Promoting and supporting the teaching and study of Scottish literature and language
Winner of an O. Henry Award, Thomas Fox Averill is Professor Emeritus of English at Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas. His most recent novel, Found Documents from the Life of Nell Johnson Doerr, was a Willa Literary Award finalist. He is currently at work on a series of essays about the poetry of Robert Burns and its importance to his family’s part in the Scottish diaspora.
My family – wife, Jeffrey Ann Goudie and children Eleanor and Alexander Goudie-Averill – made a pilgrimage to Scotland in May of 2002. We wanted to explore the Goudie family roots in the southernmost reach of the Scottish lowlands: in Port Logan, a fishpond; and near Drummore, a church, Kirkmaiden. Our itinerary also included those […]
On a Burns Night several years ago, a poet friend Eric recited, from memory, ‘To a Mouse, On Turning Her Up In Her Nest, With The Plough, November 1785’, a poem of forty-eight lines. Our gathering was impressed. A spoken poem is immediate, real, genuine. I must admit, I was jealous. At the time, I […]