Liz Lochhead Poems

weather evocative as scent
the romance of dark stormclouds
in big skies over the low wide river
of long shadows and longer shafts of light
...

Trouble is not my middle name.
It is not what I am.
I was not born for this.
Trouble is not a place
...

Down on her hands and knees
at ten at night on Hogmanay,
my mother still giving it elbowgrease
jiffywaxing the vinolay. (This is too
...

for Robyn Marsack

Go take a book down from the shelf and open it.
Listen, this isn't ‘book' but box,
box full of sound you lift the lid on, opening.
...

The moment she died, my mother's dance dresses
turned from the colours they really were
to the colours I imagine them to be.
...

Friendship is a real boat,
Clydebuilt like the best of them,
pride and strength in every rivet and spot weld.
A vessel to last lifetimes, to carry a bond
...

There is no need they say
but the needles still move
their rhythms in the working of your hands
as easily
as if your hands
...

be garlanded;
the poet's head
should be innocent of the leaves of the sweet bay tree,
twisted. All honour goes to poetry.
...

She is getting good and ready to renounce
his sweet flesh.
Not just for lent. (For
Ever)
...

The present author being, from her mother's milk,
a lover of the poetic effusions of Mr Robert Burns and
all creatures therein (whether mouse, louse, yowe, dug
or grey mare Meg) was nonetheless appalled to find,
...