I lived from 1892-1978. I was from Scotland.
Hugh MacDiarmid (Christopher Murray Grieve) was born in Langholm, 1892; died in Biggar, 1978.
He worked as a journalist in Scotland and Wales, serving in the RAMC during the First World War. He adopted the literary name 'Hugh MacDiarmid', and the writing career that he himself described as 'volcanic activity' got underway in the 1920s. His output in poetry and prose was prodigious and always controversial. He wrote poems in Scots, mixing the literary with the vernacular.
A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle (1926) is the most ambitious expression of his critical nationalism and fervent internationalism. MacDiarmid galvanised the Scottish Renaissance movement. A member of the Communist Party and a founding member of the National Party of Scotland, he was expelled from and rejoined both. His later philosophical poetry (in English) shows his vigorous intellect and engagement with science.
MacDiarmid is recognised as the towering Scottish literary figure of the twentieth century.
He worked as a journalist in Scotland and Wales, serving in the RAMC during the First World War. He adopted the literary name 'Hugh MacDiarmid', and the writing career that he himself described as 'volcanic activity' got underway in the 1920s. His output in poetry and prose was prodigious and always controversial. He wrote poems in Scots, mixing the literary with the vernacular.
A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle (1926) is the most ambitious expression of his critical nationalism and fervent internationalism. MacDiarmid galvanised the Scottish Renaissance movement. A member of the Communist Party and a founding member of the National Party of Scotland, he was expelled from and rejoined both. His later philosophical poetry (in English) shows his vigorous intellect and engagement with science.
MacDiarmid is recognised as the towering Scottish literary figure of the twentieth century.
My poetry
- I’ the how-dumb-deid o’ the cauld hairst nicht
The warl’ like an eemis stane10 lines, 1 comment - A war to save civilization, you say?
Then what have you to do with it, pray?5 lines - (On the Western Seaboard of South Uist)
(Los muertos abren los ojos a los quc viven)11 lines - Cwa een like milk-wort and bog-cotton hair!
1 love you, earth, in this mood best o' a'12 lines - When the warl's couped roun' as a peerie
That licht-lookin craw o a body, the mime,12 lines - O wha's the bride that cairries the bunch
O' thistles blinterin white?28 lines
