Tag Archives: Douglas Dunn

Stiob! It’s the New Unsettlement

Posted on May 31, 2016 by

(I’ll try to post this four part piece daily across this week.) 2 One social phenomenon which illustrates this neatly is the late Soviet satiric mode of stiob*. According to Dominic Boyer and Alexei Yurchak, who produced a study comparing stiob … Continue reading →

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Non-Standard (2)

Posted on June 1, 2015 by

(This second part is drawn from the lectures I delivered at Newcastle on ‘Modern Scottish Poetry’, a course I taught until it became evident that Creative Writing was where all the effort needed to go, in terms of designing an … Continue reading →

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The Great Moc Gonagall

Posted on January 22, 2011 by

Norman Watson, Poet McGonagall: The Biography of William McGonagall (Birlinn) One of the first books of poetry I remember from my childhood is listed in the bibliography to this new life of William McGonagall, the enigmatic purveyor of bad verse … Continue reading →

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Embodying delight (some formulae)

Posted on January 17, 2008 by

Alan Gillis, Hawks and Doves, The Gallery Press, 79pp; Fiona Sampson, Common Prayer, Carcanet, 74pp; Lynne Wycherley, North Flight, Shoestring Press, 70pp. There are a number of now quite stately premisses on which we still rely when we come to … Continue reading →

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ministrations, legions, loneliness

Posted on March 26, 2007 by

(This appeared in Poetry London in Spring 2006, and looks at Stewart Conn, David Harsent and Piotr Sommer.) These three poets, one Scots, one English, one Polish, respond in contrasting ways to their shared European context, its heritage and its … Continue reading →

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A Turbulent Makar

Posted on March 19, 2007 by

(This piece on Edwin Morgan’s Scottish Laureateship was written in November 2005 for a small magazine the name and a copy of which continues to evade me.) The idea of a poet laureate carries with it some interesting preconceptions. Although … Continue reading →

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