All posts by Ken Cockburn

Ken Cockburn is an Edinburgh-based poet, translator, editor and writing tutor.

A second Edinburgh Alphabet (A-H)

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.

A St Andrews poetry walk

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.

Presence haiku journal

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.

Poems around Edinburgh

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

News & updates, May 2025

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.

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More Instagram Posts 2024

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

Poetry walks, summer 2024

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

Instagram posts 2024

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

January was objects from my parents’ house, cleared and sold last year; above, Cadbury’s tin, folding ruler, THOR mallet, stud box, small bowl, Polish-English Dictionary.

February was small books; the first one is Burns, and the rest are self-explanatory.

March is postcards of places; above, Copenhagen, Berlin (Ost), Lübeck, Rome, Kirkcaldy, Florida.

If you’d like to see more of these, and what’s to come – April will be Paris, which I visited recently for the first time in a dozen years, and May may be Edinburgh – follow @kencockburnedinburgh at instagram.

New prints & books from The Caseroom Press

Some new publications from The Caseroom Press, designed and printed by Barrie Tullett.

There are two prints of individual poems, both published but uncollected.

I wrote ‘Hands’ in 2014, when I was working for the first time in care homes; it’s based partly on what residents told me they’d used their hands for, and partly on my own experiences and memories.

‘Close’ dates from 1996; it’s a poem I put aside, but I rediscovered it when I used it for a poetry walk a few years ago, and now I’m very fond of it. It’s a moment that’s long passed – my daughter has grown up, the ‘newspapermen’ have gone and buses no longer run along that stretch of the Mile – so in it’s way it’s become a historical document.

There are also two books – a single-poem artist’s book, and a little Edinburgh anthology.

Позже / Später / Later features a single poem by Wassily Kandinsky from his 1913 book Klänge. It’s the second in an ongoing series from The Caseroom Press – the first was Гимн / Hymnus / Hymn, published in 2022. This post from the time shows that book, and gives some background about Kandinsky’s book and the current project.

Wale comprises my selection of quotes about Edinburgh from over the centuries. The title is from Robert Fergusson – ‘Auld Reikie, wale o ika toun / That Scotland kens beneath the moon!’, ‘wale’ meaning the choice, the pick, the best. The cover image shows a detail from the paving outside the Scottish parliament building.

If you’d like copies of any of these, please get in touch via the Contact page.

‘Hands’, A3, £10
‘Close’, A4, £5
Wale, 107x107mm, £5
Позже / Später / Later, 220x220mm, £20
P&P will be added to the above prices.