Hugh Macdiarmid Quotes

“For Scotland is made out of cities and the country and the sea, which means
It's so much more, as an imagined space, a geography of the mind,
Than its centres of population. Demographics are never enough
And the way in which this might best be imagined starts
In the work of Hugh MacDiarmid. And the poets and artists
Who followed from that. Not as disciples. As students. As witnesses
As thinking men and women, who understand the depths, complexities
Subtleties and strengths and the cosmic clock,
All the resources there, and all the risks required.

from 'Scotland's Voices”
― Alan Riach, Landmarks: Poets, Portraits and Landscapes of Modern Scotland

“Wan decade frae wir last self-defeatin referendum, we're close tae hae the centenary ae MacDiarmid's masterpiece, A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle. Oan the man's daith, Norman MacCaig said they should observe twa minutes' pandemonium. Fine description ae MacDiarmid himself, as much as whit he unleashed. MacDiarmid wiss Scotland's ultimate political poet. We winna rehearse the man's mony faults here - "problematic", says Heaney. Aye. And in spite ae this, MacDiarmid's mair important tae the cause ae Scots and Scotland than ony ither poet frae the previous century. "My job, as I see it, has never been to lay a tit's egg, but to erupt like a volcano, emitting not only flame, but a lot of rubbish." And that's hou Mount MacDiarmid maun be regarded: tempted as we may be tae tak oot the rubbish, we canna thraw the hail lot awa, as wull shairly be settin the bins ablaze. An whit's mair self-defeatin nor a bin fire?”
― Colin Bramwell, Irish Pages, Vol. 12, No. 2: Scotland

“Yes, I go along with the idea of a Scottish Spring. It was genuinely a time of beginnings, a time of openings, and I always felt that those who left Scotland then - eg. Kenneth White, Douglas Dunn - were too impatient and should have stayed. New international configurations - Sottish-American, Scottish-Russian, Scottish-Brazilian - appeared. New genres like concrete poetry and sound-poetry challenged a fair amount of opposition. I remember Hugh MacDiarmid growling in 1970 "I'd hate an Ian Finlay poem on my gravetstone." Publishers like Wild Hawthorn, Migrant, Eugen Gomringer, Hansjörg Mayer, encouraged Scotland to see the world and the world to see Scotland.”
― Edwin Morgan, Justified Sinners: An Archaeology of Scottish Counter Culture, 1960 - 2000