A Scottish Poem A Day

by Gaby Morgan

A Year of Scottish Poems is a glorious collection of 366 poems compiled by Gaby Morgan. Reflecting the changing seasons, landscape and history of Scotland and her people and marking key dates in the Scottish calendar – from Burns Night to Hogmanay – these poems are powerful, thoughtful and uplifting. With an introduction from the National Poet for Scotland, Makar Jackie Kay, this collection is bursting at the seams with the strongest voices in Scottish poetry including Robert Burns, Robert Louis Stevenson, George Mackay Brown, Sir Walter Scott, Liz Lochhead, Don Paterson, Nan Shepherd, Stewart Conn, Kathleen Jamie, Elma Mitchell, John Rice, Muriel Spark, Iain Crichton Smith, Sorley MacLean, Julia Donaldson, Carolina Oliphant, Norman MacCaig, Marion Angus, Kate Clanchy, Carol Ann Duffy and many more to deliver magic on every page that lasts a whole year!

Genres: Poetry, Scotland

592 pages, Paperback

Published December 27, 2018

Reviews

[Andrea · Rating 3 out of 5]

Okay, so I cheated and I read this over three weeks instead of over a whole year... Maybe that's why its charm was a bit lost on me.

The good:
- Amazing variety of poems, topics, and poets: short, long, haikus; about love, about death, about Scotland, about anything and everything.
- The use of Scots Gaelic! (With translations)
- Some poems were really, really good; some others were very curious.
- Robert Louis Stevenson SLAPS. I didn't know he was such a good poet.
- Very beautiful book with amazing art cover, a glossary, an index...

The meh:
- I think there were more mediocre poems than really good ones, so my impression of this anthology is more "it's okay" than "ooooooh it was awesome".
- I know Scottish English has its own dialects and I fully respect that. But for every poem written (or translated into) Standard English, there were five that read something like "Cauld aneuch the wind micht blaw". I realise there's a glossary, but I can't keep turning back and forth... So a lot of this anthology involved me reading the poems out loud trying to sound out the words and decipher their meanings, which was quite tiresome when I was also trying to understand the wider picture.
- There was a lot of religious poetry in here, a bit more than I was expecting.

So I'm rating this 3.5/5 because the poetry that I liked, I really liked. But everything else... Meh.

[Alyssa Poulin · Rating 5 out of 5]

To be honest, I purchased the book in part because of its gorgeous cover (art by Josie Shenoy). I was also visiting Scotland and was intrigued to read some Scottish poetry. I did not realize there would be a poem for every day and that each poem would be tied somehow to the date or season! What a lovely surprise. I plan to read a poem each day.

I am loving it so far and would recommend this collection to anyone interested in Scottish poetry, or even just wanting to read a poem each day!

[Manon · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was so lovely to read throughout the year!

[Cressida · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars

There were some wonderful poems scattered through but I didn't necessarily feel like most were worth my time.

Make of that what you will.

[Emily Stewart · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s been fun to read a poem a day this year. I really enjoyed the selection of Scottish poems in this book.

[Jessica]

and with that, goodbye 2024! 🎉

[Benjamin Ciesinski · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you like poetry, Scotland, and/or Scottish poetry, you’ll love this book!

[Kelsey Pearson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read a poem every day at lunchtime in 2025 (or a few over lunch or dinner if life got busy!).

Great selection of poems. Some were food for thought, most led to discussion, and a few were quite amusing (in particular April 1st and some of December's poems).

[Joanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have thoroughly enjoyed reading this book over the year. (Finished a day early I know!) There's a great variety of poems from old to more modern and I have discovered poets I hadn't read before. Really recommend this book to anyone who wants to read a bit more poetry.

[Anna P (whatIreallyRead) · Rating 3 out of 5]

DNF at p. 56. I started reading this on January 1, along with 2 other poetry collections in the same "a poem a day" format, and fully intended to read it the whole year. Every day I'd read a page from each of the bulky books. But then I had to move far away, and I realized I hadn't enjoyed this enough to bring it with me.

Most poems had no connection to the date they were assigned, not by date or season, except for the one on Burns Night. There was also no extra context about the author or the poem. They were written in different decades and even centuries, and sometimes the selection seemed kind of random. Like, there was just a poem about Friends, the TV series, written in standard English. Ok, but what does it have to do with Scotland, or this day? I guess nothing, the author just happens to be Scottish. But why include this one at all?

Reading poetry requires concentration, but poetry written in dialect is even harder to follow, and I'm a non-native English speaker. Of course, I expected this. The edition included a glossary that helped me decipher, and a couple of Gaelic poems were given a full translation.

All in all, had I lived at home, I would have finished this book, but I decided to abandon it.

[Tango · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was given this as a Christmas gift in 2020 from my soon-to-be daughter-in-law (who we did a road trip around Scotland with in 2019) and have read it throughout the year (mostly as catch ups each weekend). As with all anthologies I have loved some poems more than others but have enjoyed the experience and the breadth of poetic forms and styles, use of Gaelic at times and general love of all things Scottish that shines through.

[Ailsa · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolutely lovely, varied collection of poems. I read it throughout the year, day by day, and each poem was different in a new way. Naturally some were similar to others and some weren't as strong as others, but overall there were far more poems that made me go "oh" than poems I skimmed by. And as I was reading it throughout the year, it was lovely to see how the poem tied to the seasons and dates they were assigned. A gorgeous anthology!

[Keith Boynton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wildly inconsistent, and with the annoying feature of no dates attached to the poems – but there's a lot of pleasure to be found in here, even if about 80% of the best poems turn out to be written by Robert Louis Stevenson...

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lovely companion for 2020...

[Ehryn · Rating 4 out of 5]

What I really liked about this collection of poetry is that it mixed classic poems in with newer ones. It’s a great selection and I like the format going month by month.

[Tara · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a great way to spend the year and a good way to widen your reading horizons. Poetry isn't a big read for me but this may have changed it.

[Stuart · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am not a great poetry reader and got this as a gift but I guess it provided a wide range of 'Scottish' poems both traditional and modern.

[Flora Wyllie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed most of the poems but not all. A varied selection.

[julianna · Rating 5 out of 5]

loved reading this throughout the year!

[Ashley Victoria · Rating 5 out of 5]

Me and partner began this book in 2023 and read a poem from the book for each of its dated pages. It was a lovely read and had some nice poems in it. I am not a poetry connoisseur and so some of the poems didn’t quite get me the way they might be meant to, but there were some gems for sure. A lovely book to get you through challenging times :-)

[Alan Stuart · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a great format, one poem for each day of the year, and while I might have preferred a few more modern and controversial poems in the mix, I can see why the compiler has gone for a safer and therefore more palatable collection. An excellent present for old and young. And all of us in between.

['Ella · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful, some light-hearted, some tragic, some in Gaelic. Would recommend it.

(I always found this front cover funny. When I think of Scotland, I think of anything but symmetry and balance. I think of havoc and nature at its wilderness)