All posts by Ken Cockburn

Ken Cockburn is an Edinburgh-based poet, translator, editor and writing tutor.
Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Edinburgh Poetry Tours, Uncategorized

A second Edinburgh Alphabet (R-Z)

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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 started posting on instagram and Facebook. This post summarises the last letters; click through if you want to the posts for A-H and I-Q.

R is for Ransford
S is for Snow
T is for To / two / Time
U is for Underwoods
V is for Views and Vistas
W is for Water of Leith
X is for a crisscross shadow
Y is for Yet
Z is for unseiZable

Tessa Ransford was a poet and founder of the Scottish Poetry Library. She was its its first Director from 1984-1999.
S is for Snow. The photos are from the chill winter of 2010-11.
‘To the stars’: The Canongate’s historic motto is sic itur ad astra from Virgil’s Aeneid. In his Chronicles of the Canongate, Sir Walter Scott translated the motto as ‘this is the path to heaven’ and it is elsewhere rendered as ‘thereby shall we go to the stars.’

Water of Leith, Edinburgh

Underwoods, an 1887 book of poems by Robert Louis Stevenson, borrowed its title from Ben Jonson, whose own ‘Underwoods’ gathered ‘lesser poems of later growth’, which, according to the critic (and RLS’s friend) Edmond Gosse, had sprung up ‘between the more massive timber of his plays’.
V is for Views or Vistas; here, Arthur’s Seat seen from Regent Road Park.
The Water of Leith, Edinburgh’s modest river, skirts the centre; here is a stretch not far from its mouth at Leith.

This X appeared outside the Scottish parliament building yesterday: a monochrome Saltire, a vote, a marking of the spot, a Muskless redemption.
Y is for YET, a graffiti tag followed by lines from poems relating to the Old Town which happen to contain the word.
I picked out the Z in a MacDiarmid poem, ‘Edinburgh’, inscribed on the Canongate Wall at the Scottish parliament building, which includes the lines ‘But Edinburgh is a mad god’s dream, / Fitful and dark, / Unseizable in Leith / and wildered by the Forth’.

Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Edinburgh Poetry Tours

A second Edinburgh Alphabet (I-Q)

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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-Q; you can find I-Q outlined below, and A-H in an earlier post here.

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I is for Iain Crichton Smith
J is for Jacob’s Ladder
K is for Kirk, Thomas
L is for Lepel, Benhard von
M is for Maps
N is for Newhaven
O is for Outlander, Otway & Orphan
P is for Paolozzi
Q is for Quincey, Thomas De

Iain Crichton Smith, from Lewis, and living much of his life in Argyll, wrote about Edinburgh, not always flatteringly. The image above shows an inscription in Makars Court: ‘Let our three-voiced country / Sing in a new world’ – from a poem read at the opening of the Scottish parliament in 1999.
Jacob’s Ladder runs up steeply from the gloom of an overhead railway bridge on Calton Road to the open vistas of Regent Road.
Thomas Kirk was a Yorkshireman who kept a journal of a tour of Scotland made 1677. On May 29th he describes the pretty wild celebrations on the anniversary of Charles II’s restoration – a volatile mix of wine and gunpowder.

Bernhard von Lepel travelled to Scotland with Theodor Fontane in 1858. Fontane’s travel book Jenseits des Tweeds (Beyond the Tweed) appeared in 1860. A English edition features drawings made by von Lepel on their travels.
This map dates from 1836, when the grid of the New Town has extended the city to the north.
Newhaven is a former fishing village north of the city centre, between Leith and Granton.

Otway‘s play The Orphan is quoted in a court of Bakehouse Close, one of the locations for the tv series Outlander.
The artist Eduardo Paolozzi was born in Leith to Italian parents. Technology, science and pop culture became central to his work, and as his reputation spread he received an increasing number of public commissions, including several in Edinburgh. The hand is from Egeria, University of Edinburgh, Kings Building.
Thomas De Quincey, best know for Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, lived for many years in Edinburgh. For some time he lived in New Town grand surroundings, but unpaid debts meant he took advantage of the debtors’ sanctuary at Holyrood.

Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Edinburgh Poetry Tours

A second Edinburgh Alphabet (A-H)

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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?

Gododdin were 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 as his own.

Poems, Readings & Talks, Walks

A St Andrews poetry walk

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The first poetry walk of 2026 took place not in Edinburgh but in St Andrews in mid-March, as part of this year’s StAnza, Scotland’s International Poetry Festival.

As you can see from the photos, we were blessed with (at least partially) blue skies, and what I’d expected to be a cold wind coming in from the sea turned out to be no more than a gentle breeze.

