Table of Contents

Contents; Acknowledgements; Introduction; Helen Adam; Song for a Sea Tower; I Love My Love; Margot Robert Adamson; Edinburgh; James Aitchison; The Inheritance; Dipper Territory; Landscape with Lapwings; Marion Angus; Alas! Poor Queen; The Fiddler; Anemones; Mary's Song; The Doors of Sleep; J. K. Annand; Arctic Convoy; Fur Coats; Mountain Pule; Meg Bateman; Aotromachd / Lightness; Fhir luraich 's fhir alainn / O Bonnie Man, Lovely Man; D. M. Black; The Educators; The Water-Lily; Sheena Blackhall; Doric's No Dodo ...; The Spik o' the Lan; Walk On; Captain Hamish Blair; The Bloody Orkneys; Alan Bold; Shore; from Edinburgh Castle; Deric Bolton; Schiehallion; What Might Have Been; Kate Y. A. Bone; Corners; Catlike; James Bridie (O. H. Mavor); The West End Perk; George Mackay Brown; Ikey: His Will in Winter Written; Hamnavoe; The Lodging; The Mother; The Old Women; Hamish Brown; A Salting of Snow; Dogs; Counting Sheep; Margaret Gillies Brown; Village Woman; Calgary Bay; George Bruce; A Gateway to the Sea ( ); Love in Age; Inheritance; Kinnaird Head; Departure and Departure ...; Soup and Sherry; Tom Bryan; Planting Potatoes during Chernobyl; John Buchan; from Alastair Buchan ( ); Fisher Jamie; Tom Buchan; The Everlasting Astronauts; Scotland the Wee; Elizabeth Burns; Jesus Speaks to the Church at Eastertime; Ophelia; John Burnside; Tundra's Edge; Lost; Out of Exile; Anstruther; Ron Butlin; Advertisement for a Scottish Servant; The Bath; John M. Caie; The Puddock; Janet Caird; John Donne, You Were Wrong ...; Emigrants; Angus Calder; Greeting, Not Greeting; Curling: Old Murrayfield Ice Rink; October Opera for Kate; Robert B. Calder; Love in the Abstract; Sir Alec Cairncross; Covenanting Country; Munich; Gerry Cambridge; The Drunken Lyricist; Shore Crab; Fallen Maple Leaves; Foxgloves; Kate Clanchy; Mitigation; We Have Some Urgent Messages; Men From the Boys; Timetable; W. D. Cocker; The Deluge; Stewart Conn; Stolen Light; Todd; First Light; James Copeland; The Bayonet; Ed; Robert Crawford; Sobieski-Stuarts; Scotch Broth; Helen B. Cruikshank; Comfort in Puirtith; The Wishin' Well; Sae Lang Has Sorrow; Fate; Shy Geordie; Jenni Daiches; Horse in Glasgow; Jewish Cemetery, Frankfurt; Geometry; John Davidson; Epilogue - the Last Journey; Snow; Christine De Luca; Dancing with Demons; Streams in the Desert; Telling the Time; Kirkpatrick Dobie; Aberfan; King Claudius; Keith Douglas; Vergissmeinnicht; Simplify Me When I'm Dead; Adam Drinan; from The Men on the Rocks; Florence: Sleeping in Fog; Measures; Carol Ann Duffy; Prayer; War Photographer; Close; Valentine; Warming Her Pearls; Lesley Duncan; Festive Tolls; The Visit; Douglas Dunn; Ships; From the Night-Window; France; Envoi; Alison Fell; Pushing Forty; Pigeons; Rannoch Moor; Gillian Ferguson; Grey Kirk in the Mearns; Ian Hamilton Finlay; Bedtime; Gift; Finlay's House (in Rousay); O.H.M.S.; Lillias Scott Forbes; Turning a Fresh Eye; The Half-Inch Tweeddale; Veronica Forrest-Thomson; Sonnet; In This House; Not Pastoral Enough; G. S. Fraser; Home Town Elegy; Lean Street; The Traveller Has Regrets; Hugh Frater and Duncan Macrae; The Wee Cock Sparra; Robin Fulton; The End of an Age; A Note for Robert Henryson; Forecast for a Quiet Night; Robert Garioch; Elegy; I Was Fair Beat; Nemo Canem Impune Lacessit; Flora Garry; Rostov-on-Don ( ); The Professor's Wife; Magi Gibson; Just Like Eve; Goldilocks; Reading in Bed; Valerie Gillies; We Meet Again; Summer Bull; The Look-Alike; Duncan Glen; Bell Barrow; My Faither; Twa Warlds; W. S. Graham; Loch Thom; Greenock at Night I Find You; Letter VI; Sir Alexander Gray; Scotland; On a Cat, Ageing; The Fine Fechtin Mouse; Andrew Greig; Still; Interlude on Mustagh Tower; Ruth Says; George Campbell Hay; Still Gyte, Man?; The Hind of Morning; Homer; The Old Fisherman; Hamish Henderson; The Flyting o' Life and Daith; The