Elaine is an environmental manager by profession, a writer of fiction, poetry and screenplays by vocation, and transgender by necessity.
Elaine dives head first into themes of Love, Family and Regret giving the reader a glimpse into her own life, while also asking what it means to be Trans in Scotland today.
Transient Light is her first collection but Elaine has also been published by 404ink and her short film ‘High Heels Aren’t Compulsory’ was Winner of Best Scottish Short at SQIFF, the Scottish Queer International Film Festival 2015 and also nominated for the Iris Prize 2016.
Granny’s Pot
My most treasured inheritance
is an enormous pot.
Older than I am, the lid long gone,
I got another from somewhere.
From that old pot
my granny would feed us.
Boiled meat on Saturdays
from the Sunday soup;
stew, spaghetti,
mince and tatties.
Every few months
she’d buy fruit;
oranges, strawberries,
blackcurrants and bags of sugar.
In that enormous pot
she’d boil up jam
or marmalade,
Jars and jars, enough
for six months of breakfasts.
Now, in my Granny’s old pot
I make soups and stocks,
stovies and stews
and warming winter food;
pot-roasts for potlucks
and dinner parties;
and, happiest of all, from that old pot
I get to feed my friends.
239
(In memory ...)
The cold November morning dawns too bright;
a day like this one should have leaden skies,
be raining with the tears that cloud our eyes,
our grief and anger darkening our sight.
The leaves lie underfoot, while those unshed but golden catch the sunlight, like the flames
of candles lit as we recite the names,
in memory, of our loved and honoured dead.
Our fallen, as the leaves, though not in war
but murdered and discarded with the trash
that they’re regarded as; or burned to ash
with loved ones; shot, stabbed, beaten; many more
who met their deaths in agony and fear.
We mourn them, in their hundreds, every year.