is someone who won't be appearing on here anytime soon courtesy of recent comments on copyright. Slightly more rational follow up than i'm capable of can be found here
it seems profoundly shortsighted to me to start this nonsense about poetry when most people don't buy it, bookshops don't stock it and it's reasonably troublesome to get it published. I can't imagine how i'd have even heard of half the modern poets i have if it hadn't been for their work being posted on the internet on blogs and sites just like this one. i hope in some small way to have got more people to read nordbrandt for instance and i'm reasonably confident i have.
what next i wonder, cope certainly hints at it, performance rights? one of the joys of poetry is being able to read it out loud (though not in britain). with your mates. and one of the reasons back when i was organising readings, that i used readers rather than poets is that quite some amount of the time they're rubbish at it
t, more intermittently these days, keeps at me to do more, publish more but my reasons for not doing so are always brilliantly shown at any reading, event where clusters of these cope types congeal together. which, incidentally, is why i'm still in the hospital rather than teaching. why would i encourage children to involve themselves with lot? wankers
here's a wonderful quote from the comments from the above which i'm posting without asking and says all too much for me about the state of british arts. don't publish, don't show, don't mix and you won't have to associate yourself with these idiots. or leave.
British poetry is amateurish, always gotta be a pun for fun, contented to be third rate rhymers pumped up by the drips who write for this rag and actively exclude, ignore and fear the genuine souls pointing out the uncomfortable truth, that most of those feted are fakers and have as much presence as a vacuum. The British obsession with "light verse" is laughable and her work will be forgotten as soon as the armies of publicist promoting them stop and puff up the next wet drip to come out of the sausage factories. The rebels who get square before they are thirty. Utter tripe, "astonished pavements" and all the half arsed cack that comes out their cake holes should be prosecuted under the trade descriptions act..Wendy Cope, do us a favour and shut yer whining gob..slop slob silent the force it came and divorced me from sense and serenity shrouded in the evensong at St Hildas. Top table neo-liberal-knobs. Come the revolution at Faber and Faber, axe 'em from the catalogue and sing of the joys of being a middle aged moaner, string up their shoddy verses, the worst poets since the Edwardian lot; a straight faced pout, a snoot cocked steely glare at the oinks who dare to suggest they are not magi, but woefully inadequate shysters, the absence of a smile, the O so superior tint, no egalitarian vibe in a monarchist mindset..
lovely.
Tuesday, 18 December 2007
Sunday, 16 December 2007
william soutar
since the last post i've been to the library where, conveniently they have all of soutar's work so here's a pair from A Handful of Earth
A Desire During Illness
Fevered, in mind and body, I would come
To water falling everlastingly;
And in its brightness I would stand, fixedly
With naked arms up flung, feeling the cool flood
For ever around me like a hyaline flood.
And thus, a marble statue, I would stand
Until the stream's perpetual absolution
Had changed me to the brightness of itself,
With sunlight over me and through me:
A man of glass within his glassy tower.
And after many days I would become
Apart of that pure flood; I would become
Its form which is the falling of the waters:
And men, grown weary of the changeful world,
Walking apart and seeking a green shade,
Would know this murmerous waterfall, and know
Its form which is the falling of the waters,
And is, and is not, and is there forever.
The Turn of The Year
This is the day of change
And this the hour;
The wind is holding its breath:
Each flower looks downward to the earth
As in a stare:
The listening air stands still:
Only the stream, like a bright, chattering child,
Is unaware of the foreboding peace.
This is the day, the hour,
And now the very moment fills the sky;
While the undreaming earth,
Within a trice which measures a surcease,
Is paused upon a sigh.
Life lifts a hand to turn his hour-glass round:
A leaf,
A withered world is falling with no sound.
A Desire During Illness
Fevered, in mind and body, I would come
To water falling everlastingly;
And in its brightness I would stand, fixedly
With naked arms up flung, feeling the cool flood
For ever around me like a hyaline flood.
And thus, a marble statue, I would stand
Until the stream's perpetual absolution
Had changed me to the brightness of itself,
With sunlight over me and through me:
A man of glass within his glassy tower.
And after many days I would become
Apart of that pure flood; I would become
Its form which is the falling of the waters:
And men, grown weary of the changeful world,
Walking apart and seeking a green shade,
Would know this murmerous waterfall, and know
Its form which is the falling of the waters,
And is, and is not, and is there forever.
