THE Pleasures of Hope was 2012's given theme for the annual McCash Scots Poetry Competition (run jointly by The Herald and Glasgow University).

Pippa Little won joint first prize with this response; shivereens means fragments. The best poems from 2003 to 2012 are collected in The Smeddum Test (Kennedy and Boyd).

SHIVEREENS

Sma' coal a-smoulder

in the hearth, soft selkie-gray,

to kiss the sting of bone-cauld hands away

for aye the morning's white as milk

evening's haar will drain the day,

parliaments and banks all gan aglay

for want of sharing fairly:

so look sma' to keep hope brave -

it's black tea, tobacco in a battered tin,

a button's buttonhole against the wind

that keeps love safe:

sma' things make sense of us this way,

the spoon between your teeth, the first hot gulp;

something that will stay

the whole long trauchle through,

that one sweet snap, quick over, of our lives;

things for which we grieve,

things we give away.