Showing posts with label Highlands and Islands. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Highlands and Islands. Show all posts

Friday, 25 January 2013

Poetic People: Rabbie Burns

'My heart's in the Highlands ...'

The photo above was taken some twenty-eight years ago on my first visit to the wonderfully bleak and majestic landscape of the Scottish Highlands.  

25 January is known as Burns' Night, and there will be many gatherings, complete with poetry and a haggis, in honour of the poet, Robert Burns (aka Rabbie), who lived from 1759 to 1796.

The link below the top photo will take you to a well-known and much loved song by Burns. It was written in 1789, but has become particularly cherished in the light of the emigration that ensued once the Clearances began.

Some of my Scottish ancestors, who hailed from the area around Kingussie and Newtonmore, might well have lived in homes like the blackhouse below, prior to their emigration to Australia.

Speaking of things Scottish, you can read my poem about Loch Coruisk (on the Isle of Skye) here - and you might like to create a poem with the Rabbie Burns Rhyme Generator here!

Happy Burns' Night to all.

Baile Gean, Highland Folk Museum, Newtonmore, set up by Isabel Grant

Friday, 28 October 2011

Fiesta Time (8): Aldeburgh Poetry Festival

Sheep on the beautiful Hebridean island of Raasay, birthplace of poet, Somhairle MacGill-Eain/Sorely MacLean

We have just booked tickets for the Scottish Islands event at the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival, run by The Poetry Trust. Meg Bateman, Rody Gorman and Robert Alan Jamieson will be taking part.

A new Sorely MacLean volume, An Cuilithionn 1939: The Cuillin 1939 and Unpublished Poems came out in June this year. Thank you, Sally Evans of Poetry Scotland, for drawing attention to this on FB.