Wee Gaitherin at the Grassic Gibbon Centre - Karen Macfarlane

Perthshire poet and Wee Gaitherin Trustee Karen Macfarlane will be joining our celebration at the Centre on Saturday. Tickets here: Lewis Grassic Gibbon 125 Year Celebration Tickets, Saturday, August 15  •  7 PM - 9:30 PM | Eventbrite

Karen Macfarlane grew up in Dundee and wandered a bit before settling back by the Tay in the Carse of Gowrie.  Her poetry is widely published in magazines and anthologies and her collections, All About the Surface and Native River and Other Returnings, are published by Seahorse Publications.

Here's a poem by Karen, who says 'One of the themes of Grassic Gibbon's writing is the changing nature of the relationship between people and the land. This poem is about how a river - the Tay - used to have a very different meaning for the people who live by it.'

When I was a goddess

I gave power freely, blessing trade and travel,

one strand in a weave of immortal waterways

linking a highland loch with Phoenicia and beyond.

By Danube and Thames, Tamar and Forth,

indigo, salt and wool were shuttled,

and peat-pool polished horn.

Together, we knotted a silver net

that neither earth nor air could match.

Lives followed us, followed me,

as a carver follows the grain of his wood.

Now, they ignore The Flowing, Tatha,

cargo their pointless stuff on roads,

steal power from earth and air

forgetting their goddess is still here,

watching, redundant, worshipped now

only for my beauty.

Tatha (Gaelic) - Tay

From Native River and Other Returnings, Seahorse Publications, 2026