GATHERING: A Personal Anthology of Scottish Poems

A personal journey through the landscape of Scottish poetry, some poems are well known, others less familiar, but all are private gems that Alexander McCall Smith feels should be more widely shared. They range from early ballads through Robbie Burns to works of 20th century figures like MacDiarmid and Morgan and there are lines here that make the heart soar just as there are lines that may break it. Sir Alexander Gray - Scotland: 'Here in the Uplands the soil is ungrateful; the fields, red with sorrel, are stony and bare. A few trees, wind-twisted - or are they but bushes? Stand stubbornly guarding a home here and there.' And James Hogg - from A Bard's Address to His Youngest Daughter: 'Come to my arms my wee wee pet my mild my blithesome Harriet. The sweetest babe thou art to me that ever sat on parent's knee.' Grouped by Love and Marriage, Poems of Place, Islands, Childhood, Countryside and Animals, Birth, Joy and Life, War, Conflict and Loss with great names like Robert Louis Stevenson, George Mackay Brown, George Bruce, Violet Jacob, Nan Shepherd, Edwin Muir, Hamish Henderson, Muriel Spark and Iain Crichton Smith among them. One to dip into and enjoy time and again. 238pp, paperback.