A man walked out of the sea one February morning dressed in a boilersuit & bunnet, and wearing a tartan scarf which had been tucked crosswise under each oxter to be fastened by a safety-pin at a point roughly centre of his shoulder blades…

—James Kelman, “Incident on a Windswept Beach”

Published in THE STORY OF THE STONE: Tales, Entreaties, and Incantations (PM Press, 2025)

https://pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=1769

#Scottish #literature #JamesKelman #Flashfiction #Scots #Scotslanguage #Scotstober

Independence, aye?
"That wee, that puir, that stupit"-
The eternal swick.

#Scotstober #Swick #Haiku #ScotsLanguage

Under a grey sky,
Gaitherin the fallen leaves,
An autumn trauchle.

#Scotstober #trauchle #Haiku #ScotsLanguage

Daith an’ dule will stab ye surely,
Be ye man or wife,
Mony trauchles an’ mischances
In ilk weird are rife;
Bide the storm ye canna hinder,
Mindin’ through the strife,
Hoo the luntin’ lowe o’ beauty
Lichts the grey o’ life.

—Helen Cruickshank, “Sea Buckthorn”
published in A KIST O SKINKLAN THINGS (ASL, 2017)

https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/volumes/a-kist-o-skinlan-things/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #20thcentury #Scots #Scotslanguage #Scotstober

Doos sat thegither
Like a thousan grey angels
Oan the warm kirk roof.

#Scotstober #Doo #Haiku #ScotsLanguage

And by the halie tree
In the leaman licht o the wuid,
Squired by a houlet, a hawk and a doo,
Wes his Euridikee…

—“Orpheus”, by Tom Scott (1918–1995)
from A KIST O SKINKLAN THINGS

https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/volumes/a-kist-o-skinlan-things/

#Scottish #literature #Scotstober #poem #poetry #Scots #Scotslanguage