The Turn of The Year
This is the day of change
And this the hour;
The wind is holding its breath:
Each flower looks downward to the earth
As in a stare:
The listening air stands still:
Only the stream, like a bright, chattering child,
Is unaware of the foreboding peace.
This is the day, the hour,
And now the very moment fills the sky;
While the undreaming earth,
Within a trice which measures a surcease,
Is paused upon a sigh.
Life lifts a hand to turn his hour-glass round:
A leaf,
A withered world is falling with no sound.
the black bicycle
so much depends
on that front wheel
and not braking
when the back comes up
i lie in the mud
glazed with rain
the bike lands on me
unbending
on that front wheel
and not braking
when the back comes up
i lie in the mud
glazed with rain
the bike lands on me
unbending
Friday, 14 December 2007
arnaut daniel
so i'm browsing andrew's blog again and come across this belter of a quote re pound :
"In the United States, Pound is free to publish anything an editor will accept—including even his political balderash, which is sometimes (but not often) entertaining and stimulating. The official medical verdict, declaring him unaccountable on psychological grounds for his collaboration with the late Italian government, is actually beside the point. This new poem is excellent. I should still publish it if the author were not in a hospital but in a cell awaiting execution."
now i'm not a fan of pound but you'd have to hide under a rock, or know no-one who reads poetry, to be unaware of the enthusiasm he arouses in some. don't see it myself but each to their own. anyway, in the link above there's another link to a slideshow of the cantos, so i have a look and manage a couple of pages before the inevitable haze descends, but enough to get to the bit about arnaut, who i presume is arnaut daniel (but hey, who can tell?). so it got me back to the following, which i hadn't read in a while
En cest sonnet coind’ a leri
On this gay and slender tune
I put and polish words and plane
and when I’ve passed the file they’ll be
precise and firm.
For Love himself pares down and gilds my song
which moves from her whose glances are
the firm light rails that guide all excellence.
I tell you frankly, she I adore and serve
‘s the loveliest in the world.
Because I’m hers from head to toe
I cleanse myself, and though wind blow in winter
the love flowing in my heart keeps ice
out of the stream the coldest weather.
I burn oil lamps, wax tapers, no pretense I
hear a thousand masses put for my intention,
that God grant me by his intervention
good success with her against
whom all resistance is useless.
And when I think of her auburn hair, her
Merry body, svelte and lissom,
I love her better than if they gave me Lusena.
I love her with fire
seek her with such
excess of desire
I feel I float.
Loving without stint one loses weight.
Her heart submerges mine in a great flood that nothing
will evaporate.
She takes such usury of love she’ll end
by owning tavern and bartender.
I do want the Roman Emp.
nor to be elected pope
if I can’t
turn toward her
where my heart
is kindled to a blaze nothing can quell.
The meat
browns and catches fire, flames, cracks and splits,
and if she doesn’t heal me with a kiss
before New Year’s she destroys me, she
damns me to hell. And I
cannot turn from loving her too well.
The pain I put up with’s hard, this
solitude wraps me round and is my theme.
On this cover
I embroider
words for rhymes.
My fate is worse than his who plows a field, for
though my field’s a little bit of earth, I love,
I love it better than Mondis loved Audierna.
I am Arnaut
who gathers the wind
who hunts with an ox
to chase a hare
forever, and swims against the current.
Arnaut Daniel (1180 – 1210)
(trans. Paul Blackburn)
"In the United States, Pound is free to publish anything an editor will accept—including even his political balderash, which is sometimes (but not often) entertaining and stimulating. The official medical verdict, declaring him unaccountable on psychological grounds for his collaboration with the late Italian government, is actually beside the point. This new poem is excellent. I should still publish it if the author were not in a hospital but in a cell awaiting execution."
now i'm not a fan of pound but you'd have to hide under a rock, or know no-one who reads poetry, to be unaware of the enthusiasm he arouses in some. don't see it myself but each to their own. anyway, in the link above there's another link to a slideshow of the cantos, so i have a look and manage a couple of pages before the inevitable haze descends, but enough to get to the bit about arnaut, who i presume is arnaut daniel (but hey, who can tell?). so it got me back to the following, which i hadn't read in a while
En cest sonnet coind’ a leri
On this gay and slender tune
I put and polish words and plane
and when I’ve passed the file they’ll be
precise and firm.
For Love himself pares down and gilds my song
which moves from her whose glances are
the firm light rails that guide all excellence.
I tell you frankly, she I adore and serve
‘s the loveliest in the world.
