Alex Linklater

My review of Modern Irish and Scottish Literature by @richardalanbarlow.bsky.social is now published by @mfsjournal.bsky.social.

Richard's book is definitely worth a read if you are interested in modern Scottish and/or Irish literature, revivalism, and modernism.

muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/articl...

In praise of useless idiots

Phew!

Oh

What was the answer?

R.S. Thomas was a 20th c Welsh poet & Anglican priest whose most famous poem, The White Tiger, uses the analogy of a tiger trapped in a cage for human perception of the divine-- "agonizing over immensities that will not return."

Aw, shucks!

Richard Leonard (17.27.30) produces the most impressive MacDiarmidian rhetoric in this Holyrood motion. He repeats the myth that MacD was expelled from the National Party for being a communist but gets the splendidly mad tenor of the politics just right

www.scottishparliament.tv/meeting/memb...

Ewan Morrison on Elon Musk, brain implants and the danger of tech bros The novelist discusses his latest book and reveals his fears of the darker side of technology being pursued by billionaires such as the Space X chief

Time for @mrewanmorrison.bsky.social to be recognised as the most prescient writer working in Scotland today

www.thetimes.com/article/4048...

God's own county

God's own county

Is theft of stolen property still theft? AI copyright issues blown open. Students of TS Eliot's borrowing-stealing audit of major writers take note. For @asls.org.uk and other Scotlit folk, Hugh MacDiarmid is surely the pre-eminant (con-?) artist of the "perfect" (and other kinds of) poem

The Trouble with Elon I didn’t set out to become an enemy of the world’s richest man, but I seem to have managed it all the same.

This is compelling from Sam Harris

open.substack.com/pub/samharri...

The dawn of the anti-woke era Having rejected the Democrats’ progressivist dogma, the American electorate is undergoing a social and demographic revolution.

The dawn of the anti-woke era - www.newstatesman.com/internationa...

Watch out for throat lumps!

I’m sure you’d agree @ginorgym.bsky.social

Damn Edwin Muir could write a poetic eulogy

Edwin Muir FOR ANN SCOTT-MONCRIEFF (1914–1943) Dear Ann, wherever you are Since you lately learnt to die, You are this unsetting star That shines unchanged in my eye; So near, inaccessible, Absent and present so much Since out of the world you fell, Fell from hearing and touch— So near. But your mortal tongue Used for immortal use, The grace of a woman young, The air of an early muse, The wealth of the chambered brow And soaring flight of your eyes: These are no longer now. Death has a princely prize. You who were Ann much more Than others are that or this, Extravagant over the score To be what only is, Would you not still say now What you once used to say Of the great Why and How, On that or the other day? For though of your heritage The minority here began, Now you have come of age And are entirely Ann. Under the years’ assaults, In the storm of good and bad, You too had the faults That Emily Brontë had, Ills of body and soul, Of sinner and saint and all Who strive to make themselves whole, Smashed to bits by the Fall. Yet ‘the world is a pleasant place’ I can hear your voice repeat, While the sun shone in your face Last summer in Princes Street.

Dear Ann, wherever you are
Since you lately learnt to die,
You are this unsetting star
That shines unchanged in my eye…

Born in Kirkwall, Ann Scott-Moncrieff was a friend of the Orkney poet & translator Edwin Muir, who wrote this poem for her when she died.
7/7

Scotland Street Press | Who was Ann Scott-Moncrieff? Lesley Findlay, daughter of Orcadian author Ann Scott-Moncrieff talks to Scotland Street Press about Ann’s life in Orkney, her writing and her Children's stories which have been republished as a colle...

Orcadian author Ann Scott-Moncrieff (1914–1943) was born #OTD, 11 January. Lesley Findlay, her daughter, talks about Ann’s life in Orkney, her writing, & her children’s stories – recently republished by Scotland Street Press
1/7
www.scotlandstreetpress.com/journal/who-...

The January exhibition of Turner watercolours in Edinburgh is an annual treat. Made even lovelier this year because, for the first time, the national galleries of Ireland and Scotland have swapped their Vaughan bequests. New Turners!

There’s some crazy here, too, but it’s much quieter (you use some long words for a 2-yr-old btw… looking forward to reading them tmrw!)

Man, you rational folks on @bsky.app have been missing all the crazy shit on X-formerly-Twitter. Nigel just lost $100m by saying something sensible and Elon is having a globally public mental health episode and everyone is shrieking uncontrollably and nothing is happening in reality!

How would you like your satire, sir? Dark, please, seared with baby-eating, Swiftian streaks

The author who, more than any other British writer, defined the idea of literary academia: both its great intellectual dreams and its comic absurdities.

It's a Smaller World now.

Is the death of David Lodge a metaphor or a metonym?

RIP

🙏

Depressingly on-the-nail account of the state of Scottish education

Yes please, Paul

Reading James VI and I’s Daemonologie. Seeing Macbeth everywhere:
‘And oftentimes, to win us to our harm,
The instruments of Darkness tell us truths;
Win us with honest trifles, to betray’s
In deepest consequence…

Hugh | Daily Reckless Reckless EP based on Scotland 76 by Momus. Scotland 76 "The mist-filled Scotland in which people chant Hugh MacDiarmid poems over Side Two of David Bowie's Low" - Momus (from The Book Of Scotlands) Tr...

@alexlinklater.bsky.social Hi Alex. Fellow Shuggy Mac D fan here. www.dailyreckless.com/2024/11/01/h...

Nice to MacD-meet!