Hugh MacDiarmid
Hugh MacDiarmid, Christopher Murray Grieve actually, ( born August 11, 1892 in Langholm, Dumfries and Galloway, † September 9, 1978 in Edinburgh) was a Scottish poet. He wrote works on both English and Scots, was instrumental in the Scottish Renaissance ( a cultural movement of the early 20th century ) and is regarded as probably the most significant Scottish poet since Robert Burns.
Life and work
The Grieve family lived in an apartment above the city library of Langholm, which MacDiarmid interest was based on literature. First, he wanted to be a teacher and completed appropriate training in Edinburgh, but then worked as a journalist for local newspapers in Scotland and Wales.
In 1915 he joined the Royal Army Medical Corps, for which he served in Greece and France. During this time, he expressed first literary ambitions. In 1918 he fell ill with malaria and returned to Scotland. There, he worked again as a journalist; he lived in the 1920s in Montrose, where he was not only chief reporter at the newspaper, but also to the Arbitration Office and was active in the administration of the County.
With his growing interest in Renaissance Scottish culture - and its independence alongside the English - were his first poetic activities and are, therefore eventually do an entire cultural movement out, the Scottish Renaissance. MacDiarmid, as he called himself since the 1920s, published an anthology of poems, a literary magazine, and in 1925 his first book of poetry on Scots, Sangshaw. The following year saw - also on Scots - A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle, a modernist long poem that looks at the cultural, political and metaphysical situation in Scotland. It is considered his magnum opus.
The 1930s MacDiarmid spent with his second wife on Whalsay, where he still wrote poetry, stood up for the Scottish Renaissance and the Scottish Gaelic language and began in essays and theoretical texts on politics, science, philosophy, and language again the English language use. MacDiarmid became increasingly politically active in order to represent his Socialist, Scottish and internationalist positions. In 1928 he co-founded the National Party of Scotland, the predecessor of the Scottish National Party. In 1964 he was a candidate of the Communist Party for the office of Prime Minister in the general election.
The last 27 years of his life were spent with his wife in modest circumstances in a cottage in South Lanarkshire, which today serves as a museum and writers center. In 1974 he became professor at the Royal Scottish Academy, 1978 President of the Poetry Society.