I called the walk ‘Waves as Blue as Air’, a line taken from the poem / song ‘We’ll Go to Sea No More’:

It was written by one, or perhaps both of the Misses Corbett, the sisters Walterina Cunningham and Grace Corbett who lived in Edinburgh, by the sea at Portobello. They were wrote a number of books in the early nineteenth century, most notably two editions called The Odd Volume (1826–1827). This poem features in the second of these. (The text above is taken from Poems of Places, Volume 2 (1876).)

With thanks to Riley for the photos.

Poems, Publications

Presence haiku journal

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I took over as co-editor of Presence Haiku Journal recently, along with James Roderick Burns and Becky Dwyer who are, like me, members of Edinburgh Haiku Circle.

Our first issue (#82) appeared at the end of July, and we’re currently open for submissions for #83 – until the end of September, with the magazine due out towards the end of November.

We’ve changed a few things, but kept a lot the same, including the sequence of the contents – starting with tanka, having the haiku in seasonal sections (concluding with a no-season section) and interspersing these with haibun. The magazine closes with an essay and a substantial Reviews section, and we’re grateful for the continuing work of Judy Kendall and Julie Mellor in commissioning and compiling these.

Matthew Paul continues to manage the website.

As for the changes, we’re delighted that Barrie Tullett has brought his designer’s eye to bear on the parts and the whole. We’ve reduced the number of poems we publish too, so that those we do select are given more room on the page.

And Sean O’Connor will join us from #83 as Haibun Editor.

You can buy individual copies or take out an annual subscription (which buys you three copies) here.

Edinburgh Poetry Tours, Poems, Poets, Walks

Poems around Edinburgh

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I’ve been out taking photos of lines and stanzas from poems I read on the poetry walks, at the places where I read them.

I’ve been posting these on my Facebook and instagram pages, but thought I’d gather a few of them here.

S.T. Coleridge at the Black Bull, Grassmarket

Gavin Douglas at Gladstone’s Land, Lawnmarket. The ‘soir gled’ is the red kite; the surname of the man after whom Gladstone’s Land refers to a ‘gled stane’, or kite’s stone, hence the golden raptor on the building’s front.

Ken Cockburn at Deacon Brodie’s pub, Lawnmarket

Angus Reid at The Scottish parliament building, Holyrood Road

Robert Fergusson at the Palace of Holyroodhouse

RLS at the High Kirk of St Giles, Parliament Square

John Taylor on Johnstone Terrace

Edinburgh Poetry Tours, exhibitions, Poems, Walks

News & updates, May 2025

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I’m aware I haven’t posted here for quite a while, the main reason being that I’ve got into the habit of putting out my news in other ways, mainly regular posts on instagram, and an occasional newsletter sent out via Mailchimp.

You can find the last newsletter, which I sent out at the start of May, here. This is the introduction:

I’ll be leading poetry walks on the Edinburgh Fringe again this year, for the first time since 2019. – Along with Rod Burns and Becky Dwyer, I’ve become co-editor of Presence Haiku Journal, established by the late Martin Lucas and edited since 2014 by Ian Storr. – I have work in a forthcoming exhibition at MOCA Dunoon, paying tribute to Ian Hamilton Finlay whose centenary falls this year. – I’m leading a walking renga at Glasgow Botanic Gardens on Sunday 25th May, i.m Gerry Loose. – Plus a short poem published recently in Poetry Scotland.

If you want to read more about any of these, you can find the mailing here.

And if you want to sign up to receive future mailings, you can do so below.

If instagram is your thing, there I’m @kencockburnedinburgh Last year I took a different theme each month, which turned out to be a lot of work, and this year I’m posting on a more ad hoc basis.

By clicking submit, you agree to share your email address with the site owner and Mailchimp to receive marketing, updates, and other emails from the site owner. Use the unsubscribe link in those emails to opt out at any time.

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Travels, Uncategorized

More Instagram Posts 2024

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I’ve been posting regularly on instagram this year, with a different theme each month.

The first three months are covered by this post; the themes since then have been Paris and Edinburgh…

the Hebrides and Gael Turnbull…

postcard portraits…

then London and poem postcards.

Still two months to come…

kencockburnedinburgh

Edinburgh Poetry Tours, Walks

Poetry walks, summer 2024

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I’m running more poetry walks in Edinburgh over the next few months, from 21 June to 12 October.

The June, July, September and October walks start outside St Giles Cathedral; the August walks by the Robert Fergusson statue outside the Canongate Kirk.

Full details here.

Column 1: St Anthony’s Chapel, Holyrood Park; The Scottish parliament building (staves and shadows); the old Royal High School, Calton Hill

Column 2: Gullan’s Close, Canongate; Salisbury Crags, seen from Moray House gardens; 264 Canongate

Colum 3: carved oak leaves, Riddle’s Court, Lawnmarket; Scottish Poetry Library; view from New Calton Burial Ground