IF one of Scotland’s early pioneers of independence had one message for the movement today, it would be “take action”, according to the author of a new lyrical portrait of Hugh MacDiarmid.
“He would say if you believe in something, act on it,” said Professor Alan Riach who will give The MacDiarmid Memorandum, his new book of poems, its Scottish launch on Thursday.
Talking to the Sunday National on his return from the first international conference on MacDiarmid, Riach said it showed the continuing relevance of the poet and cultural revolutionary.
Scholars and writers from across the world, including China, the US, New Zealand, Poland, Italy and France attended the conference in Brest to debate MacDiarmid’s work and his views on socialism and independence.
One of the countries represented was Iceland, which became an independent republic in 1944, and where MacDiarmid is known for his views on independence.
A translator, biographer and playwright as well as a poet, MacDiarmid’s support for the redistribution of wealth is also striking a chord today, Riach said.
“He was out for independence, he was out for communism or socialism or republicanism, the redistribution of wealth and freedom of speech,” he said. “He explored extremes and put speculations into the air – he was a dangerous thinker, so much so that when he lived in Shetland he was put under surveillance by MI5. George Orwell put the finger on him and said if communism does come to dominate Britain, this is the man to watch.”
A year before his death in 1978, MacDiarmid, whose real name was Christopher Murray Grieve, said: “I’ve got no interest whatever in devolution of any kind at all, of any degree. I want Scottish independence, and ultimately a Scottish Republic. That’s not a new idea. But the majority of the Scottish people don’t want that. The majority of the Scottish people don’t know any more than they’ve ever known what they want.
“In any case, they couldn’t want what I stand for because until quite recently, Scottish schools, colleges and universities had no courses in Scottish literature or the Scottish languages. They were entirely conditioned by English standards. I want to break away from all that. I want complete disjunction from England…”
Riach said it was time for MacDiarmid to be reassessed in Scotland as he has “huge lessons” for the independence movement.
“MacDiarmid was a one-man demolition squad attacking the establishment,” he said. “He transformed what Scottish literature – and politics – might be and ought to be compulsory reading for all politicians of all parties. Every single politician in Holyrood should know at least one MacDiarmid poem by heart and recite it every month and act on it!”
Riach’s new book is a “kind of biography in 38 poems” which he hopes will make MacDiarmid more accessible.
“It’s a series of snapshots of his life and the way he thought and it will maybe encourage people to look further at his poetry,” said Riach, who met, talked and drank whisky with MacDiarmid on a number of occasions.
The poems written by Riach are a response to MacDiarmid’s life, tracking him from his boyhood in Langholm in the Scottish Borders, through the post-First World War “modernist artistic revolution” in Montrose, the ending of his first marriage and his “internal exile” in the Shetland Islands in the 1930s with his second wife Valda, then their move to Brownsbank Cottage, Biggar, from 1951 till his death.
Riach said: “The threats that MacDiarmid lived through – two world wars, the rise of fascism, the Cold War – predate those of the 21st century, the impending catastrophes of climate and global ecology, the sweeping contagions of disease and the corruptions of the ideals of human agency that are developed in particular forms in every era.
“But what gave rise to them has never really gone away and he can still show us ways to resist them. We shall need these methods and examples for it seems that now as then our languages, Gaelic and Scots, our entire cultural history and its living practice in education and social engagement, in all the difficulties and pleasures art can bring, that which gives us human learning, must be fought for once again. The battle continues.”
The book includes reproductions of paintings by the artists Alexander Moffat and Ruth Nicol, focusing on some of the landscapes, friends and associates MacDiarmid knew most closely through his long life, plus a frontispiece portrait by William Johnstone and a song-setting by Ronald Stevenson.
It will be launched in the Scottish Poetry Library on Thursday.