st Highland Division's Farewell to Sicily; Elegies for the Dead in Cyrenaica:; Prologue; First Elegy; J. F. Hendry; The Constant North; The Ship; W. N. Herbert; The King and Queen of Dumfriesshire; Why the Elgin Marbles Must Be Returned to Elgin; Looking Up from Aeroplanes; Alan Jackson; Hitch-Haiku; Confessio; The Proddy Heebie Jeebies; The Worstest Beast; Violet Jacob; The Water-Hen; Tam i' the Kirk; The Neep-Fields by the Sea; Kathleen Jamie; Arraheids; The Queen of Sheba; Mrs McKellar, Her Martyrdom; Crossing the Loch; Jackie Kay; Old Tongue; Teeth; I. W. King; If Ye Hivni ...; Norman Kreitman; In Torrett, Minorca; Lizard; Glossy Mail; Bonfire in April; Frank Kuppner; from An Old Guide-Book to Prague; R. D. Laing; Sonnet; Sonnet; Helen Lamb; She Said / He Said; Evidence; Tom Leonard; The Good Thief; Feed Ma Lamz; Maurice Lindsay; At Hans Christian Andersen's Birthplace, Odense, Denmark; Hurlygush; 'Tis Sixty Years Since; Liz Lochhead; My Rival's House; The Empty Song; Poem for My Sister; Noises in the Dark; Roddy Lumsden; Yeah Yeah Yeah; Vanishing; Prayer to Be with Mercurial Women; George MacBeth; Shotts; The Ward; Alsatian; Brian McCabe; Seagull; Kite; Norman MacCaig; No Choice; Toad; Praise of a Collie; Heron; Byre; Double Life; Hugh MacDiarmid; Empty Vessel; The Bonnie Broukit Bairn; The Eemis Stane; O Jesu Parvule; Milk-Wort and Bog-Cotton; O Wha's Been Here Afore Me, Lass?; Lo! A Child is Born; Two Memories; from The Glass of Pure Water; Ellie McDonald; Widdershins; Uncle; Pittendrigh Macgillivray; Mercy o' Gode; Matt McGinn; Coorie Doon; The Big Orange Whale; Alastair Mackie; Schoolquine; Pieta; Primary Teachers; Albert D. Mackie; Molecatcher; Newsboy; Rayne Mackinnon; After the Snow; Bruckner; Scotland; The Cuillin; Hamish MacLaren; Island Rose; Alasdair Maclean; Rams; Question and Answer; After Culloden; Sorley MacLean / Somhairle MacGill-Eain; Calbharaigh / Calvary; My Een Are Nae on Calvary; Coin is madaidhean-allaidh / Dogs and Wolves; Traighean / Shores; Hallaig / Hallaig; Lionmhorachd anns na speuran / Tumultuous Plenty; in the Heavens; Robert McLellan; Sang; Anne MacLeod; Shakespeare No More; Persephone's Daughter; Hugh McMillan; Leaving Scotland by Train; The X Files: Bonnybridge, October '; Adam McNaughtan; Oor Hamlet; The Jeelie Piece Song; Aonghas MacNeacail; Oideachadh ceart / A Proper Schooling; Anochd is tu bhuam / Tonight You Being From Me; Hugh Macpherson; Looking for 's in the ' s; Gerald Mangan; Glasgow; Ailsa Craig; Kirkintilloch Revisited; Angus Martin; Passchendaele; Who Among Common Men of Their Time?; Gordon Meade; The Scrimshaw Sailor; The Great Spotted Woodpecker; In Eyemouth Harbour; Elma Mitchell; The Crucifixion Will Not Take Place; The Death of Adam; Thoughts After Ruskin; Naomi Mitchison; To a Fisherman with the Present of a Knife; The Scottish Renaissance in Glasgow:; The Farm Woman:; Nettlebed Road; William Montgomerie; Flodden; Epitaph; Edwin Morgan; King Billy; Glasgow Green; Strawberries; The First Men on Mercury; Ken Morrice; To a Shy Girl at a Party; Crossing the Alps; Voyager; Edwin Muir; Scotland; Mary Stuart; Scotland's Winter; Song; Merlin; One Foot in Eden; Stephen Mulrine; The Coming of the Wee Malkies; Neil Munro; Hey, Jock, Are Ye Glad Ye 'Listed?; The Heather; In Prison; Charles Murray; Gin I Was God; Charon's Song; The Whistle; Donald S. Murray; An Incomplete History of Rock Music in the Hebrides; William Neill; A Celtic History; Lark; Are You There, Mr Punch?; SiA'saidh NicNeill; Steel Yourself; For Eric Blair; Dennis O'Donnell; The Young Men of Blackburn; The Crab; Even Solomon; Donny O'Rourke; Wine and Wooing; A Letter From My Father; Janet Paisley; The Intellectual; Feminist; The Turning; Don Paterson; The Trans-Siberian Express; The Eyes; Walter Perrie; Exilics: Leaving Lochboisdale,; Ascending Strathbraan; Tom Pow; A Favourite