Mungo's Tongues: Glasgow Poems 1630-1990

by Hamish Whyte (Editor)

Edwin Morgan maintains that poetry should "acknowledge its environment." Over the last 300 years Glasgow poets have done just that, responding to the life around them, to the changing face and condition of the city, even campaigning for change themselves: from the elegant 18th-century merchant town, through the violent effects of the Industrial Revolution, to the social optimism of the present era. In Mungo's Tongues, weavers, shoemakers, booksellers, housewives, pedlars, paupers, teachers, and not forgetting anon, all give voice to the lives and times of a great city, and give testimony to its variety and energy.

192 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1993

About the author

Hamish Whyte is a Scottish poet. He worked as a librarian and bibliographer in Glasgow before moving to Edinburgh in 2004. For more than thirty-five years he has run Mariscat Press, publishing the poetry of Gael Turnbull, Edwin Morgan and many others, in well-presented pamphlet form. Mariscat won the Michael Marks Pamphlet Publisher of the Year Award, and the Callum Macdonald Memorial Award, both in 2015.

Whyte has edited anthologies of Scottish poetry, including Mungo’s Tongues: Glasgow poems 1630 - 1990 (1993) and Scottish Cats (2013), and several issues of New Writing Scotland. He has also published, edited and written on his friend Edwin Morgan, Scotland’s first National Poet. Whyte’s own poetry has appeared in various Scottish magazines, he has many pamphlets to his name and three full collections have been published by Shoestring Press. He is a member of Edinburgh’s Shore Poets.

Reviews

[Patricia Mcgovern · Rating 5 out of 5]

Poems (and songs down the ages) has one of my favourites simply called Let Glasgow Flourish. It also has the words to the Jelly piece song ... Definitely a classic!