Barry Graham's Blog

POEM: TWO PEOPLE

10th floor flat
human being sitting
in meditation on cushion on floor
facing window

window shelf
potted plant sitting
leaning bending reaching
for sunlight

R.I.P. ALASDAIR GRAY

Alasdair Gray died this morning. When he spoke at the funeral of another of the greats, Tom Leonard, nearly a year ago, he was in a wheelchair and seemed frail. Scotland’s intellectual, artistic and literary landscapes would be different without him. I’m sad he didn’t live to see the independent Scotland he wanted. He urged us: “Work as if you live in the early days of a better nation."

EDWIN MORGAN’S NOTES ON THE BOOK OF MAN

The personal library of the late Edwin Morgan is now in a special collection at the Mitchell Library in Glasgow. I heard he’d written some notes in the back of his copy of The Book of Man, so yesterday I visited the library to have a look.

The numbers refer to pages in the first edition, published by Serpent’s Tail. He rightly thought Michael Ilingworth was based on Alexander Trocchi, and that Tim McGuire was our mutual friend Tom McGrath. I never met Trocchi (he died when I was not quite 18),...

WHY SCOTLAND SHOULD RULE SCOTLAND

I remember my naive bemusement back in 1992, when, with a general election impending, Alasdair Gray published his book Why Scots Should Rule Scotland. I wrote a review of the book in which I said that, even though the book presented a succinct cultural history of Scotland, it never even mentioned, let alone addressed, the subject of its title. It took a shamefully long time for me to realise that his vivid description of Scotland was all the answer to the question that was needed. To make an...

GHOST STORY: THE HOST

There’s a story by me on Dockyard Press’ Harbourmaster’s Loug. It’s a modern take on William Hope Hodgson’s Carnacki the Ghost Finder, set in Scotland.

BABS NICGRIOGAIR: BECAUSE THE NIGHT BELONGS TO US

Babs Nicgriogair is a self-described “Stornoweegie” (Stornoway born and raised, longtime Glasgow-based) writer and native Gaelic speaker. Dockyard Press’s Harbourmaster’s Loug has a poem by her in the original Gaelic and her English translation.

THE BUTNEY HEADHUNTERS BY BART LESSARD

There’s a new short story by the great Bart Lessard on the Dockyard Press blog — and it’s set in my neighbourhood, Maryhill.

HAIKU BY DUBH

cauld smirr

ootside pub

shilpit weans staunin greetin

More by dubh

IS MASTODON AN ALTERNATIVE TO TWITTER, AND CAN IT FIGHT MISINFORMATION?

This article asks the question.

I quit Facebook in, I think, 2013, and Twitter in 2016. I’ve never missed Facebook, but I miss what what Twitter used to be about 10 years ago. Last week, I signed up for Mastodon, which is independent and open source, because I was told it has the spirit of early Twitter. So far, I like it. You can find me here.

OF MATTERS LITERARY

Bad to the Bone, Saturday’s event in Dunbar with me, Tony Black, Shona MacLean and Douglas Skelton, went very well… aside from when a Tory asked the American novelist Bart Lessard, who’s in the process of applying for residency in Scotland, where he owns a house, “What are you bringing to the United Kingdom?” (Hope for the dissolution of said nation.)

Then we got the news that the mighty Ken Bruen said of the new Tony Black book, “Wrecked is my novel of the year.” So Dockyard Press is...