Stretch of Disused Railway; The Years; Richard Price; Horseshoe Crab in Fragrante Delicto; On, Off, Over; John Purser; The Organist Confesses to His Mirror; Love Poem; David Purves; Crabbit Angels; Cleikit; Kathleen Raine; To My Mountain; Maire Macrae's Song; Highland Graveyard; Tessa Ransford; First Thaw; A Stable Relationship; Viewpoint; Alastair Reid; Propinquity; Scotland; Weathering; The Manse; Robert Rendall; The Horse-Mill; Angle of Vision; Alan Riach; Antenor; Sankey Hymns; James Robertson; Melt (Twa); Royalty; George Buchanan in Old Age; Robin Robertson; Affair of Kites; Flags of Autumn from Camera Obscura; David Rorie; The Pawkie Duke; Dilys Rose; Queen Bee; Figurehead; R. Crombie Saunders; The Empty Glen; Alexander Scott; Scotched; Continent o Venus; Calvinist Sang; The Sodgers; Tom Scott; Auld Sanct-Aundrians: Brand the Builder; Charles Senior; Fulmars; Robert Service; The Shooting of Dan McGrew; Burns Singer; Poem; 'The Local Ogres Are Against Me Here ...'; A Poem About Death; Iain Crichton Smith; Poem of Lewis; John Knox; Old Woman; Returning Exile; Two Girls Singing; Sydney Goodsir Smith; Elegy V from Under the Eildon Tree; Ye Mongers Aye Need Masks for Cheatrie; Philomel; Largo; Charles Hamilton Sorley; When You See Millions of the Mouthless Dead; William Soutar; The Philosophic Taed; The Gowk; The Tryst; Who Are These Children?; The Permanence of the Young Men; Winter Beauty; Muriel Spark; We Were Not Expecting the Prince To-day; The Yellow Book; Lewis Spence; Portrait of Mary Stuart, Holyrood; Capernaum; Kenneth Steven; The Calvinist; The Long Silence; Lamb; Edge; William J. (Bill) Tait; 'On With the Dance! Let Freud Be Unconfined!'; The Contracting Universe; Adjustan Mysel tae the Situation; Derick Thomson / Ruaraidh MacThomais; Am bodach-rocais / Scarecrow; Steidhichean laidir / Lewis; Coimhthional Hiort / St Kildan Congregation; An darna eilean / The Second Island; Valerie Thornton; Birds of Passage; Ruthven Todd; Personal History; About Scotland, &c.; Sydney Tremayne; The Falls of Falloch; North of Berwick; Mixed Weather; Gael Turnbull; For Whose Delight; And I Think It Yours; Anne Turner; Medusa; W. Price Turner; Full Supporting Programme; Homely Accommodation, Suit Gent; Raymond Vettese; Scottish Mythology; Photograph; Scottish Names; Val Warner; Clearing Out; Roderick Watson; Is This Man, Martin Bormann?; Kenneth White; Brandan's Last Voyage; Song of the Coffin Close; McTaggart; Colin Will; Satori in Fauldhouse; Jim C. Wilson; Pruning; Death in Venice; Andrew Young; The Fear; Field-Glasses; The Falls of Glomach; Suilven; Culbin Sands; Douglas Young; The Ballant o' the Laird's Bath; For a Wife in Jizzen; For the Old Highlands; Last Lauch; Notes on Poets; Title Index; Index of First Lines.

About the Author

Maurice Lindsay, CBE, is a senior figure of Scottish letters, a poet and literary commentator. Lesley Duncan is poetry editor of The Herald newspaper.

Reviews

I cannot imagine any reader who will not find seomthing to treasure in this anthology. Its selection principles are generous and expansive! it provides a welcome counterbalance in its promotion of female writers, as well as the occasional dip into more 'popular' forms. A pleasing, pleasure-filled book, with lots of surprises. -- Professor Alan Riach Editors Maurice Lindsay and Lesley Duncan have provided a concise and lively introduction to The Edinburgh Book of Twentieth Century Scottish Poetry, giving an informative historical context for non-Scottish readers. A surprisingly diverse compilation. I cannot imagine any reader who will not find seomthing to treasure in this anthology. Its selection principles are generous and expansive! it provides a welcome counterbalance in its promotion of female writers, as well as the occasional dip into more 'popular' forms. A pleasing, pleasure-filled book, with lots of surprises.