017)
#poem #poetry #scots #language #MinorityLanguages
birlinn.co.uk/product/a-ch...
January 7, 2026 at 12:43 PM
“Artist put your brush away
Tiny Partick are here to stay”

From the @natlibscot.bsky.social Moving Image archive – a clip from a 1975 documentary about John Byrne, where he talks about painting his gable-end mural in Partick & the public reaction to it
2/8
movingimage.nls.uk/film/T2287/7...
January 6, 2026 at 1:19 PM
Playwright & artist John Byrne (1940–2023) was born #OTD, 6 Jan. An extraordinary talent, best known for the SLAB BOYS trilogy & TUTTI FRUTTI & YOUR CHEATIN’ HEART, he also designed album covers for Gerry Rafferty & the set for THE CHEVIOT, THE STAG & THE BLACK BLACK OIL

A 🎂🧵
#art #theatre
1/8
January 6, 2026 at 1:19 PM
Up in the morning’s no for me,
Up in the morning early;
When a’ the hills are cover’d wi’ snaw,
I’m sure it’s winter fairly…

—“Up in the Morning Early”, by Robert Burns – poet of the people 🫡
#poem #poetry #C18th
www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/morning...
January 6, 2026 at 11:27 AM
“Respectability is doubled with degradation; abandon with restraint; honesty with duplicity”

@gregbuzwell.bsky.social explores how JEKYLL & HYDE engaged with #C19 debates about evolution, degeneration, consciousness, homosexuality & criminal psychology
5/8
www.britishlibrary.cn/en/articles/...
January 5, 2026 at 12:57 PM
“The manuscript also contains Stevenson’s edits, in some places quite extensive… Stevenson complicates the distinction between the two poles that Jekyll & Hyde are supposed to represent”

—RLS’s handwritten manuscript is online, via New York’s Morgan Library
2/8
www.themorgan.org/collection/r...
January 5, 2026 at 12:57 PM
Off Lindisfarne
the waves shiver like monks
at their ablutions.

Under high horizontals
of ice-cloud, the sky
scrubbed clean as a dairy…

—Alison Fell, “January, 5”
published in LIGHTYEAR (Smokestack Books, 2005)
#poem #poetry
www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/january...
January 5, 2026 at 11:08 AM
Winter winds are biting,
Etching the woods in shadows.

The paw prints of hunting dogs
Are black stars in the snow…

—Sheena Blackhall, “A Brueghel Winter”
🖼️ Pieter Bruegel the Elder, “Hunters in the Snow”, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
#poem #art #painting
www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-brueg...
January 4, 2026 at 7:04 PM