Scotland Author: Editors: Kathleen Jamie & Don Paterson ISBN-13: 9781739090203Publisher: Irish Pages Guideline Price: £14It would be silly to try to say anything all-encompassing about such a varied collection of essays and poems, meaning that whatever I do assert will have to be taken as partially true. So, let me say: what a glum mood runs through this anthology! I had no idea Scottish artists were feeling so bitter and depleted. As is often the case with our own Irish national dramas, the phrase that comes to mind while reading these essays is “storm in a teacup”, with such storms always appearing faintly ridiculous to anyone positioned safely outside the cup. One contributor, James Campbell, opens his essay with the complaint of being stereotyped as “dour” by the English. Yet if this anthology could be summarised as anything (which, again, it cannot), dour is the word.The main issues troubling Scottish artists seem to be the failed referendum back in 2014 and the lack of arts funding in Scotland. This latter does sound egregious, especially reading from Ireland where, for all our caterwauling, we have some of the best arts funding in the world.The foreword by the collection’s editors, Kathleen Jamie and Don Paterson, is bristlingly hyperbolic. They assume the reader’s ready belief in a Machiavellian plot by Westminster to keep Scotland in England’s grasp, without evidence or qualification. There’s talk of “veiled threat”, “gaslighting” and “hollow laughter”. Next, Neal Ascherson’s essay concludes: “But to perish ‘unconquered’ and asphyxiated by a suicidal neighbour is no sort of victory.” Later, Stuart Kelly (in an otherwise excellent essay) questions why Scotland’s creative output after the referendum wasn’t more like that of the States, post-9/11. Yikes!But not every essay is an atavistic wail and some of the contributors stand out. Dougie Strang offers a beautiful reflection on art through the ages. Colin Bramwell, switching between Scots and English, made me chuckle, and I adored Rosemary Goring’s piece on the demise of literary reviewing. There were many others worth reading, some not. As for the poetry, which felt a little out of place, oddly tacked on at the end, the standouts were Rob McClure and Ryan Van Winkle, whose City Snowprints, 2018 opens: “It got late. I took a snow day. / I took a walk. There had been / a lot of giving that winter.”Lucy Sweeney Byrne is a writer and critic