Every year we look forward to the publication of the New Writing Scotland anthology as it always highlights the best in established names and exciting newcomers in Scotland’s literary scene. The new anthology, A Chaos of Light, is fine reading as expected! Here, we publish a few poems from the collection.

A Chaos of Light: New Writing Scotland 43
Edited by Kirsten Innes, Chris Powici & Niall O’Gallagher
Published by Association of Scottish Literature

Kevin Cormack

SHORACKS
fur Tony Swain

This wis whin TVs hid thir oun national bedtime:

a vicar in a comfortable, high-backed chair

wid shepherd his mild-mannered story

aboot a window cleaner, or a trip tae the seaside,

twaards hids inevitable punchline:

‘And, you know, Jesus was a bit like that.’

At these words the TV wid sink intae a sea o white noise.

We convened in her mither’s attic,

oan an owld couch beneath the cooples,

and stared at yin churnan blizzard fur oors oan end.

Hunkered in front o her mither’s muted Grundig,

a year since wir last meeteen, we drifted oot again

intae a dwam until figures appeared.

The hoose below breathed like bellows

o an accordion; a timorous whistle, me squeaky eyes.

The attic lowed like a crystal haal, last I saa her –

dark-eyed and ready tae furgit me.

I wid lean intae that storm (o some demiurge’s

makeen) the rest o me days.

Sheu leant in different – like bliindie-bockie –

and disappeared intae tambourines and mirrors.

Shoracks: shore-dwellers of Kirkwall

bliindie-bockie: blind man’s buff

GUTS
i.m. K. H.

‘You know more than I know’ sang John Cale,

under the needle in yir student digs, twinned

wae mine. Words afore I worded thum;

clippeens o feteesh and crime scenes

afore the inkleen, the glue, the compositional eye.

Whar ye came fae and whar ye then dwelt:

that fraction o a second afore sense

reaches the brain, raffles up wae emotion,

laughter lippers ower. Whar stimuli bides

in the raa, afore adoption: colourless colour,

touchless touch and ither such blethers.

Makan me whit? A cover version – a bad wan

at that – wae virry little say in the metter?

Me intimidatan mate, as mates so often err.

The Mekon in Bowie’s black leather jaiket

fae the cover o Heroes, riflan through

vintage paperback emporiums,

as if elbuck-deep in a buullick’s liver.

Lendan me biographies o resplendent,

reckless lives – hand-me-doon

subversion fur yir second-hand sael –

designed tae mak me less and less sure.

Fae somebuddy thit nivver bowt a stick

o furnityir in his life, nivver ouwned

a fridge or washeen machine, hoose or ker,

computer or smertphone.

Zeus (as played bae Niall MacGinnis)

geen foosty in a ruined picture-hoose attic.

That’s the trouble wae classicists:

liable tae spang clear o the membrane entirely.

Blessed be the latecomers – the gulf

between stoory needle crackle

and yir bureaucratic bowels.

Reyzl Grace

BRIGADOON
for E. R. Shaffer

A think A knew, somegate,

in that first month we war girlfreinds –

We’d passt the nicht thegither,

an it wis sae haurd tae lea’ ye

in the morn, cuisten across

yer gowd-strawn bed

like a saunt’s cloak on a sunleam

whiles yer ain lay on the fluir.

Ye laucht, telt me object

permanence is a real thing

an that ye’d still be there eftir

ye walkit me tae the door.

As it shut, I cawed

oot, ‘An the door eelit

a hunner year . . .’ A wis anely

tryin tae mak ye lauch,

but ye reappeart in an instant,

luiken sae sairious,

catcht bi ma vyce afore

the joke, and then ye grint

in that aaber, elfin wey

ye dae that inveets ma tongue

like the clootie wall caws

the cuinyie in a lanely lass’s

purse. A wis late tae wark.

That wis afore A’d eaten

thae cupcakes on yer birthday –

afore A’d passt a century

watchin ye draig a fag

an then kythed tae find A’dna

been missin mair ’an a day.

Nou A knaw why

ye walk circles aroond

the flat whan things gae missin,

why yer een wirth til milk

like some Greek oracle

anent the clock, why

ye maist like daena remember

the lingelie whit apens the poyum

ye demandit, an why ye demandit

a poyum, oot aw things,

whan offert yer auchtin. Ye telt me,

aince, that ye war afeart

A wudna date ye acause

ye’re a stoner, but the suith

is A cudna lea’ ye kis ye’re a sìth.

Zain Rishi

PILLARS

Among the trees, there is a tree, the leaves
of which do not fall and is like a Muslim.
—Sahih al-Bukhari

1. Sajjada

It was as if blessing the floor below her knees was

the only way she could ever stand again. Her scarf,

black and billowing, moulded to her like a dark

calcification as she said the words, , and I

couldn’t help saying them too. I didn’t know what

they meant, only that somewhere in the rhythm of

each syllable, the roughness of the middle h, was

a kind of safety: something that resembled a home.

1. Taeam

Home was an unfaltering reminder that our lives

were burdened with temporality. Plastic chairs.

Plastic plates. Plastic food containers stacked like

glassy, wordless bookshelves behind the fridge.

We lived as though we were bound to leave, and

yet we could not deny our permanence, how we

pulsed out of the foreign ground like a weed, how

we only grew twofold, only deepened our roots.

iii. Hadiiqa

Roots veining below my feet, I climbed higher and

higher towards the canopy. I found my Allah in the

furrows running up the tree, in the bugs that left

them just to live below my nails. I climbed higher

and higher, leaves cleaving to me like a new flesh,

dew mottling my hair as I broke out into the daylight,

forgetting, if only for a moment, the splinters in my

palms, the bark breaching my new, ascended skin.

1. Wajah

Skin that was never scarred or spotty, only plain as

bleached canvas, only warm blood bristling under

rosy white cheeks. It meant something in me was

wrong, something I could never reach, a place

I could never inhabit, a beauty I could never keep.

Because to keep a thing was to love it, and to love

a thing was to become it. So I would put on my

own skin, every day, thinking it wasn’t mine

1. Rouhi

until I knew it was hers. And there are many things

I know now. That the Devil is the name we gave to

the human condition. That there are a thousand ways

to love another boy. That I never uttered an honest

prayer, not until I knew this skin was ours, that we

grew out of foreign ground, that we fell from the

canopy, our bodies glowing with sin, and prayed

for a faith where we didn’t need words at all.

A Chaos of Light: New Writing Scotland 43, edited by Kirsten Innes, Chris Powici & Niall O’Gallagher is published by Association of Scottish Literature, priced £9.95.