This indictment of coal-mining in Scotland in the 1920s is kept in balance by the poet’s irony (and knowledge of the Bible). No wonder its author, Joe Corrie, made a stir – a thousand copies of his collection, with ‘The Image o God’ as its title piece, were sold in half-an-hour on one May Day celebration on Glasgow Green.

Corrie defied stock notions of a radical. William Hershaw writes about this complex man with insight and admiration in Lallans 91, the magazine’s Yuil edition (£9). 

          THE IMAGE O GOD

Crawling aboot like a snail in the mud,

Covered wi clammy blae,

Me, made after the image o God –

Jings! But it’s laughable tae.

~

Howkin awa ’neath a mountain o stane

Gaspin for want o air,

The sweast makkin streams doon my bare back-banes,

And my knees aa hauckit and sair.

~

Strainin and cursin the hale shift through,

Half-starved, half-blin, half-mad,

And the gaffer he says, “Less dirt in that coal

Or ye go up the pit, my lad.”

~

So I gie my life tae the Nimmo Squad

For eicht and fower a day.

Me! Made after the image o God –

Jings! But it’s laughable tae.