A biography of Scottish poet Hugh MacDiarmid (1892-1978). Examines not only his literary career in both Scots and English verse, but also his political work as a communist, cofounder of the Scottish National Party, and frequent candidate for Parliament. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland,
Baglow shows that this search for justification was a focus for MacDiarmid almost from the start, but that it was only with his development of "synthetic Scots" that he begin to grapple with it directly. While at first the idea of a Scottish essence seemed to promise the spiritual foundation MacDiarmid was seeking, as his poetry developed this idea became less important and he came to see poetry as an unrealizable ideal. This reading of MacDiarmid's poetry, relating it to the modernist movement, will be of value to readers interested in twentieth-century literature.
The only full-length companion available to this distinctive and challenging Scottish poet By using previously uncollected creative and discursive writings, this international group of contributors presents a vital updating of MacDiarmid scholarship. They bring fresh insights to major poems such as A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle, To Circumjack Cencrastus and In Memoriam James Joyce, and offer new political, ecological and science-based readings in relation to MacDiarmid's work from the 1930s. They also discuss his experimental short fiction in Annals of the Five Senses, the autobiographical Lucky Poet, and a representative selection of his essays and journalism. They assess MacDiarmid's legacy and reputation in Scotland and beyond, placing his poetry within the context of international modernism.
By examining at length for the first time those places in Scotland that inspired MacDiarmid to produce his best poetry, Scott Lyall shows how the poet's politics evolved from his interaction with the nation, exploring how MacDiarmid discovered a hidden tradition of radical Scottish Republicanism through which he sought to imagine a new Scottish future. Adapting postcolonial theory, this book allows readers a fuller understanding not only of MacDiarmid's poetry and politics, but also of international modernism, and the social history of Scottish modernism.
This is both the first complete annotated edition of the letters exchanged by these major twentieth-century Scottish poets and the first major exploration of their long friendship and literary association. Spanning nearly fifty years, from 27 July 1934 to 23 July 1978, this engaging correspondence offers a revealing and sometimes intimate look at their lively dialogical exchanges on a broad range of topics from major historical events such as the Spanish Civil War and WW II, to the mundane challenges of daily life.The introductory chapters chart the development of MacDiarmid and MacLean's enduring friendship in relation to their quite different literary contexts and careers, discuss MacLean's significant contributions to MacDiarmid's Golden Treasury of Scottish Poetry, and situate MacLean's literary innovations in terms of Gaelic modernism. They thus provide comparative critical insights into the influence of cultural nationalism on each writer's developing poetics, their work as translators, and their mutual influence on each other's careers. These private letters in which culture, politics, and modern history intersect offer a fascinating glimpse at the creative processes and collaborative work of Hugh MacDiarmid and Sorley MacLean.Key Features:* The first complete annotated edition of the correspondence between the two poets * The only major exploration of MacDiarmid and MacLean's friendship and literary association* Full biographical and historical Introduction, bibliography and appendices
This volume includes the full texts of In Memoriam James Joyce, Three Hymns to Lenin, and The Kind of Poetry I Want. Included are long poems and intense lyrics.
Hugh MacDiarmid's Selected Poetry is an invaluable introduction to the work of a major poet who, despite the enthusiasm of T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, remains little known in the United States. MacDiarmid (1892-1978), universally recognized as the greatest Scottish poet since Robert Burns and the man responsible for reviving Scots as a literary language, was also the author of an enormous body of poems in English. As the noted critic and translator Eliot Weinberger writes of MacDiarmid's work in his introduction: "There is nothing like it in modern literature, nothing even close. It is an attempt to return poetry to its original role as repository for all that a culture knows about itself." Edited by Alan Riach and the poet's son Michael Grieve, the Selected Poetry draws generously from fifty years of work, and includes the complete text of MacDiarmid's 1926 masterpiece, "A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle."