Brian Johnstone, director of the StAnza festival has blogged about Alastair Reid’s Scotland poem.
It’s a good article. I like the quote from Alasdair Gray, "work as if you were living in the early days of a better nation", itself a quote from Canadian poet Dennis Lee. Although I don't think I want to be quite as "free of it" (i.e. the attitude of the poem) as Alastair Reid and Brian Johnstone do.
The other day, I was in a car. One woman said, "It's such a beautiful day." The guy beside her, who was certainly no Calvinist in a religious sense, replied, "Ach, by next week it'll likely be snowing." Anyway, I turned round, gestured to the sky and said, "Yes, we'll pay for it!" and they all laughed.
