Hugh MacDiarmid
born Aug. 11, 1892, Langholm,
Dumfriesshire, Scot.
died Sept. 9, 1978, Edinburgh
preeminent Scottish poet of the first
half of the 20th century and leader of the
Scottish literary renaissance.
The son of a postman, MacDiarmid was
educated at Langholm Academy and the
University of Edinburgh. After serving in
World War I he became a journalist in
Montrose, Angus, where he edited three
issues of the first postwar Scottish verse
anthology, Northern Numbers (1921–23). In
1922 he founded the monthly Scottish
Chapbook, in which he advocated a Scottish
literary revival and published the lyrics of
“Hugh MacDiarmid,” later collected as
Sangschaw (1925) and Penny Wheep (1926).
Rejecting English as a medium for Scottish
poetry, MacDiarmid scrutinized the
pretensions and hypocrisies of modern
society in verse written in “synthetic
Scots,” an amalgam of elements from various
middle Scots dialects and folk ballads and
other literary sources. He achieved notable
success both in his lyrics and in A Drunk
Man Looks at the Thistle (1926), an extended
rhapsody ranging from investigation of his
own personality to exploration of the
mysteries of space and time. Later, as he
became increasingly involved in metaphysical
speculation and accepted Marxist philosophy,
he wrote Scotticized English in To
Circumjack Cencrastus (1930) and archaic
Scots in Scots Unbound (1932), then returned
to standard English in Stony Limits (1934)
and Second Hymn to Lenin (1935). His later
style was best represented in A Kist of
Whistles (1947) and In Memoriam James Joyce
(1955). Autobiographical volumes include
Lucky Poet (1943) and The Company I’ve Kept
(1966). His Complete Poems appeared in 1974.
MacDiarmid became professor of literature to
the Royal Scottish Academy (1974) and
president of the Poetry Society (1976).