Because I’m hers from head to toe
I cleanse myself, and though wind blow in winter
the love flowing in my heart keeps ice
out of the stream the coldest weather.
I burn oil lamps, wax tapers, no pretense I
hear a thousand masses put for my intention,
that God grant me by his intervention
good success with her against
whom all resistance is useless.
And when I think of her auburn hair, her
Merry body, svelte and lissom,
I love her better than if they gave me Lusena.
I love her with fire
seek her with such
excess of desire
I feel I float.
Loving without stint one loses weight.
Her heart submerges mine in a great flood that nothing
will evaporate.
She takes such usury of love she’ll end
by owning tavern and bartender.
I do want the Roman Emp.
nor to be elected pope
if I can’t
turn toward her
where my heart
is kindled to a blaze nothing can quell.
The meat
browns and catches fire, flames, cracks and splits,
and if she doesn’t heal me with a kiss
before New Year’s she destroys me, she
damns me to hell. And I
cannot turn from loving her too well.
The pain I put up with’s hard, this
solitude wraps me round and is my theme.
On this cover
I embroider
words for rhymes.
My fate is worse than his who plows a field, for
though my field’s a little bit of earth, I love,
I love it better than Mondis loved Audierna.
I am Arnaut
who gathers the wind
who hunts with an ox
to chase a hare
forever, and swims against the current.
Arnaut Daniel (1180 – 1210)
(trans. Paul Blackburn)
william soutar
Autobiography
Out of the darkness of the womb
Into a bed, into a room:
Out of a garden into a town,
And to a country, up and down
The earth; the touch of women and men
And back into a garden again:
Into a garden; into a room;
Into a bed and into a tomb;
And the darkness of the world's womb.
william soutar is never going to be that well known outside of scotland and even in scotland i don't he's that well known outside of people who read this sort of thing. or perth. which is a shame, or maybe it's just me, given that places he talks about are all very familiar. though i doubt it ever entered soutar's head that people might be mountain boarding down craigie hill one day.
worth a look though. in some ways, like the english poets of the thirties, soutar and his like are representative of a way of life. a way of looking, that's all but vanished now
Out of the darkness of the womb
Into a bed, into a room:
Out of a garden into a town,
And to a country, up and down
The earth; the touch of women and men
And back into a garden again:
Into a garden; into a room;
Into a bed and into a tomb;
And the darkness of the world's womb.
william soutar is never going to be that well known outside of scotland and even in scotland i don't he's that well known outside of people who read this sort of thing. or perth. which is a shame, or maybe it's just me, given that places he talks about are all very familiar. though i doubt it ever entered soutar's head that people might be mountain boarding down craigie hill one day.
worth a look though. in some ways, like the english poets of the thirties, soutar and his like are representative of a way of life. a way of looking, that's all but vanished now
Wednesday, 12 December 2007
but today i'm loving sustrans more....
after a voting process i've done my best to avoid sustrans have come up with the goods by getting 50 very large for their connect2 project. i'd have been a bit more than surprised if it had gone any other way. i'm sure the midlands could've done with some green space and the eden project, well i don't really care but what sustrans are about is getting people out of their cars, onto their bikes and making it easier to commute. the benefits should be beyond any need of explanation
i imagine that there may be some naysayers north of the border as we've only four projects happening but people who would say such things either don't have bikes or have forgotten how well provided we are in cycling terms compared with our southern cousins
i'm not about to go down the two wheels good, four wheels bad route, maybe more four wheels okay but two wheels a whole lot better. the governments on both sides of the border (and that welsh lot) would do well to spend less time harping on about transport on the roads and making it a whole lot easier for people not to have to rely on vehicles as their primary mode of transport.
i imagine that there may be some naysayers north of the border as we've only four projects happening but people who would say such things either don't have bikes or have forgotten how well provided we are in cycling terms compared with our southern cousins
i'm not about to go down the two wheels good, four wheels bad route, maybe more four wheels okay but two wheels a whole lot better. the governments on both sides of the border (and that welsh lot) would do well to spend less time harping on about transport on the roads and making it a whole lot easier for people not to have to rely on vehicles as their primary mode of transport.
you have to love the nasa
i've loved all things space since i was small but in recent years its aurorae and the magnetosphere that's captured my attention, an interest that has dwindled since moving south as the light pollution is so bad you're lucky to see the stars
however i've kept on the nasa mailing list and today they come up with the goods with this last info on the themis mission. now it may be that one day i get my grand thesis on language, identity and the anthropology of the hospital finished (though i doubt it) but even if i do i doubt i'll have the same sense of wow-ness i get when i'm reading the likes of this. magnetic ropes? substorms? how cool is that?
however i've kept on the nasa mailing list and today they come up with the goods with this last info on the themis mission. now it may be that one day i get my grand thesis on language, identity and the anthropology of the hospital finished (though i doubt it) but even if i do i doubt i'll have the same sense of wow-ness i get when i'm reading the likes of this. magnetic ropes? substorms? how cool is that?
