Back Room 23: Brent Hodgson, A lost and Unique Scottish voice

Often I re-read Brent Hodgson's side of our long correspondence: a series of splenetic often obscene letters slagging off the literary icons of Dumfries and Galloway and Scotland and threatening to do them violence. Brent was a brilliant humourist and satirist and a very underrated writer. The kind of archaic middle-scots that he often chose to express himself in - a natural choice for someone from New Zealand- was a perfect medium too because it left the reader wondering if the author was a genius or simply taking the piss. The truth was, of course, he was both. If Brent had had another 20 years he would probably have written a major but largely incomprehensible novel from prison, but unfortunately he died in 2011. As it is, his works are hard to find, scattered through Scottish literary magazines of the 1990s, although he did publish four pamphlets and co-edited with Pete Fortune, another vanished literary figure (though very much alive) the great anthology of south west writing 'Mr Burns for Supper' and appeared in the Clocktower Anthology edited by Duncan MacLean 'Ahead of Its Time'.






Some scant information here:

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poet/brent-hodgson/


The Weit

The weit fawis on the gressis
The weit fawis on flouris in the park
Na eschaip is thair fra the weit.
Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding fawis the weit.

Becaus of all the weit, the shops
On the Whitesands are neirly drint.
The weit fawis on pepill at the bus stop.
Now heir the pepill mene!
Thai do nocht lyke the weit.
Ding, ding, ding fawis the weit.

Fra the daw till the glomand
The weit hais bene dingand doun.
And now the revir Nith is in flude...

Now the flude hais entirt the pub
Quhair I am sat. Now the flude hais
Carriit away my Sun newspaper.
Now the fluid hais swepit away the pub
And we are flottand intill the Sulway.
Pepill!
I do nocht lyke this wat wedder ether.



HELLO MAISTER SMYTH'

Hello, Maister Smyth,
Yow suld be att hame
Puttand yowr dennar on.
Yow suld nocht be lyggand thair,
Warslyng with a python.