Owen and Sassoon: The Edinburgh Poems

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He felt himself linked to Scottish poets of the past, like Dunbar and Henryson, their humanism – and saw himself as a successor to that quintessential Edinburgh poet, Robert Fergusson (‘faur apairt/in time, but fell alike in hert’). But Garioch was no parochialist, as at the very least his devotion to the Italian poet Guiseppe Belli (1791-1863) attests. He spent much of his time and energy translating over a hundred of Belli’s satirical sonnets, written originally in the Roman dialect – almost the perfect vehicle for Garioch to poke fun at establishment excesses. These translations the critic and translator Christopher Whyte has called ‘a stunning performance’. Scott Lyall and Margery Palmer McCulloch (eds), The Edinburgh Companion to Hugh MacDiarmid (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011) How does it feel when the person you love the most is already gone? Nordbrandt creates an accurate representation about the grief that follows a loved one’s death. You are gone. Aristotle, in his Poetics, states that poetry is like a medical purge that cures the soul rather than the physical body. Most poets often compose dark works as a form of release.

My dear Sir, do not think that I blaspheme when I tell you that your great London, as compared to Dun-Edin, ‘mine own romantic town’, is as prose compared to poetry, or as a great rumbling, rambling, heavy Epic compared to a Lyric, brief, bright, clear, and vital as a flash of lightning.” Robin Fulton, ‘Norman MacCaig’, in Contemporary Scottish Poetry: individuals and contexts (Loanhead: Macdonald, 1974)One of the principal figures behind the Scottish Renaissance of the mid-20th century, Hugh MacDiarmid, was an influential poet and writer. Bill Findlay (ed.), Frae Ither Tongues: essays on modern translations into Scots (Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 2004) [two essays on Garioch] Gordon Wright, MacDiarmid: an illustrated biography of Christopher Murray Grieve (Hugh MacDiarmid) (Edinburgh: Gordon Wright Publishing, 1977) MacCaig's formal education was firmly rooted in the Edinburgh soil: he attended the Royal High School and then Edinburgh University where he studied Classics. He then trained to be a teacher at Moray House in Edinburgh and spent a large part of his life as a primary school teacher. During the war MacCaig refused to fight because he did not want to kill people who he felt were just the same as him. He therefore spent time in various prisons and doing landwork because of his pacifist views. Having spent years educating young children, MacCaig then went on to teach university students when in 1967 he became the first Fellow in Creative Writing at Edinburgh University, and he later held a similar post while teaching at the University of Stirling.

MacDiarmid’s great emphasis in his later poetry and political understanding is that form in art also involves movement. It can never be static. MacDiarmid knew this, but he also learned it, deeply, in his years at the centre of cultural activity in Scotland in the 1920s, then in the years of exile, collapse and recovery in the 1930s, and it is at the core of all his later work. He continued to dominate the Scottish literary world even as he aged. Edwin Morgan, in his tribute on MacDiarmid’s 75th birthday, said: ‘Eccentric and often maddening genius he may be, but MacDiarmid has produced many works which, in the only test possible, go on haunting the mind and memory and casting Coleridgean seeds of insight and surprise.’ As he became older, MacCaig's fame spread and he received such honours as the O.B.E. and the Queen's Medal for Poetry, yet it was at home in Edinburgh and Assynt where he was probably most appreciated. This was evident at his 75th, 80th, and 85th birthday parties when the cream of the Scottish literati and musicians came together for readings and musical performances. I’m convinced the boys at Tynecastle High School influenced his poetry – he clearly had a good relationship with the class teacher and the boys.” McLehose. Edinburgh had brought him 'Clarinda', patronage, prominence and prestige, but few good poems and virtually nothing The literary arguments intertwined with crises in MacDiarmid’s personal life. His first wife, Peggy Skinner, left him for a coal merchant. He met his second wife, Valda Trevlyn, and with their young son Michael, went to Shetland in 1933. Here, physical and mental breakdown followed a period of intense isolation, introspection and psychological anxiety. Astonishingly, his greatest poems of the 1930s delivered a way through the crises. ‘Lament for the Great Music’ reconnects with deeper traditions, the classical music of the Highland bagpipe and all that signifies for a multi-layered, complex, tragic, defiant, strengthening, persistent national character. ‘On a Raised Beach’ begins with the poet utterly alone but it ends with the understanding that life is an act of participation in a way the lonely observer could not comprehend.

