Category Archive: Poetry

Poetry On Trial: 2. “Poetry and Tribalism” by Jon Stone

In the second of our ‘Poetry on trial’ essays – culled from the excellent Cut Out and Keep blog (now part of Fuselit website) – English poet Jon Stone looks at poetry’s three… Read More

Poetry On Trial: 1. “What are poets for?” by George Gunn

This thoughtful provocative essay by poet George Gunn asks some timely questions on the whys and wherefores of modern poetry, and asks whether there is a socialised character of poetry in Scotland that… Read More

‘The Winter Coast’ by George Gunn

We don’t usually publish poetry on Bella but occasionally something comes into our hands which we can’t not publish.  The Winter Coast is one such poem.  In this beautiful, timely and epic work… Read More

Soundherd

This from Social Media Week Glasgow Crowdsourced Scottish Poetry Audiobook:

Kevin Williamson on our radical seditious patriotic Bard

It takes a brave or foolish man to try and step into Robert Burns’s Scotland-size shoes but Bella Caledonia’s Kevin Williamson is doing it for fourteen nights in August.  Here he explains why:… Read More

Not Burns

By Dougie Strang Last month the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum was officially opened by the First Minister and by Liz Lochhead, our new Scots Makar.  Earlier, it had opened to the public on… Read More

Notes From The Gutter, Music To My Ears

by Kevin Williamson – And yet I feel this muckle thistle’s staun’in’ Atween me and the mune as pairt o’ a Plan.” When Hugh MacDiarmid’s whisky-fuelled ‘Drunk Man’ looks up from the gutter,… Read More

O Donald Trump, Woe Donald Trump

Donald Trump is an American billionaire born of an exiled Hebridean mother. He plans to build “the world’s greatest golf course” and five hundred executive houses on a pristine beach near Aberdeen, previously… Read More

The Republic of Hope

To conclude (but not close) our week long celebration of women writers  - we’re delighted to publish a handful of poems by Lorna Waite, from her forthcoming collection The Steel Garden. We tried to… Read More

In Memoriam Edwin Morgan (1920-2010)

By Robert Alan Jamieson In a life of 90 years, a degree of transformation is to be expected, as times a-change and people must respond. In Edwin Morgan’s, sheer constancy of place, work… Read More

So now begin

Open the doors! Light of the day, shine in; light of the mind, shine out! We have a building which is more than a building. There is a commerce between inner and outer,… Read More