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Alec Finlay

@alecfinlay.bsky.social

artist and poet; ecological remediation and human recuperation; landscape, tea, limit and creativity; lives by the sea in Edinburgh; mostly sharing a daily poem here.

1523 Posts3921 Follower3541 Folgt
Royal Irish Academy@ria.ie · 12h ago

Calling Tim Robinson fans! RIA Publishing House is producing new editions of Robinson's iconic map series, Aran, The Burren and Connemara. How would you like to see these wonderful maps brought back to life? We would love to hear from you! Email publications@ria.ie with your feedback.

Black and white map of Connemara, County Galway, with marked regions and the author Tim Robinson's name displayed.
Prof Nisreen Alwan@nisreenalwan.bsky.social · 2d ago

I’m intrigued by the recent resurgence of the ‘Long Covid is not real’ nonsense we saw back in 20/21. The refusal to learn is one thing, but the dismissal of reality is another. Long Covid is too painful, too common & too present in many people’s lives to be denied. The story is hard to rewrite.

Frances Ryan@francesryan.bsky.social · 2d ago

As Rod Liddle has died, I notice this column I wrote in 2019 about his attacks on people with M.E. is on the most read again. Rebekah Brooks, of News UK, described Liddle today as “provocative”. In reality, he spread lies about very sick people for cash. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Rod Liddle vilifies disabled people. I’m tired of the hate. We all should be | Frances Ryan

Whether it is ME patients or another target, huge swathes of the media have normalised hatred of minorities for years, says Guardian columnist Frances Ryan

theguardian.com

Alec Finlay@alecfinlay.bsky.social · 5d ago

for Christine & Ross I ask how he’s been since she died? Good, but spinning like a compass. And aren’t we all at sea as the wild- flowers laid on the wicker casket mount up like a great wave of spray.

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Alec Finlay@alecfinlay.bsky.social · 6d ago

Tarskavaig, Tokavaig, et al The gravelly tides of speech, and spit, and open mouths washed vágr into vík and vaig, bàgh and way, and hóp into òb, to say where it’s safe to anchor. 31.VII.26

Ian Hunt@ianhunt.bsky.social · last wk.

Good and wide-ranging writing by Jenny Turner on Lewis Grassic Gibbon. It builds a discussion of what she finds difficult, alongside (late in the essay) actual encounters with young readers in Scotland, whose broad identification with the novels is still intense. #LewisGrassicGibbon #reading

London Review of Books@lrb.co.uk · last wk.

‘Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s new and self-created version of the modernist sentence mixes Scots and English to resemble “a meandering, live thought-process”, as Ali Smith puts it: “poetic and realist and soaring and dark and local and strange all at once”.’ Jenny Turner: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Sam Freedman@samfr.bsky.social · last wk.

Re the Emily Wilson discourse - her Dad (A N Wilson) was the king of literary feuds. A good family tradition. Best one was his feud with Bevis Hillier who hoaxed him into including a fake letter in his biography of Bejteman where the first letter of each sentence spelt "AN Wilson is a shit".

Christina Tudor-Sideri@dreamsofbeing.bsky.social · 2w ago

“Whatever this crowded world had no room for, I made a place for within myself,” writes Elias Canetti in Notes from Hampstead, in the translation of John Hargraves. Perhaps that is indeed the lesson to take from him. To always make a place within oneself. And to tell stories.

My obstinate rejection of time is now taking its revenge on me. Its passing never existed for me. I never felt it as a river that could dry up. It was all around me, inexhaustible, a sea. I drifted about in all directions; it seemed natural to go on this way. My time would never run out. Everything I undertook was for eternity, and eternities were at my disposal, even for the smallest projects. I was in search of the old gods, wanted to reconcile them within myself. My intellectual ambitions were fulfilled in the study of many peoples: this was how I atoned for the arrogance of my own forebears. I did not look to history for guidance. The smallest things, because they were on the verge of disappearing, meant more than the biggest. I could not accept ignoring a single life. What-ver this crowded world had no room for, I made a place for within myself. And so now I feel as broad as the world: I feel I touch it everywhere. Year by year the arrogance ofthose who live for themselves alone seems more and more alien to me. Today I know how little I am myself, how much of me is in the universal breath of the spirit. But having attained this goal, I recognize my own futility. I have scorned time, and now it is running out on me. The things one depends on in the course of a life are grotesque, and it is hard to see how one can guard against them without models. Telling stories to anyone who will hear them s stories, who doesn't know you, who doesn't expect literature. Life as a wandering storyteller would be nice. Someone says the word, and you tell the story. You never stop, day or night, you go blind, you lose the use of your limbs. But your mouth still serves its function, and you speak whatever is in your head. You have no possessions, only an infi-nite, ever-growing number of stories. Nicest of all would be if you could live on words alone and did not even need to eat.
Alec Finlay@alecfinlay.bsky.social · 2w ago

word-mntn (Druim Diomhain, the ridge of purposelessness, Tarskavaig). Diomhain can mean vain, lazy, of no use, and will refer to the lack of agricultural value in the land.

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