The Complete Poems of Hugh MacDiarmid, Volume 1

MacDiarmid 2000; the Collected Works from Carcanet

by Hugh MacDiarmid, Michael Grieve (Editor), William R. Aitken (Editor)

The first volume of this two-volume edition of MacDiarmid's "Complete Poems" reprints the texts of the Penguin edition (1986), which was based on the first edition of 1978, which MacDiarmid himself saw through the press. Additional poems discovered since the first edition of 1978 are included, and the additional text revised. MacDiarmid insisted that his "Complete Poems" should be books of poetry, uncluttered by editorial annotations and notes. Michael Grieve, the poet's son, and W. R. Aitken, his bibliographer, have carefully followed his instructions, and compiled an extensive glossary based on the earlier collections.

Genres: Poetry

738 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1978

About the author

Christopher Murray Grieve, known by his pen name, Hugh MacDiarmid, was a Scottish poet and cultural activist.

MacDiarmid was instrumental in creating a Scottish version of modernism and was a leading light in the Scottish Renaissance of the 20th century. Unusually for a first generation modernist, he was a communist; unusually for a communist, he was a committed Scottish nationalist. He wrote in English and literary Scots (sometimes referred to as Lallans).