Complete Poetical Works

by Robert Garioch, Robin Fulton (Editor), Sydney Goodsir Smith (Introduction)

Robert Garioch's poems occupy a place of special honour in twentieth-century writing in Scots. Not simply because he made literary use of the Scots with which he grew up, and not simply because he was a superb verse craftsman; but also because he was able, through his poetry, to establish a rapport with his predecessors, both native and foreign, and then to use this sense of historical continuity or community to create a poetry which is as contemporaneous as any written today.

This edition incorporates and supersedes the 'Collected Poems' of 1977.

Genres: Poetry

327 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1983

About the author

Robert Garioch Sutherland was a Scottish poet and translator. His poetry was written almost exclusively in Scots and he was a key member in the literary revival of the language in the mid-20th century. His biggest influences were the 18th-century poet Robert Fergusson and the Italian dialect sonneteer Giuseppe Gioachino Belli.

Garioch was born in Edinburgh, the son of a decorator and a music teacher, and attended the Royal High School before going to the University of Edinburgh. He was conscripted into the Royal Corps of Signals in 1941, and married early the following year. Whilst serving in Operation Torch in North Africa, Garioch was captured by German troops in November 1942. His three years as a prisoner of war, in camps in Italy and Germany, are described in his memoir, Two Men and a Blanket (1975).

After Garioch returned to the United Kingdom in 1945 he became a teacher, a job he held until taking early retirement in 1964. Following his retirement he worked on a number of Scottish literary magazines, most notably Scottish International. He also spent a number of years in the 1970s as writer-in-residence at Edinburgh University.