I didn’t want to sully my celebration of the wonderful news that Alison Lang has been shortlisted Saltire Society literary awards with this gripe, so I’ve held it over for today: where on earth are the poetry books on the shortlists? There’s Crawford’s biography of Burns, but that’s the closest we get. No Hunt in the Forest, no Outside the Narrative, no Third Wish Wasted, no Farewell My Lovely, no When the Sun Turns Green to name a few that could well have been candidates for the best book list. And no Natural Mechanical or Opposite of Cabbage, to name two bleedin’ obvious candidates for the first book prize.

This is crazy, surely. So much for the year of homecoming, in which we were celebrating who, again? And remind me: just what  is it he’s famous for?* I really don’t care about the special homecoming award, you know. Perhaps we need a poetry category in the Saltire Society awards. Or perhaps, as I hinted elsewhere a while back**, we need another less winner-takes-all approach to celebrating new writing.

Or maybe we should take up pottery instead.

*No, aside from the amorous exploits.

**See my answer to question 6.