‘Get Me Oot this Pleiter!’

Weather, landscape, and the struggle over the national and cultural identities of Scotland’s people have featured as predominant themes within Scottish poetry for centuries, with changing depictions of the environment and selective use of the Scots language mirroring significant socio-political, cultural, and national upheaval over time. Thus, Scottish poetry is highly reflective of changing perceptions of Scotland, of its people and their identities, and its relationship to external forces and challenges, offering glimpses into particular moments in time where received traditions from the past are reconsidered and expectations for the future reimagined in response to perceived threats. While interactions with the weather represent a long-standing symbolic marker of Scottish rural identity, rural residents now face new challenges posed by increasing extreme weather, which is forcing them to reconsider their relationship with their environment. The poem ‘Get Me Oot this Pleiter!’ Far It’s a Wee Bit Coorse far Tomorrow’s Whisky engages with the themes of weather, environment and identity, and shows the emotional complexity inherent in the ways Scottish people confront the threat posed by climate change through the poet’s reflection of the lessons learned from an ethnographic encounter with rural residents one night in a flood-emergency evacuation centre. The poet’s voice also reflects their own positionality and conflict over their dual status as a member of wider Scottish society, but also as a researcher and outsider within the particular rural locality. Lessons learned through the poet’s ethnographic interactions with interlocutors are delineated through use of the Scottish poetic ‘double tongue’ (use of Scots and English) to show how even amidst chaotic surroundings the received past, imagined future and culturally specific symbols of identity (including language) are reconsidered, communicated, received, and restrengthened. In thirty-six lines presented in three twelve-line stanzas with the addition of two, two-line breaks within the main traditional stanza convention, the poem also utilises disruptive post-modern structural techniques. The mix in language and structure aims to respect traditional linguistic conventions in Scots oral verse while simultaneously challenging class-based expectations in Scottish poetic creative writing to assert equality in cultural creative power, as well as to emphasise the message of how externally-derived interventions aimed at providing support during extreme weather emergencies may inadvertently enhance feelings of alienation.