Sorrow remembers us when day is done.
It sits in its old chair gently rocking
and singing tenderly in the evening…
—Iain Crichton Smith, “When Day is Done”
published in DEER ON THE HIGH HILLS (Carcanet, 2021)
https://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?product=9781800170940
#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #20thcentury #IainCrichtonSmith #sorrow #grief #grieving
“An elevated tone marries an almost imagistic focus. It’s a small poem that gives an impression of spaciousness. [… Iain Crichton Smith] is a poetic painter and storyteller central to the literary biography of 20th-century Scotland.”
—Carol Rumens writing on Iain Crichton Smith’s poem “Neighbour”
#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #20thcentury #IainCrichtonSmith
Build me a bridge over the stream
to my neighbour’s house
where he is standing in dungarees
in the fresh morning…
—Iain Crichton Smith, “Neighbour”
published in NEW COLLECTED POEMS (Carcanet, 2011)
https://www.carcanet.co.uk/9781857549607/new-collected-poems/
#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #20thcentury #IainCrichtonSmith
The glitter of water and the wake…
Heading for University in Aberdeen.
It’s an autumn morning. I am seventeen.
Above the Isle of Skye the dawn’s a flag
of red infuriate ore…
—Iain Crichton Smith, “Aberdeen University 1945–49 (1)”
in DEER ON THE HIGH HILLS, ed. by John Greening (Carcanet, 2021)
https://www.carcanet.co.uk/9781800170940/deer-on-the-high-hills/
#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #IainCrichtonSmith #Skye #Aberdeen
Some days were running legs and joy
and old men telling tomorrow would be
a fine day surely: for sky was red
at setting of sun between the hills…
—Iain Crichton Smith, “Some days were running legs”
published in Deer on the High Hills (Carcanet 2021)
https://www.carcanet.co.uk/9781800170940/deer-on-the-high-hills/
He will outlast us, churning out his books,
advocate and historian, his prose
earning him Abbotsford with its borrowed gates,
its cheap mementos from the land he made…
—Iain Crichton Smith, “At the Scott Exhibition, Edinburgh Festival”
published in DEER ON THE HIGH HILLS (Carcanet, 2021)
https://www.carcanet.co.uk/9781800170940/deer-on-the-high-hills/
#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #WalterScott #IainCrichtonSmith #writers #writing
So on the bus through late November running,
by yellow lights tormented, darkness falling,
the two girls sang for miles and miles together…
—Iain Crichton Smith, “Two Girls Singing”
Published in DEER ON THE HIGH HILLS, ed. by John Greening (Carcanet, 2021)
https://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?product=9781800170940
#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #20thcentury #IainCrichtonSmith
Assoc for Scottish Literature