Monday, 10 December 2007
rumi
Unfold your own myth
Who gets up early to discover the moment light begins?
Who finds us here circling, bewildered, like atoms?
Who comes up to a spring thirsty
and sees the moon reflected in it?
Who, lie Jacob, blind with grief and age,
smells the shirt of his lost son
and can see again?
Who lets a bucket down and brings up
a flowing prophet? Or like Moses goes for fire
and finds what burns inside the sunrise?
Jesus sips into a house to escape enemies
and opens a door to the other world.
Solomon cuts open a fish, and there's a gold ring.
Omar storms in to kill the prophet
and leaves with blessings.
Chase a deer and end up everywhere!
An oyster opens his mouth to swallow one drop.
Now there's a pearl.
A vagrant wanders empty ruins.
Suddenly he's wealthy.
But don't be satisfied with stories, how things
have gone with others. Unfold
your own myth, without complicated explanations,
so everyone will understand the passage,
We have opened you.
Start walking towards Shams. Your legs will get heavy
and tired. Then comes a moment
of feeling the wings you've grown,
lifting.
trans Coleman Barks with John Moyne
Who gets up early to discover the moment light begins?
Who finds us here circling, bewildered, like atoms?
Who comes up to a spring thirsty
and sees the moon reflected in it?
Who, lie Jacob, blind with grief and age,
smells the shirt of his lost son
and can see again?
Who lets a bucket down and brings up
a flowing prophet? Or like Moses goes for fire
and finds what burns inside the sunrise?
Jesus sips into a house to escape enemies
and opens a door to the other world.
Solomon cuts open a fish, and there's a gold ring.
Omar storms in to kill the prophet
and leaves with blessings.
Chase a deer and end up everywhere!
An oyster opens his mouth to swallow one drop.
Now there's a pearl.
A vagrant wanders empty ruins.
Suddenly he's wealthy.
But don't be satisfied with stories, how things
have gone with others. Unfold
your own myth, without complicated explanations,
so everyone will understand the passage,
We have opened you.
Start walking towards Shams. Your legs will get heavy
and tired. Then comes a moment
of feeling the wings you've grown,
lifting.
trans Coleman Barks with John Moyne
cyclocross - the evidence
I did ask my parents to look out the window to see if there was any snow so they were feeling just a tad concerned at the conditions come sunday! as it stood there was only a smattering where i was for my first endeavour at the cyclocross racing.
and what fun! having been training solely for enduros i had no rhythm for getting the head down and going as fast as i could for an hour so it was a completely alien sensation. the mud was intense but just what i need for my big race in january, though that big tyre you can see on the back just wasn't sitting right and ended up rubbing so put paid to any burst of speed i could hope to put on. kenda tyres - i am not happy!
that said while i was plugging away on my bulldozer tyres the skinny wheeled cross types were whizzing past with ease making think a cross bike would be a fine addition. all in all it was a great wee race and i'm sure to be back for next season. doubtless my shifts'll be rubbish so i won't be able to go for the championship but if i can manage a couple of the races, especially the one in mull, i think i'll be well happy. respect to scottish cyclocross - the smile well and truly slapped onto my face this week. along with all the mud....
Sunday, 2 December 2007
kathleen jamie
it's been pointed out that i missed out kathleen jamie in my list of scottish poetry for christmas. i hold my hands up and admit full responsibility. so here's this, my favourite kathleen jamie poem and one of the first i ever heard her read. sorlil (and nice poetry by the way) this is for you.....
Arraheids
See thon raws o flint arraheids
in oor gret museums o antiquities
awful grand in Embro -
Dae'ye near'n daur wunner at wur histrie?
Weel then, Bewaur!
The museums of Scotland are wrang.
