Category: Arts
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West Highland trainlines of poetry
No need for narrative as the small Scotrail train pulls out of Glasgow Queen Street – the coming and going of industrialisation is written on the landscape.
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Balanced in between Ireland and Britain
When Marcia died in 1991, seven years before the Good Friday Agreement, her coffin was carried downhill to the church, Ulster-style, the weight born on the shoulders of men from friends and family. Balanced between Catholics, Protestants and non-believers.
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Five poems to defy populists
I wrote this for the 2019 election when there was good reason to be fearful. Five years on, we face another election in a turbulent time. And yet. Courageous compassion and conscience are precious human strengths. These five poems defy fear, anger and distrust.
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‘Who is it for?’ the big question at the heart of Dundee’s McManus
Who is culture for? A trip to Dundee’s McManus explores the meaning of ‘widening access’ and the purpose behind a welcome at the door.
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In search of the emotional museum
Can museums use popular culture to engage a wider audience? What better time could there be to explore what shapes our identities? Let’s hit the road…
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Edinburgh Makars mak mischief
No mics, no loudspeakers, no wham-bam poetry slam. This was a poetry stand-up with a difference – a gently subversive event in the commercial centre of Edinburgh.
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For love of life
I thought back to another year I knew Autumn, lifting potatoes and stacking peats On Mull… Ruthven Todd There it is. Reading aloud from his latest book, Alexander McCall Smith nabs a furtive shadow from another time with a few lines from Ruthven Todd’s poem written in 1938.
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What’s the story in a Russian passport?
Some passports arouse an obliging smile While others are treated as mud. Vladimir Mayakovski A passport can conceal or reveal, open or close. Who knows how the true-blue British passport will be treated after Brexit, but right now Russian travellers are likely to be attracting more than average scrutiny at border control. And none too…
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Irish passport to peace?
Please pardon any wobbly bits in the piece that follows. This was a two-fingered exercise on my iPad, written and posted by hand for Sceptical Scot from Seat 53 on the train from Edinburgh to Kings Cross. A journey long enough to explore two passports and changing identities. Travelling light, I’m sitting on the train…
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Rite of Spring
Here’s the Rite of Spring playing in front of me. Close up and breathtakingly personal. The Scottish Ballet’s raw reworking is not for casual viewing. How on earth did I think I could combine it with a spot of ironing?
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That jiggery-pokery thing called life: poem for the new year
At first I find it hard to choose a poem from Judi Benson’s, Hole in the Wall. She became Writer in Residence at Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary just a year after the death of her husband, Ken Smith, and there are lines in this book which I find painful to read.
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Silent greetings from Mars
Women may be from Venus but that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy the occasional trip to Mars. On a dreary, rain-smeared midsummer night, I land on a sociable planet light years away from Brexit Britain, and find the perfect holiday poem for my husband.