Like many cities of similar size and heritage, Glasgow contains multitudes. No singular part speaks for, or of the whole; the city can only truly be seen by examining many (sometimes conflicting) perspectives, which evolve and change over time.

Glasgow’s ideal artforms are the anthology, collage, compilation or tapestry – which is why we are pleased to present this first selection of poems as part of our ‘Future Glasgow’ series which – through their variety and differences, as well as their similarities and cross-references – go some way to capturing our contributors’ and citizen-poets’ visions, dreams, hopes and fears for the future.

In this selection you will find poems by: A C Clarke, Britta Benson, Finola Scott, George Colkitto, Ian Macartney and Robin Fulton Macpherson.

Some have themes or subject matter in common (environmental catastrophe is a burning issue in A C Clarke’s ‘Sun-spree’, but also a rising tide in Finola Scott’s ‘Doos wi watter-wings’), but what we find most resonant in this selection of work are its shifts in form, sensibility and tone – because it is these varied, diverse perspectives that best reflect the city itself.

Sun-spree

By A C Clarke

---

(Suggested by ‘Theft’ by Esther Popel)  

The sun that day was a swaggerer

lording it over shrinking clouds

shouting his macho credentials

in breath that shrivelled rivers

lit the touchpaper

of tinder forests.

Indecent cried the summer roses

cover your nakedness

for the love of nature

we can’t bear the sight of you.

And the sun, laughing, shot flames

out of his eyes

because he could.

We never asked you moaned the parching lawns

for greenness’ sake step back

behind a raincloud.

And the sun, yelling like a demon,

turned up the heat.

At last even his worshippers

prostrate before his radiance 

begged his mercy,

Cool it, we’re burning to crisps.

And the sun taking his ray gun blasted 

their skin to crackling.

Beat it the moon hissed

coming on the scene

punctual as tides

but the sun stopped his ears

revved himself up

for a blaze of glory

that turned her pale.

At last night took a hand, 

dropped a black cloth

over the sun’s tantrums.

He’d worked his mischief though –

no patch of coolness

all through the dark.

And everyone

rose, grass, sunbather

knew he’d be back with a vengeance.

In the cyber-classroom

By A C Clarke

---

Call up in all its virtual presence

this skull dug from a time before remembrance

sprang into our digitised brains

at the prompt of an algorithm. See how the bones

fuse at the crown. Imagine the soft spot

that pulsed there first, under a covering

the bluntest knife could tear, it was so thin.

Observe what’s left of the jaw – there’s not

a tooth without its filling  – outstare

the hollows where the eyes found shelter.

Did you know the thing once sprouted hair, 

stuff lice could live in? This should put the kybosh

on your vain dreams of turning back to flesh.

Cyber is best. Our bodies were disaster.

A C Clarke lives in Glasgow. She has published five collections and six pamphlets, two of them collaborative. She was a winner in the Cinnamon Press 2017 pamphlet competition with War Baby and has twice won the Second Light Long Poem Competition. She has been commended in the UK National Poetry Competition (2005) and longlisted in it (2014). Wedding Grief, her most recent collection, was published by Tapsalteerie in 2021. Her sixth collection, Alive Among Dead Stars, is due to be published by Broken Sleep in 2024.

here

By Britta Benson

---

here

find neighbourhoods
beyond the edges
of broken

crumbling pits
some bits straggly

find Glasgow

continued roads
stone on stone

corners
turning more
than two stories

find the core

modern
raw
old

‘here’ is a blackout poem. Its source is the first page of Archie Hind’s ‘The Dear Green Place’ [also referenced in George Colkitto’s poem, below].

Britta says, “The future is always rooted in the past, so I took an old book about Glasgow in order to find the place again. I also used the book’s title and erased it to the poem’s title ‘here’.”

