About Hugh MacDiarmid

Hugh MacDiarmid, the pseudonym of Christopher Murray Grieve (1892-1978), was the pre-eminent Scottish literary figure of the 20th century. As a poet, critic, essayist and political activist, he dominated the nation’s cultural scene for over five decades.

Hugh MacDiarmid and the Scottish Literary Renaissance

MacDiarmid was the founding father and prime mover of the Scottish Literary Renaissance, the movement that sought to revitalize Scottish writing by fusing the heritage of the medieval makers and an international, modernist outlook. In the 1920s, MacDiarmid rejected English in favour of Lallans, a hybrid or ‘synthetic’ Scots, in which he wrote his masterpieces Sangschaw (1925), Penny Wheep (1926), A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle (1926), and To Circumjack Cencrastus (1930). Soon recognized as the major Scots-language poet since Burns, MacDiarmid inspired other poets such as Sydney Goodsir Smith and William Soutar to take up Scots as a literary medium.

In the 1930s, however, MacDiarmid returned to English in Stony Limits (1934) and Second Hymn to Lenin (1935), rejecting the lyricism of his early volumes in a favour of an austere, philosophical diction. In his post-war poetry, he increasingly shunned the personal and subjective in favour of open-ended epics such as In Memoriam James Joyce (1955) and The Kind of Poetry I Want (1961) which celebrated political and scientific materialism. MacDiarmid continue to inspire younger Scottish poets and in the 1950s and 1960s was at the heart of the group, including Sydney Goodsir Smith, Norman MacCaig and George Mackay Brown, which met in Edinburgh's legendary literary pub, Milne's Bar.

MacDiarmid combined literary and political activism. He was a founding member of the Scottish National Party in 1928 but left in 1933 due to his Marxist-Leninist views. He joined the Communist Party the following year only to be expelled in 1938 for his nationalist sympathies. He would subsequently stand as a parliamentary candidate for both the SNP (1945) and British Communist Party (1964). As a follower of the Scottish revolutionary socialist John Maclean, he saw no contradiction between international socialism and the nationalist vision of a Scottish workers' republic, but this ensured a fraught relationship with organized political parties.

Further Reading

  • Boutelle, Ann Edwards. Thistle and Rose: A Study of Hugh MacDiarmid’s Poetry (Loanhead: Macdonald Publishers, 1980)
  • Bold, Alan. MacDiarmid, Christopher Murray Grieve: A Critical Biography (London: John Murray, 1988)
  • Buthlay, Kenneth. Hugh MacDiarmid (C.M. Grieve) (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1964)
  • Duval, K.D., and Sydney Goodsir Smith (eds) Hugh MacDiarmid: A Festschrift (Edinburgh: K.D. Duval, 1962)
  • Gish, Nancy K. Hugh MacDiarmid: The Man and his Work (London: Macmillan Press, 1984)
  • Gish, Nancy K. (ed.) Hugh MacDiarmid: Man and Poet (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1992)
  • Glen, Duncan. Hugh MacDiarmid (Christopher Murray Grieve) and the Scottish Renaissance (Edinburgh: W. & R. Chambers, 1964)
  • Glen, Duncan (ed.) Hugh MacDiarmid: A Critical Survey (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1972)
  • Kerrigan, Catherine. Whaur Extremes Meet: The Poetry of Hugh MacDiarmid 1920-1934 (Edinburgh: Mercat Press, 1983)
  • Lyall, Scott. Hugh MacDiarmid’s Poetry and Politics of Place: Imagining a Scottish Republic (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006)
  • Lyall, Scott, and Margery Palmer McCulloch (eds) The Edinburgh Companion to Hugh MacDiarmid (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011)
  • MacDiarmid, Hugh. Lucky Poet: A Self-Study in Literature and Political Ideas (London: Methuen, 1943)
  • Morgan, Edwin. Hugh MacDiarmid (Harlow: Longman Group Ltd., 1976)
  • Riach, Alan. Hugh MacDiarmid’s Epic Poetry (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1991)
  • Riach, Alan. The Poetry of Hugh MacDiarmid (Glasgow: Association for Scottish Literary Studies, 1999)
  • Scott, P. H., and A.C. Davis (eds) The Age of MacDiarmid: Essays on Hugh MacDiarmid and his Influence on Contemporary Scotland (Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing, 1980)
  • Wright, Gordon. MacDiarmid: An Illustrated biography of Christopher Murray Grieve (Hugh MacDiarmid) (Edinburgh: Gordon Wright Publishing, 1977)

Online Resources

Includes a biographical profile, a selection of poems, lists of biographical and critical resources, and links to publications by and about Hugh MacDiarmid in the Scottish Poetry Library's online catalogue. The Scottish Poetry Library is open to everyone to use and free to join.