Dorothy Lawrenson was born in Dundee and grew up in Fife. She studied poetry at Texas State University and the University of Edinburgh, began writing in Scots while living in America, and was the 2019 winner in the Scots category of the Wigtown Poetry Prize. An Associate Lead Reader for openbookreading.com, Dorothy leads monthly shared reading and discussion sessions of Scots language poems and stories for adults in the community. Her poems, in English and Scots, have appeared in journals including Edinburgh Review, Frogmore Papers, Irish Pages, Lallans, Poetry Scotland, The Scores, and South, and in the anthologies A Year of Scottish Poems, Be the First to Like This, Umbrellas of Edinburgh, and the forthcoming Best New British and Irish Poets 2019–2021. She can be found online at www.dorothylawrenson.com and followed on twitter @djlawrenson.

Ranch Road 12, San Marcos

Inby the shooder, Aa trauchle
the gutterie loanin, drookit yird
sookin the sweeshin soond

o fleet watter fae the causey.
The blacktap souchs
wi ilk truck that wins by.
Ae-twa starns glentin
through the smirr – the gloamin
lits fae zinc tae tin

till aw is tint i the mirk o a lampless pit. Suddent
a leam o lichtnin cracks

the nicht across. Aam blin. Syne
glisks o starns: ae, twa, a thoosan –

stramash o smattert gless
oot owre the crazed causey.