Hugh MacDiarmid has long been considered the greatest Scottish poet since Robert Burns. That might not be the most impressive of distinctions, but his admirers would add that his work has dimensions beyond Burns's, and that in a contemporary context a...

The works of Christopher Grieve, written under the pen-name Hugh MacDiarmid, are now recognized as leading examples of Modern Scottish poetry. His poems often explore controversial subject matter, and many reflect his left-wing political ideology. LIKE one of his famous thistles, wiry and...

Marco Fazzini, ed. & tr. Seamus Heaney, tribute Venice. Supernova. 2001 (c2000). 90 pages L. 15,000. ISBN 88-86870-54-X THE STUDY AND TRANSLATION of Scottish literature in the nineteenth century was a German phenomenon, but during the twentieth it was Italy which held...

"The Eemis Stane," from Sangschaw, is one of MacDiarmid's most famous lyrics. It is a fine example not only of the engaging effects of "synthetic Scots" but also of the characteristically unearthly mood of many of his early poems. The atmosphere of "The Eemis Stane" is initially dreamlike and disembodied, but it seems to coagulate and become vaguely pessimistic as the poem progresses. There is a tinge of loneliness and sorrow in the poem, but there is little ...

When one discusses the poetry of Hugh MacDiarmid one is forced to make an evaluation of the importance of ideas in poetry or to put it another way to discuss how ideas are related if at all to poetry. (p. 124) MacDiarmid's favourite method seems to be a dialectic one. He may have learned this from a study of Communism but he was talking about Hegel before Communism came into his poetry. In this method he veers from one idea to its opposite. And very often he comes down on neither side. (p. 126)

[The] mindless, sentimental poetry in Scots explains not only the vehemence of [MacDiarmid's] satire on St. Andrew's societies and Burns clubs in [A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle] but the manner and matter of the poem, highbrow in the extreme, as far removed as possible from the kailyard, or often popular in form and images but applied ironically and unexpectedly to sacred or intellectual topics. (p. 86) [A Drunk Man] forms more of a unity than most non-narrative long poems, like Pound'...