Tag Archives: Edinburgh

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.

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

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

Poems, Publications, Translations

New prints & books from The Caseroom Press

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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.

Adult Workshops, Readings & Talks

Edinburgh Communities

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On and off since spring of last year I’ve been running sessions in care homes and day centres for the Edinburgh International Book Festival’s Communities Programme. Sessions are themed, and I take in a selection of poems and songs on that theme, together with objects relating to them.

In recent weeks I’ve been visiting Corstorphine Dementia Project and Gilmerton Neurological Care Centre (both in Edinburgh). Themes so far include Scotland, Autumn and Hands, and in the coming weeks we’ll focus on Edinburgh itself as well as travelling Around the World.

The Book Festival came along to last week’s session at Corstorphine, and have since posted about it here. They also took the photos you can see here (in which I’m wearing my best autumnal shirt).

I’m pleased to say the sessions have been really well received – ““the feedback I’ve been getting from staff and our members has just been so positive. From what they tell me, it’s really multi-sensory, engaging and they love the way you deliver the poem and conversation prompts.”

I worked in theatre a long time ago, and it’s been good to explore a more performative approach to presenting poems.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned here the post I wrote for the Book Festival last year, about the sessions I ran at Eagle Lodge Care Home, which you can still read here.

My thanks to the Book Festival for enabling these sessions, to the organisers at the care homes and community centres, and to everyone who has listened, joined in, made suggestions and otherwise conversed.

Edinburgh Poetry Tours, Poems, Publications, Translations, Walks

Edinburgh (2nd edition)

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Almost 18 months ago Barie Tullet’s Caseroom Press published the pamphlet Edinburgh: poems and translations. The first edition – hand-sewn, with covers in a wide range of colours – is now sold out, and last month a second edition appeared, with staples and a uniform cover. The contents remain the same – poems about the city written in 1996-97 and 2016, plus translations from Victor Hugo, Theodor Fontane and the 17th century Latin of Arthur Johnston.

The first sales were at last month’s Artists Book Fair at the Fruitmarket Gallery. Also on sale there were two new pamphlets, both featuring poems that would have made the cut for Edinburgh: poems and translations had they been written a little sooner.

They were commissioned by the first Push the Boat Out festival in autumn 2021, and again refer to sites in Edinburgh’s Old Town: ‘Jacob’s Ladder’ beneath the railways bridge at the junction of Calton Road and New Street, and ‘The Ballad of William Knox’ at the poet’s memorial stone in the New Calton Burial Ground, not far from the Stevenson vault, where Robert Louis’s grandfather, father, and uncle are all buried. (There are some photos of his memorial in an earlier blog, part of An Edinburgh Alphabet – scroll down to ‘K’.)

Edinburgh: poems & translations
ISBN 978-1-905821-35-8
210 x 125mm, 16 pages, soft covers

Jacob’s Ladder
No ISBN
282 x 99mm, 4pp, grey endpapers

The Ballad of William Knox
No ISBN
282 x 99mm, 4pp, blue endpapers