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Norman MacCaig was born in Edinburgh, Scotland on November 14,1910.He attended the prestigious Royal High School and studied classics at the University of Edinburgh, where he earned an MA in 1932. He later worked as a primary school teacher. During World War II, MacCaig registered as a conscientious objector and consequently spent some time in prison, as well as in various labor programs. He was appointed a fellow in creative writing at the University of Edinburgh in 1967 and, in 1970, became a Reader in poetry at the University of Stirling. His awards included an OBE, the Cholmondeley Medal, and the Queen’s Medal for Poetry.

Douglas Dunn, ‘Cantraips and trauchles: Robert Garioch and Scottish poetry’, Cencrastus Hugh MacDiarmid Memorial Lecture, Cencrastus No. 43, (Autumn 1992) Poe speaks of the trauma that occurs when your loved one dies. You remain in stasis, coping with the reality that the person is gone while simultaneously rejecting the truth. Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing, Anette Degott-Reinhardt, Norman MacCaigs lyrisches Werk: eine formanalytische Untersuchung (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1994) A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle: an annotated edition, edited by Kenneth Buthlay (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1987) Complete Poems, 2 vols, edited by Michael Grieve and W.R. Aitken (London: Martin Brian & O’Keeffe, 1978; Manchester: Carcanet, 1993-94)Beautiful city of Edinburgh, most wonderful to be seen; with your ancient palace of Holyrood and Queen’s Park Green; and your big, magnificent, elegant New College; where people from all nations can be taught knowledge.” Edinburgh - Edinburgh Castle, Edinburgh, Scotland - Edinburgh Castle, Johnston Terrace, Edinburgh, City of Edinburgh EH1 2, UK

I wanted to know what he was doing, where he was going, who was he meeting and how the geography and environment of Edinburgh, this city of Enlightenment helped to propel his thinking and his writing. ILLE TERRARUM - Edinburgh Castle, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK - Edinburgh Castle, Johnston Terrace, Edinburgh, City of Edinburgh, UK Below is a list of poems that showcase darkness in all its forms. You can find poems that pay tribute to the night or express the burdens of death, suffering, grief, and any other negative emotions. 1. “Mirror” by Kajal Ahmad, translated by Michael R. Burch stanza XXIX: Though all unask'd his birth or name...): The Highlanders, who carried hospitality to a punctilious excess, are said to have considered it as churlish, to ask a stranger his name or lineage, before he had taken refreshment. Feuds were so frequent among them, that a contrary rule would, in many cases, have produced the discovery of some circumstance, which might have excluded the guest from the benefit of the assistance he stood in need of. One of the school’s teachers, a Mrs Fullarton, may also have influenced a later poem, called School Mistress.From this time onward for some years, Scott stood on a pinnacle of fame and brilliant social prosperity that no other British man of letters had reached. In 1820, to set a seal upon all this distinction, a baronetcy was bestowed upon him as a special mark of royal favor. But sudden ruin smote the stately fabric of his fortunes. Through the failure of the printing and publishing house of James Ballentine, in which he was a partner, Scott found himself one forenoon bankrupt, with personal liabilities to the extent of something like ?150,000. With his creditors composition would have been easy; but this usual course he disdained. "God granting him time and health," he said, he would owe no man a penny. Breaking up the establishment at Abbottsford, where the wife whom he loved lay dying, he hired a lodging at Edinburg, and there for some years, with stern and unfaltering resolution, be toiled at his prodigious task. The stream of novels flowed as formerly; a "History of Napoleon" in eight volumes, was undertaken and completed, with much other miscellaneous work; and within the space of two years Scott had realized for his creditors the amazing sum of nearly ?40,000. A new and annotated edition of the novels were issued with immense success, and there seemed every prospect that, within a reasoable period, Scott might again front the world, as he had pledged himself to do, not owing to any man a penny. But the limits of endurance had been reached.