Poem of the month - June and July 2006

Real Thistles On Les Murray having remarked that he couldn't find any thistles in Scotland. You'd have found your thistles on motorway shoulders, in the cracks beside barns, in small time gardens and other town yards, and you'd have known them from our yarns, stamped in gold on book spines. Cracked into crystal whisky- tumblers they sooth the inebriated ditches, or still adorn allotments' protesting potato trenches, or crouch rough beside rivers. They are banished from farms. Fact: they are a notifiable invasive weed; if your neighbour lets thistle seed, you can cop him. He must poison them or dig them up. But they flower unstoppably in our minds, defiant beauty in unkempt lands. By Sally Evans From The Lie of the Land, stories and poems from Perth and Kinross, edited by Brian McCabe, Margaret Gillies Brown and Patricia Ace (Perth and Kinross Libraries, 2004).

About the poet Sally Evans has published three books - Millennial (Diehard, 1995), Looking for Scotland (Salzburg 1996) and Bewick Walks to Scotland (Arrowhead) - as well as many poems in magazines and on websites. Another book is to be published by Arrowhead in 2006, and The Bees, a satirical poem with full page line drawings by Reinhard Behrens is due to be published by Diehard. In 2005 she was awarded the first Ted Slade Award for Service to Poetry by the Poetry Kit website. Sally lives in Callander, where she is editor of Poetry Scotland and runs Kings Bookshop with her publisher/bookbinder husband, Ian W. King.

About the poem Sally says 'Real Thistles is a comment on Scotland from someone who has seen it from the edges. It is a poem with assonance and hidden balance, and a poem that laughs behind its poker-face. The poem is called Real Thistles because I had just writtten another one with the title Artificial Grass. The poem is in Bewick Walks to Scotland (Arrowhead, 2004). It first appeared in the Herald. Les Murray, who sparked off the poem, is also the "Laureate Beyond the Seas" of Poetry Scotland, the independent magazine I edit.'

If you have enjoyed this poem, you can borrow a range of poetry from the Scottish Poetry Library, who also lend by post. Telephone 0131 557 2876 or email reception@spl.org.uk. For an online catalogue, poetry events listings and more featured poems, please visit the Scottish Poetry Library website.