John Baker’s Blog

The recordings of several lectures and a discussion with poet Robert Frost, which were left forgotten in the Dartmouth College Library in New Hampshire , will be published for the first time.
The journal Literary Imagination has revealed it will publish a transcript of one the lectures and exchanges in its next edition.
“It’s like Frost unplugged,” [...]

Blue Girls
Twirling your blue skirts, travelling the sward
Under the towers of your seminary,
Go listen to your teachers old and contrary
Without believing a word.
Tie the white fillets then about your hair
And think no more of what will come to pass
Than bluebirds that go walking on the grass
And chattering on the air.
Practice your beauty, blue girls, [...]

Norman MacCaig (1910-1996) was a major Scottish poet of the twentieth century. The following poem is included in his collection, The Sinai Sort (1957):
November night, Edinburgh
The night tinkles like ice in glasses.
Leaves are glued to the pavement with frost.
The brown air fumes at the shop windows,
Tries the doors, and sidles past.
I gulp down winter raw. [...]

There are several excellent short stories in this collection. This is a taster from Timing:
The copper one threw her arms around the dark one and they kissed at the side of the river. I have never seen a kiss on one of my walks, not a long desperate kiss like that. I had to slow [...]