Back in 2017 I posted an A-Z of Edinburgh poetry. This summer I thought I’d do another, so in the run-up to this year’s Fringe poetry walks I’ve started posting on instagram and Facebook. Thus far I’ve done A-H.
A is for the Adam Dome
B is for Bookshelf
C is for Connelly, & Cowgate
D is for Deacon Brodie
E is for Edinburgh etc
F is for Fringe
G is for Gododdin
H is for Hedrich
The Adam Dome is the spendid though somewhat redundant centrepiece of General Register House;
‘An elaborate theatre… an exquisite void.’
The Bookshelf shows some of the books about Edinburgh I’ve referred to regularly or occasionally to inform the poetry walks. Many of them were published and / or printed in Edinburgh too.
James Connolly was born in 1868 in Edinburgh’s Cowgate, and died (by firing squad) in Dublin in 1916, following the Easter Rising.
William ‘Deacon’ Brodie’s ‘cunning and audacity were unsurpassed’. On the Lawnmarket a pub is named after him, and he is said to be one of the models for Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde.
Edinburgh… and other names it has been known by over the centuries by speakers of:
Brittonic (Old Welsh), Gaelic, Latin, Scots and English.
Some photos from Edinburgh Festival Fringes past, including these ticket stubs … remember them?
G is for Gododdin, the one time residents of what’s now Edinburgh Castle. It didn’t end well…
Franz Hedrich was a Austrian writer, buried in Greyfriars Churchyard, who caused a scandal by claiming with some justification another writer’s works his own.


















































































