Three great Scottish poets
Bloodaxe author Kathleen Jamie perfomed at this summer's Edinburgh International Book Festival. Our web site editor was there.

Edwin Morgan is suffering from throat cancer. At 81, Scotland's greatest living poet and playwright could be forgiven for taking it easy. Instead he is onstage reading his life-affirming poetry in leafy Charlotte Square Gardens at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.

Beside him are two of Scotland's finest poets from another generation: Don Paterson and Bloodaxe's own Kathleen Jamie. Their combined age is 77 - still three years short of Eddie's tally.

Morgan has six honorary degrees and an OBE

The younger poets could be forgiven for feeling humble in Morgan's presence. He is the last of the giants of Scottish literature, since Iain Crichton Smith's death two years ago. His prolific output of poetry, criticism, plays and libretti has earned six honorary degrees and an OBE.

But there is no fibre of arrogance in Edwin Morgan's being, and no reason for Paterson or Jamie to feel anything other than his equal.

On a sunny Tuesday afternoon the three are here to read to a tent packed with 250 poetry readers. In terms of public recognition the audience trumps the stage. Doctor Who actor Sylvester McCoy, novelists Sebastian Faulkes, A L Kennedy and Alan Spence, and poets Robin Robertson and Bloodaxe's Adrian Mitchell have all come to hear this poetry.

Timelords in the audience? This stuff must be good.

Don Paterson, introduced by Scottish Arts Council's Gavin Wallace reads first. 38-year-old Paterson is a Dundonian renaissance man: jazz musician, publisher (he is poetry editor for Picador) and poet.

Paterson has the patter of an experienced musician. Unshaven and lugubrious, he seems almost embarrassed by his own dry wit. He reads new work: "Fame", an untitled ballad, and "Twinfloor". This last is typical Paterson: scholarly, metaphysical and in Scots.

The last line is remarkable

But most memorable, also not yet published, is "Waking with Russell", a love poem to the poet's young son. Self-deprecating, Paterson calls it "relentlessly soppy". Rather it is piercingly emotional, yet utterly without sentiment. Its remarkable last line is an old romantic cliché given new meaning: "I kissed your mouth and pledged myself forever". From a father to a son this is breathtakingly tender.

Kathleen Jamie was born in Renfrewshire in 1962 and published her first book with Bloodaxe in 1986, "A Flame in Your Heart", co-written with Andrew Greig. She has won several prestigious poetry prizes including the Somerset Maugham Award, and now teaches creative writing in St Andrews. Bloodaxe will publish a new selection of her poetry, "Mr and Mrs Scotland are Dead" early next year.

Jamie is slight and pale, hiding behind a chestnut fringe, perhaps not wholly at ease with public readings. After the convivial Paterson, she at first seems a little aloof as she reads a series of unpublished poems.

"I have wanted since I was 15 to be a nature poet" she tells us. "I thought I'd better get on with it". She starts with "Swallow's Nest", a subtle, perfectly understated short poem.

"I wrote that for my husband, it's the only poem I've ever written for him. Ten years and he gets, what, ten lines?" Jamie laughs, and her humour dispels any impression of coldness.

"Pipistrelles", "The Glass-hulled Boat" and "Basking Shark" follow. This is nature poetry with something of the unease and ambivalence of Seamus Heaney, but imbued with Jamie's distinctive sensibility.

In "Puddocks" Jamie watches two toads ("puddocks" is the Scots word) mate, like "something scrotal", until the arrival of "The car that would smear them into one another".

She finishes with "The Bower", another new poem. "I suspect this is about poetry" she says, shamefaced. "I always swore I'd never write a poem about poetry!"

And so to the main feature: Edwin Morgan. Morgan is a delight to hear, a reader whose quiet reserve and gentle voice are utterly compelling. The recent poems he reads are as lambent and joyous as ever.

Glasgow, full of would-be demons

"Cinquevalle", which pictures the famous juggler on his tight-wire, is followed by "The Demon on Argyle Street", a magic realist story of Glasgow "full of would-be demons".

"Gasometer" sees Morgan eulogise these much-despised structures. "You're constructivist to the core" he tells them. Finally "Gull" where a seagull lands on Morgan's Glasgow windowsill and peers in at him - "That was a cold inspection, I can tell you".

Stepping out of the tent, I felt I had been in the presence of three of Scotland's Greatest Living Poets, not one.

But only one Timelord.