Edinburgh Poetry Tours

23/10/2024

I’ve been posting regularly on instagram this year, with a different theme each month. The first three months are covered by this post; the themes since then have been Paris and Edinburgh… the Hebrides and Gael Turnbull… postcard portraits… then London and poem postcards. Still two months to come… kencockburnedinburgh

I’ve been posting regularly on instagram this year, with a different theme each month. The first three months are covered by this post; the themes since then have been Paris and Edinburgh… the Hebr…

08/10/2024

I’m leading two more Edinburgh poetry walks this weekend – Friday 11th at 2.30pm, Saturday 12th at 11.00am – last of the year! Details and booking via Eventbrite.

Let's take a stroll through the historic streets of Edinburgh's Old Town and soak in the beauty of poetry together this autumn!

10/09/2024

Next poetry walks coming up this weekend – Friday 13th at 2.30pm, Saturday 14th at 11..00. Starting outside St Giles, finishing down by the parliament (pictured). Details on Eventbrite.
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/887662060117

13/08/2024

As the upper part of the Royal Mile is so busy during the Festival, this month's walks start outside the Canongate Kirk by the Robert Fergusson statue. He missed last year's Festival – a leg needed mending – but he's back in place this year and still striding purposefully, book in hand.

07/08/2024

Next poetry walks later this month on Friday 16th and Saturday 17th August – Friday afternoon at 2.30pm, and Saturday morning at 11.00. This month we'll start by the Robert Fergusson statue outside the Canongate Kirk. Full details and bookings on Eventbrite. And the weather looks pretty good for both days at the moment!

Let's take a stroll through the historic streets of Edinburgh's Old Town and soak in the beauty of poetry together this summer!

19/07/2024

Walks today (Friday) at 2.30pm and tomorrow (Saturday) at 11.00am. You can book via Eventbrite, or come along and pay cash. Meet at Parliament Square, outside the main entrance of St Giles. Weather forecast is good!
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/come-down-the-mile-poetry-walks-in-edinburghs-old-town-junejuly-2024-tickets-887648870667?aff=odcleoeventsincollection&keep_tld=1

Send a message to learn more

07/06/2024

I’m running more poetry walks in Edinburgh over the next few months, from 21 June to 12 October. The June, July, September and October walks start outside St Giles Cathedral; the August walks by the Robert Fergusson statue outside the Canongate Kirk. Full details here. Column 1: St Anthony's Chapel, Holyrood Park; The Scottish parliament building (staves and shadows); the old Royal High School, Calton Hill…...

I’m running more poetry walks in Edinburgh over the next few months, from 21 June to 12 October. The June, July, September and October walks start outside St Giles Cathedral; the August walks by th…

29/05/2024

Memorials to forgotten writers and their unread works.

Mary Balfour (1778-1818), author (or authoress, if you prefer) of Self Control, a novel, first published in 1811; the version available on Google Books dates from 1849, which gives some measure of its popularity. Her stone is in the Canongate Kirkyard.

Franz Hedrich (1823-1895), whose best known work claimed he was true author of a series of popular novels published by his friend and compatriot Alfred Meissner (1822-1885) in the 1850s and 1860s; they were reprinted in the early 1870s, but not again since. (I've just about finished writing a novel about Hedrich, which delves into why he made such an outrageous claim, and why he's buried in Greyfriars Kirkyard.)

Thomas Reid (1746-1831) wrote a Treatise on Clock and Watch Making (1826) which ran to six editions. His stone is in the Old Calton Burial Ground.

William Knox (1889-1825), who I've posted about before, wrote the poem 'Mortality', a favourite of Abraham Lincoln. Walter Scott praised his work, and an edition of his Collected Poems appeared in London in 1847. His memorial is in the New Calton Burial Ground.

27/05/2024

Some ghosts evoked by plaques in closemouths just of the High Street.

Anchor Close, home of the men's drinking club the 'Crochallan Fencibles', founded by printer William Smellie (who edited the first edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica) and visited by Robert Burns.

Old Stamp Office Close, associated with the Countess of Eglinton and, like something out of a folk tale, her seven beautiful daughters, as well as Flora MacDonald. As Robert Chambers wrote in Traditions of Edinburgh (1842), "It was a goodly sight, a century ago, to see the long procession of sedans, containing Lady Eglintoune and her daughters, devolve from the close and proceed to the Assembly Rooms, where there was sure to be a crowd of plebeian admirers congregated to behold their lofty and graceful figures step from the chairs on the pavement. It could not fail to be a remarkable sight — eight beautiful women, conspicuous for their stature and carriage, all dressed in the splendid though formal fashions of that period, and inspired at once with dignity of birth and consciousness of beauty! Alas! such visions no longer illuminate the dark tortuosities of Auld Reekie!"