They urnae arraheids
but a show o grannies' tongues,
the hard tongues o grannies
aa deid an gaun
back to thur peat and burns,
but for thur sherp
chert tongues, that lee
fur generations in the land l
ike wicked cherms, that lee
aa douce in the glessy cases in the gloom
o oor museums, an
they arenae lettin oan. But if you daur
sorn aboot an fancy
the vanished hunter, the wise deer runnin on;
wheesht...an you'll hear them,
fur they cannae keep fae muttering
ye arenae here tae wonder,
whae dae ye think ye ur?
Arraheids
See thon raws o flint arraheids
in oor gret museums o antiquities
awful grand in Embro -
Dae'ye near'n daur wunner at wur histrie?
Weel then, Bewaur!
The museums of Scotland are wrang.
They urnae arraheids
but a show o grannies' tongues,
the hard tongues o grannies
aa deid an gaun
back to thur peat and burns,
but for thur sherp
chert tongues, that lee
fur generations in the land l
ike wicked cherms, that lee
aa douce in the glessy cases in the gloom
o oor museums, an
they arenae lettin oan. But if you daur
sorn aboot an fancy
the vanished hunter, the wise deer runnin on;
wheesht...an you'll hear them,
fur they cannae keep fae muttering
ye arenae here tae wonder,
whae dae ye think ye ur?
Saturday, 1 December 2007
mina loy
The Dead
We have flowed out of ourselves
Beginning on the outside
That shrivable skin
Where you leave off
Of infinite elastic
Walking the ceiling
Our eyelashes polish stars
Curled close in the youngest corpuscle
Of a descendant
We spit up or passions in our grand-dams
Fixing the extension of your reactions
Our shadow lengthens
In your fear
You are so old
Born in our immortality
Stuck fast as Life
In one impalpable
Omniprevalent Dimension
We are turned inside out
Your cities lie digesting in our stomachs
Street lights footle in our ocular darkness
Having swallowed your irate hungers
Satisfied before bread-breaking
To your dissolution
We splinter into Wholes
Stirring the remorses of your tomorrow
Among the refuse of your unborn centuries
In our busy ashbins
Stink the melodies
Of your
So easily reducible
Adolescences
Our tissue is that which escapes you
Birth-breaths and orgasms
The shattering tremor of the static
The far-shore of an instant
The unsurpassable openness of the circle
Legerdemain of God
Only in the segregated angles of Lunatic Asylums
Do those who have strained to exceeding themselves
Break on our edgeless contours
The mouthed echoes of what
Has exuded to out companionship
Is horrible to the ear
Of the half that is left inside them.
We have flowed out of ourselves
Beginning on the outside
That shrivable skin
Where you leave off
Of infinite elastic
Walking the ceiling
Our eyelashes polish stars
Curled close in the youngest corpuscle
Of a descendant
We spit up or passions in our grand-dams
Fixing the extension of your reactions
Our shadow lengthens
In your fear
You are so old
Born in our immortality
Stuck fast as Life
In one impalpable
Omniprevalent Dimension
We are turned inside out
Your cities lie digesting in our stomachs
Street lights footle in our ocular darkness
Having swallowed your irate hungers
Satisfied before bread-breaking
To your dissolution
We splinter into Wholes
Stirring the remorses of your tomorrow
Among the refuse of your unborn centuries
In our busy ashbins
Stink the melodies
Of your
So easily reducible
Adolescences
Our tissue is that which escapes you
Birth-breaths and orgasms
The shattering tremor of the static
The far-shore of an instant
The unsurpassable openness of the circle
Legerdemain of God
Only in the segregated angles of Lunatic Asylums
Do those who have strained to exceeding themselves
Break on our edgeless contours
The mouthed echoes of what
Has exuded to out companionship
Is horrible to the ear
Of the half that is left inside them.
