Jane's Writing Shed.

Written in support of all the refugees travelling to Europe who are desperately seeking new lives. Somewhere, not here If we were birds we’d heed no borders, if I, if we, if war, if poverty, if trafficked, war weary people, if corpses locked in lorries, washed up on indifferent tides, if death is better than torture, barrel bombs, leaving everything better than staying, walking with hundreds and hundreds for hundreds of miles, but we are humans, who all came from, came from, came from, all refugees from somewhere, not here, every single one.

Very sad news this week that Tessa Ransford has died. She was the founder of the Scottish Poetry Library and other significant initiatives to enable poetry to flourish in Scotland including Scottish Pamphlet Poetry and the Callum Macdonald Memorial Award. I only met Tessa once very briefly but I'm aware that so much of her life was devoted to developing resources for poets and poetry in her adopted country. Demonstrably she was a dynamic, creative person and a force for good who will be greatly missed. The first poem in her collection 'When it Works it feels like play' 1998 is 'The Shepherd of Remedello'. Thank you Tessa Ransford for everything you did for poetry in Scotland. The Shepherd of Remedello (The prehistoric man found at Hauslabjoch the Otztal Alps on 19 September 1991) He went to sleep for five thousand years not expecting a resurrection high on the ridge where he tended flocks with grass-woven cloak and birch tinderbox copper axe and flintst...