Britta Benson is a German circus performer, writer and linguist, thriving in Scotland since the year 2000. She writes a daily blog (Britta’s Blog – Letters from Scotland, teaches Gaelic and runs a creative writing group, The Procrastinators. Her poetry and prose have been published online and in print by the Scottish Book Trust, Open Book Unbound, The Edinburgh Literary Salon, Books Ireland Magazine, Masticadores India and others. She was shortlisted three times for the Glasgow Women’s Library Bold Types Competition and her piece ‘Token Gestures’ won third prize in last year’s Crossing the Tees Short Story Competition.

Doos wi watter-wings

By Finola Scott

---

George Sq too fluidit noo fir taxis, tanks or statues    

Wellington’s horse staunds stoic wishin he cud fly

Deliveroo lads scoot Argyle St in kayaks

thrill at the pace o the surgin watter race

Polis in waders wrastle chanties an salmon

awbody seekin thon golden ring

O’er late in the cathedral, penitents oan thir knees  

This watter’s no holy enuff     Repent Repent 

Cooncillors in wellies flounder in murky shallows,

dreamin o broon envelopes & ferries tae the isles

Wheels turn, cards jiggle, the casino plays loose 

an fancy wi the howps o orange-sashed believers 

Oe’r it aw, sauf as Mount Ararat, John Knox smirks

doon on the brig, at the populace finally sighin

Sternly he calls, nay demands, fir thon regiment 

o wimmen tae sweep an woosh the risin Clyde tae hell 

Whiles oot in the West End smug drumlins are lauchin

High an dry, boulder clay minds the brawness o ice 

In the quads, the rattlin wirds an green-washin o COP26 

flaff lik bauchelt birdies comin hame tae ruist

Professors try tae wheest the hale clamourin clamjamfrie 

wi education’s auld cry  Ah telt yi, Ah telt yi  

Finola Scott confesses writing is a compulsion. Her poems appear in places such as New Writing Scotland, Lighthouse and Gutter. Although she knows poetry won’t change the world, she
continues to write. Winner of the MacDiarmid Tassie, Runner up in the McLellan (Scots) competition, she writes in Scots and English. Three publications to date. More info & poems at FB
Finola Scott Poems and www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poet/finola-scott/

Glasgow 2124

By George Colkitto

---

the river does not flow here any more

rainfall slowed in 2058 and then the sands

dunes creeping up from Seamill and from Ayr

so slowly they barely thought how metres

would become kilometres and soon

strangle field and valley in their quest

a man-made desert stretching to the east

desalination gave the privileged their drink

irrigated a green-belt round the City

they accept deaths for greed knew no pity

the Dear Green Place a shrivelled memory

accepted in civilisation’s onward trajectory

now no fish swim and no trees grow

no birds fly – the warning bell was rung

they stood deaf refused to understand

the future burning in their hands to bring

them wealth from mines and wells and every

exploited piece of land their casual waste

so money talks and walks and toasts

the few who today sit in their Sun

while Armageddon has begun

At Glasgow Cathedral

By George Colkitto

---

the night is gray and grim

to the East I sense a brightening

know that dawn is still a long way off

I am warming to these Glasgow streets

the cathedral’s bulk silhouetted beneath

the dark hill of the Necropolis

around a bench a crowd has gathered

four homeless men crouch despite slow rain

a woman bearing soup approaches 

a blind man bends to lay his hand upon

the shoulder of a girl sitting centre scene

while his dog lies guard beneath

We, three old men, travelled here from Rome

but our wandering started further off

from distant continents we fled our riches

self-made and hollow we were searching

seeking a thing we did not know

but knew we could not buy

Saddened by that realisation we began

the trek which has brought us to this place

by our chance meeting on the road to Rome

when finding nothing there we heard a song

speaking of a God who came in love

the tune a Bagpipe one from Scotland 

a street light casts a glow upon the girl

I see there is a child at her breast

a make-shift cover pulled above them both

I begin to hum that air fixed within my head

still do not understand what I was seeking

but am satisfied the answer is here

George Colkitto writes for the pleasure of words.  His work has appeared in numerous anthologies and magazines.  His poetry publications include Waitin tae Meet wi the Deil (2018) Diehard Press, Brantwood: That Place of Little Green Poems (2019) Clyde, my river (2021) and Shake the Kaleidoscope (2023) Cinnamon Press. 