aonghas macneacail
A land that never
this is the land that never was
and its forest of cities with their
glass palaces where money is
woven into money that feeds the poor,
and towers, lithe as masts, from which
see - between grey mountains at ease
with the high footsteps of deer and
travellers, and the salmon-rich stream
(accessible to all) - tidy meadows
submerged in fruit, herbs and grain
this is the land where the army is
ploughing, where the ocean itself is
a ferry for every refugee without hope,
and you pick up your neighbour’s language
with fluent ease, where poets present
the daily news reports, on truth’s
wide screen, while the accountants
spread their purses out like meadows
on which grow the vessels of plenty -
with ho-ro and ho-ro, that’ll be the day
but a poet can’t deny the scene - a
world’s tears, when the news is
in his mouth like bitter filberts, and
the foolish ears of hope hear, under
the words, a choice, a road out from
stories of blazing horizons to fields where
the sun’s breath opens blooms of peace,
where a mind, blindly defiant, weaves
between green stalks, to read the perils
between an egg of new thought and flight
dùthaich nach robh riamh
translated into English by the author
just in case you fancy it here's a scots translation of the above. it's not how we speaknow but it's nearer than english
this is the land that never was
and its forest of cities with their
glass palaces where money is
woven into money that feeds the poor,
and towers, lithe as masts, from which
see - between grey mountains at ease
with the high footsteps of deer and
travellers, and the salmon-rich stream
(accessible to all) - tidy meadows
submerged in fruit, herbs and grain
this is the land where the army is
ploughing, where the ocean itself is
a ferry for every refugee without hope,
and you pick up your neighbour’s language
with fluent ease, where poets present
the daily news reports, on truth’s
wide screen, while the accountants
spread their purses out like meadows
on which grow the vessels of plenty -
with ho-ro and ho-ro, that’ll be the day
but a poet can’t deny the scene - a
world’s tears, when the news is
in his mouth like bitter filberts, and
the foolish ears of hope hear, under
the words, a choice, a road out from
stories of blazing horizons to fields where
the sun’s breath opens blooms of peace,
where a mind, blindly defiant, weaves
between green stalks, to read the perils
between an egg of new thought and flight
dùthaich nach robh riamh
translated into English by the author
just in case you fancy it here's a scots translation of the above. it's not how we speaknow but it's nearer than english
scottish poetry for christmas
given the season and as i've been talking about such things recently what might i recommend for someone who fancied some scottish poetry to settle down with over the festive season? have browsed the shelves and here's a short list from the swiss shelves, not all of which i can guarantee is till in print but hopefully it is...
The Triumph Tree:Scotland earliest poetry 550-1350. should still be out on canongate. great book, and in languages that aren't gaelic!
still if gaelic's your thing you could do a lot worse than
An Leabhar Mor The great book of gaelic, which is just lovely
while it doesn't have the artwork of the above meg bateman's collection of scottish religious poetry is a nice companion piece the the triumph tree and easily offsets the stereotypical image of scottish protestants as frigid calvinist types, even if they do seem to want to cling to it these days (did i live on the islands, er, well yes i did)
for a more up to date collection check out an tuil : anthology of 20th century gaelic poetry. again lovely and available in both the uk and the usa
all of the above are bilingual versions should you want to do that to your tongue
in english my first stop would be douglas dunn's twentieth century scottish poetry which is a fine overview
then i'd be having norman maccaig's collected poems, the hardback, which comes with a rather lovely spoken word cd. unsure if this is still available so if not and you fancy it get in touch and we can come to an arrangement
anything by meg bateman not least because everyone should be able to use the word aotromachd
anything, except her poetry for childen, by carol ann duffy. my current favourite remains he world's wife
pretty much anything by aonghas macneacail who'd i'd go as far as to say is one of our best poets in gaelic or english but, in typically scottish fashion,has books out of print!
that should about do it. and you never know, if you're profligate in your buying you might even stumble across me!
The Triumph Tree:Scotland earliest poetry 550-1350. should still be out on canongate. great book, and in languages that aren't gaelic!
still if gaelic's your thing you could do a lot worse than
An Leabhar Mor The great book of gaelic, which is just lovely
while it doesn't have the artwork of the above meg bateman's collection of scottish religious poetry is a nice companion piece the the triumph tree and easily offsets the stereotypical image of scottish protestants as frigid calvinist types, even if they do seem to want to cling to it these days (did i live on the islands, er, well yes i did)
for a more up to date collection check out an tuil : anthology of 20th century gaelic poetry. again lovely and available in both the uk and the usa
all of the above are bilingual versions should you want to do that to your tongue
in english my first stop would be douglas dunn's twentieth century scottish poetry which is a fine overview
then i'd be having norman maccaig's collected poems, the hardback, which comes with a rather lovely spoken word cd. unsure if this is still available so if not and you fancy it get in touch and we can come to an arrangement
anything by meg bateman not least because everyone should be able to use the word aotromachd
anything, except her poetry for childen, by carol ann duffy. my current favourite remains he world's wife
pretty much anything by aonghas macneacail who'd i'd go as far as to say is one of our best poets in gaelic or english but, in typically scottish fashion,has books out of print!
that should about do it. and you never know, if you're profligate in your buying you might even stumble across me!
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