“I am sitting in my reasonably grotty Glasgow bedsit being a writer. I have done my statutory spell of staring at the wall…”

—from William McIlvanney’s “Personal Dispatches”: the sad story behind his poem “Bless this House: A Sampler for Glasgow Bedsits”
(CW: suicide)

9/9

http://www.personaldispatches.com/dispatch021a.html

#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #WilliamMcIlvanney #Glasgow #bedsitbritain

Available via BBC Arts: William McIlvanney reads his poem “Bless this House: A Sampler for Glasgow Bedsits”

8/9

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02kgq1n

#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #WilliamMcIlvanney #poem #poetry #Glasgow #bedsitBritain

Bless this house, wherever it is,
This house and this and this and this,

Pitched shaky as small nomad tents
Within Victorian permanence,

Where no names stay long, no families meet
In Observatory Road and Clouston Street…

—William McIlvanney, “Bless this house: a sampler for Glasgow bedsits”

7/9

#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #WilliamMcIlvanney #poem #poetry #Glasgow #bedsitBritain