Old Assembly Close, where the 'dancing assemblies' attended by the Eglinton ladies took place. They were, as described by Oliver Goldsmith, rather sombre affairs. "When a stranger enters the dancing-hall, he sees one end of the room taken up by the ladies, who sit dismally in a group by themselves; in the other end stand their pensive partners that are to be; but no more in*******se between the sexes than there is between two countries at war. (…) At length, to interrupt hostilities, the lady directress, or intendant, or what you will, pitches upon a lady and gentleman to walk a minuet; which they perform with a formality that approaches to despondence. After five or six couple have thus walked the gantlet, all stand up to country dances; each gentleman furnished with a partner from the aforesaid lady directress; so they dance much, say nothing, and thus concludes our assembly."

24/05/2024

Words vying for (and catching) my attention one day last autumn.
TREAD LOUDLY, Princes St; QUIET NO MORE, Picardy Place; DON'T SLEEP, Cowgate.

22/05/2024

Words of Walter Scott in Waverley Station, named after the indecisive hero of his first novel.

17/05/2024

Just the one word today, appearing from behind the clouds in three languages to Moses (atop a sundial). On the side of John Knox House on the High Street.

15/05/2024

Some Edinburgh colours: white, grey, blue, black, green.

13/05/2024

Until 1856 Edinburgh and Canongate were two separate burghs. The Canongate's coat-of-arms – a stag with a cross between its antlers – together with its motto, 'sic itur ad astra', is still present at various sites, including on the Mercat Cross by St Giles (in Edinburgh proper – golden stag on a red ground), and on a small plaque on the blue tiles of the Scottish Poetry Library (in the Canongate), aptly enough as the words of the motto are taken from a poem – Virgil’s Aeneid.

The words 'sic itur ad astra', meaning, more of less, ‘this way to the stars’, are found in an episode in which the god Apollo descends to praise the valour in battle of Aeneas’s son Iulus.

The first complete translation of the Aeneid into a northern European language was made in Edinburgh by the churchman Gavin Douglas in 1512-13. Below is the Latin original, his version of this passage and an English gloss I've made of Douglas's text (any unfamiliarity comes more in his spelling than his vocabulary).

“Macte nova virtute, puer: sic itur ad astra,
dis genite et geniture deos."

"Eik and continew thy new vailʒeand deidis,
Thou ʒong child ; for that is the way the ledis
Vp to the sternis and the hevynnis hie,
Thou verray Goddis ofspring, quod he,
That sal engendir Goddis of thy seyd."

(Even continue thy new valiant deeds,
Thou young child, for that is the way that leads
Up to the stars and the heavens high,
Thou very God's offspring, said he,
That shall engender gods of thy seed.)

11/05/2024

"Gin I speak wi the tungs o men an angels, but hae nae luve i my hairt, I am no nane better nor dunnerin bress or a rínging cymbal."

1 Corinthians 13, Scots version by William Lorimer (1885-1967)

Outside Queensberry House, integrated into the Scottish Parliament building, is this translation from St Paul by William Lorimer, who taught Ancient Greek at various universities, and in retirement translated the New Testament from Greek into Scots.

The text might have been placed here to remind parliamentarians of truths more profound than passing political concerns, but its placement behind a large barred gate literally constrains it. I've never seen the gate opened, and those using this entrance go in through two smaller side-gates, neatly side-stepping Paul's admonition.

(The King James Bible version of the verse above is: "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.")

09/05/2024

"Open the doors! Light of the day, shine in, light of the mind, shine out!"
The opening of Edwin Morgan's poem 'For the Opening of the Scottish Parliament', as presented on the front door of the Scottish Poetry Library, with photos of windows taken from inside the parliament building.

07/05/2024

I posted recently about a new booklet, Wale. The cover features an image of the pool surround outside the Scottish parliament building – these are from a series of photos I took last summer.

06/05/2024

Robert Fergusson was the poet of 'Auld Reikie', but during his lifetime Edinburgh's transformation to the 'Athens of the North' was beginning, as the New Town started taking shape.

One of its main instigators was George Drummond (1688-1766), who is remembered by a stone is in the south-west corner of the Canongate Kirkyard. He was Lord Provost of Edinburgh on six separate occasions from the 1720s to the 1760s, and his two great achievements were the building of a new hospital in what is now Infirmary Street just off South Bridge (Drummond Street is the next street up); and the initial planning of the New Town. He saw James Craig's 1765 designs, though it was a project realised only after his death.

In ‘Auld Reikie’ Fergusson paid tribute to Drummond’s achievements in creating both the infirmary and the New Town, while also ribbing upstart Glasgow's architectural pretensions.

Peace to thy shade, thou wale o' men,
Drummond! relief to poortith's pain:
To thee the greatest bliss we owe,
And tribute's tear shall grateful flow:
The sick are cur'd, the hungry fed,
And dreams o' comfort tend their bed.
As lang as Forth weets Lothian's shore,
As lang's on Fife her billows roar,
Sae lang shall ilk whase country's dear,
To thy remembrance gie a tear.
By thee Auld Reikie thrave and grew
Delightfu' to her childer's view:
Nae mair shall Glasgow striplins threep
Their city's beauty and its shape,
While our new city spreads around
Her bonny wings on fairy ground.

poortith, poverty
threep, argue