Hugh MacDiarmid
Hugh MacDiarmid - A Famous Scottish Poet - A modern maker of verse
Hugh MacDiarmid (1892-1978). Born Christopher Murray Grieve in Langholm, Dumfriesshire, the son of a postman, MacDiarmid was educated at the local academy and served in both world wars. During a teacher-training course at Edinburgh he decided to become a journalist and while working as such at Montrose, he took up poetry-writing. He edited the magazine Scottish Chapbook which fostered his own verses. His first poem was Sangschaw (1925). MacDiarmid gained literary status as 'the new prophetic voice of Scot-land' with his nationalistic, politico-metaphysical work A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle (1926). In this he gave a vision of a MacDiarmid-style Scotland and what he felt it might become. An early member of the Independent Labour Party, a Fabian and a Communist Party member, MacDiarmid was also one of the founder members of the Scottish National Party in 1928 and he produced his first collection of poetry, First Hymn to Lenin, in 1930. He spent most of his writing effort bringing to life what he saw as the regeneration of Scottish literary language, writing lyrics in various Scottish dialect styles. Brownsbank Cottage, at Biggar, was his home for the last 27 years of his life.
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