Tannahill's 'Poems and Songs' [1875 Edition]It would be unfair not to include that most universal of poets, 'Anonymous', in the select list of Scottish poets here.
Born in Edinburgh. The son of a solicitor's clerk, he was educated at both Edinburgh's and Dundee's High School, and trained as a minister of the church at St.Andrews University. He was forced to cease his studies through lack of money following the death of his father. He became a clerk instead, first in the Commissary Office then the Sheriff Clerk's Office in Edinburgh. He gained local fame when some of his poems were published in Thomas Ruddiman's 'Weekly Magazine' from 1771. His company became sought after and he gave full vent to excess. He became seriously depressed after developing an interest in religion, following a meeting with John Brown, a famous Scottish theologian. His final drift into insanity has been attributed to a fall downstairs. It seems that this provoked a manic outburst and 'friends' tricked him into being admitted to a mental asylum. Conditions in those places were appalling and when he realized where he was it was the last straw. A book of his poetry ('Poems') was published in the year before his suicide. In 1789 Robert Burns paid for a headstone to his memory in Edinburgh's Canongate cemetery, having been influenced by Fergusson's work.
His father was a chemist in Edinburgh. Although born in Edinburgh he had an island connection through his mother, who had been born in Harris, and felt close to Highland society. He grew up in Edinburgh, attending the Royal High School and Edinburgh University. His degree was in the classics. He was a non-combatant in WWII since he was a 'conscientious objector'. His 'day job' was primary school teaching. In 1943 he published the first collection of his poetry ('Far Cry') and together with his second volume, 'The Inward Eye', (published in 1946) it made his name as a member of the 'New Apocalypse' school. This was something he became uncomfortable with and repudiated in his 1985 collected works by excluding these early poems. He found the voice which he was more satisfied with by 1955 ('Riding Lights') and thereafter published many collections of philosophical and witty poetry. He has been generally regarded as the finest Scottish poet of his generation (writing in English) and was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 1986.
This was the pen-name used by Christopher Murray Grieve. He was born in Langholm and educated at Langholm Academy before becoming a pupil-teacher at Broughton school in Edinburgh. He then became a journalist. During the 1914-1918 war he was in the Royal Army Medical Corps. A controversial figure, as many of the most interesting artists are, he pioneered what many regarded as a Scottish literary renaissance in the 20th century. He held strong political opinions which, as they ebbed and flowed, coloured his writings, but central to his work was his intention to create (in his opinion re-create) the Scottish literary language. This involved using a vocabulary from all regions of Scotland and all historical periods which to some seemed forced and artificial, but to others was legitimate given the lyric use to which MacDiarmid put the words. His political views have irritated the simplistic from time to time since he held ideas which seemed to categorize him as a 'Communist', though his communist ideas were very much his own. He did stand as a Communist candidate in an election in 1963 but he had also been a founder member of the 'Scottish National Party'. In the early 1920's he was publishing his own poetry amongst collections of contemporary verse which he was employed to edit. In Scotland his most famous work is probably 'A Drunk Man Looks At The Thistle' (1926) which deals comprehensively with the condition of Scotland and the Scots. This no doubt explains its continuing poularity here.
Born in Deerness, Orkney (Mainland). The family moved to Glasgow when he was fourteen. It was an experience he did not enjoy. He developed left-wing political interests and read widely, including Shaw, Heine, Ibsen and Nietzsche. He settled in London in 1919, marrying the novelist Willa Anderson. They travelled in Europe between 1921 and 1924 and collaborated in translations of Kafka and Feuchtwanger. He published his first volume of poems ('First Poems') in 1925, having returned to Scotland. He subsequently lived in France for a while, writing novels, then lived in Britain for most of the 'thirties. He was at odds with 'Hugh McDiarmid' over the latter's artificial construction of a Scottish literary language. At the end of WWII he went back to Prague as director of the British Institute there. When the Communists took over in 1948 he moved to Rome to run the British Institute there. He spent five years as head of the adult education college at Newbattle Abbey, in Scotland, before taking up the post of Eliot Norton professor of poetry at Harvard University in the U.S.A. from 1955-1956. After this he settled near Cambridge in England. In all he published eight small volumes of poetry as well as publishing some poems in 'The Listener' and other magazines. Other work includes a critical and controversial study of John Knox.
Born in Paisley. He was a cotton weaver. The weavers had a reputation for intellectual and artistic endeavour. Tannahill was shy and morbidly sensitive. In 1807 he had a volume of poems and songs published ('Poems and Songs') which met with great success. When the publisher Constable delayed publication of a collection of new songs, this affected him so much that he burned the MSS and drowned himself in a canal.
© Copyright Len Nicholson, 1996