Caledonian Cloud Computer

By Ian Macartney

---

In houses across the country those cuboids glowed, black, humming fantasy their function.

If a citizen grew dissatisfied with their Scotland, its porridge skies, they could slip inside such an obelisk.

For, after the results of the third referendum, a clean 50/50, only virtuality could save the day.

There was peace because one half of the country could abscond to a socialism whirred through a grid of numbers.

The rest wandered dead pubs, worse streets, lonely arguments.

O beautiful eternity.

O infinite goal, further reached.

After thirteen silent months Westminster ordered every cuboid to be ripped open.

Scotland smelled for weeks.

But at least our minds were a single prism of light, right?

Each soul flung into the heart of Scotland’s dreaming Scotland?

It was too far to call them back.

Lighter in you

by Ian Macartney

---

pt. 1

that hypereglasgow feeling – i.e. 

intelligent expectations in the time 

going out is now / knitted

bedazzled as thoughts

that trundle the brain’s

outer line / a turning topaz

the aether-blether in that 

edinburgh was the london of scotland then aberdeen was the

edinburgh of scotland (it’s the quick)

& seven cities established along old laser 

know further than counter-starts 

with names super-gloopy – i.e. 

intact expectations insinuate we keep this

ketamine of dreams insulating scotland 

on a high priestess’ traffic cone above

the gallery’s fifth horseman / kilted

a broken toy phone

a cartoon baby gravestone by the CBD-cutting road

pt. 0

there is so much sunset-bronze in the towers

each open window like a winking baby nightcore 

-light / i get to the liking of irreal heights up there 

oi pewter-glasgow

you fizzy warm irn bru of a synth

saltirewave via osc knob infinity

you could also stage the perfect fifth 

metaphor / sauchiehall-stacked / like 

(but only if it were possible) a

metachord

 ((((((metaphwor

skyline akin to honeyed coral / glossy horizon / perfidious

harmonisation // parhelion-nightclubish

hyperglasgow you exploded kenning keep giving

us nougaty cores of modular nothing

the ample sublime of a sugary sine pad

evergreenwave outwith transmit washed out august air forever

grey oh hey yeah just like that))))))

Ian Macartney can be found at ianmacartney.scot, but for how much longer?

Island

By Robin Fulton Macpherson

---

Grew up on a small island.

When old, went back to see it.

Expected that the island 

would look small but it looked big.

Voices who lived there were calm.

“Don’t accept oblivion”.

What astonished me most was:

all the trees were made of light.

Revisiting ‘Island’

Revisited, not revised.

Line two: I wasn´t that old

but when the dream let me in, I was.

Line six: a friend had just died.

Oblivion had waited,

a cliff-face with no scratched date or name.

Line eight: I forgot to ask 

if the trees were visible

even when the night was black, or not. 

An Unfolding

By Robin Fulton Macpherson

---

Cold rain drenches the graveyard sycamore,

which must be a good two centuries old.

It has reached an authoritative height

above the headstones and their messages.

The tree is the unfolding of a tune.

The song moves too slowly for human ears.

In my eighties I can now imagine

listening to an echo of an echo

of something I might have heard before birth,

the sung words telling me I won’t forget.

The melody spreads a Gaelic sadness

over the now silent generations.

Robin Fulton Macpherson has spent fifty years in Norway.

His poetry has been gathered in two collections from Marick Press (Michigan) and two from Shearsman (UK), and he has translated many Swedish poets, including Harry Martinson, Tomas Tranströmer and Kjell Espmark.