Sun Behind the Castle

The Edinburgh of Angus Calder’s poems is not the city of summer tourism and landmark buildings. It is the all-the-year-round arena of lingering mists or brilliant sunlight on grey stone, where seagulls and pigeons command the early-morning streets, curlers sweep their ice at Murrayfield and coarse sportsmen revel on the Meadows. World famous Sandy Bell’s is not the only pub evoked, and Bread Street features more strongly than Princes Street. This is because the centre of Calder’s Edinburgh is Tollcross, terrain of theatres and cheap shops, ethnic restaurants and lapdance bars, just southwest of respectability. The culminating sequence of Sun Behind the Castle transports to Tollcross the ancient Roman poet Horace, modernising completely more than a score of his famous Odes, with their gossip and lyricism, fatalism, political comment and hedonistic moralising. ‘Carpe diem. Enjoy this delicious biscuit.’