Roderick Watson (born 1943) is a Scottish poet. He is a professor emeritus in English Studies at the University of Stirling. [1]
Watson was born on 12th May 1943 in Aberdeen. He was educated at Aberdeen Grammar School and Aberdeen University before doing postgraduate study at Peterhouse, Cambridge, [2] where his doctoral thesis was on the poetry of Hugh MacDiarmid. He was later to write a critical study of MacDiarmid, whom he met and befriended as a student. Watson later taught at the University of Victoria in Canada, before coming back to Scotland and joining the University of Stirling.
He has written and lectured widely on Scottish literature and cultural identity, and served as General Editor of the Canongate Classics reprint series since the start of the project in 1987. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and is currently the co-editor (with Linda Dryden) of The Journal of Stevenson Studies.[ citation needed ]
He has published two main volumes of verse over the years, and has featured in numerous periodicals and anthologies. After an early pamphlet he published his debut work True History on the Walls in 1976, and this was followed by the Luath Press publication Into the Blue Wavelengths in 2004. Upon its publication it was lauded by Philip Hobsbaum, who labelled Watson as a "poet of introspection and retrospection".[ citation needed ]
Sorley MacLean was a Scottish Gaelic poet, described by the Scottish Poetry Library as "one of the major Scottish poets of the modern era" because of his "mastery of his chosen medium and his engagement with the European poetic tradition and European politics". Nobel Prize Laureate Seamus Heaney credited MacLean with saving Scottish Gaelic poetry.
Angus Lindsay Ritchie Calder was a Scottish writer, historian, and poet. Initially studying English literature, he became increasingly interested in political history and wrote a landmark study on Britain during the Second World War in 1969 entitled The People's War. He subsequently wrote several other historical works but became increasingly interested in literature and poetry and worked primarily as a writer, though often holding a number of university teaching positions. A socialist, he was a prominent Scottish public intellectual during the 1970s and 1980s.
Scottish literature is literature written in Scotland or by Scottish writers. It includes works in English, Scottish Gaelic, Scots, Brythonic, French, Latin, Norn or other languages written within the modern boundaries of Scotland.
Christopher Murray Grieve, best known by his pen name Hugh MacDiarmid, was a Scottish poet, journalist, essayist and political figure. He is considered one of the principal forces behind the Scottish Renaissance and has had a lasting impact on Scottish culture and politics. He was a founding member of the National Party of Scotland 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 Scottish National Party (1945) and British Communist Party (1964).
Norman Alexander MacCaig DLitt was a Scottish poet and teacher. His poetry, in modern English, is known for its humour, simplicity of language and great popularity.
The Scottish Renaissance was a mainly literary movement of the early to mid-20th century that can be seen as the Scottish version of modernism. It is sometimes referred to as the Scottish literary renaissance, although its influence went beyond literature into music, visual arts, and politics. The writers and artists of the Scottish Renaissance displayed a profound interest in both modern philosophy and technology, as well as incorporating folk influences, and a strong concern for the fate of Scotland's declining languages.
Sydney Goodsir Smith was a New Zealand-born Scottish poet, artist, dramatist and novelist. He wrote poetry in literary Scots often referred to as Lallans, and was a major figure of the Scottish Renaissance.
William Soutar was a Scottish poet and diarist who wrote in English and in Braid Scots. He is known best for his epigrams.
Sir Herbert John Clifford Grierson, FBA was a Scottish literary scholar, editor, and literary critic.
Alan Norman Bold (1943–1998) was a Scottish poet, biographer, journalist and saxophonist. He was born in Edinburgh.
Professor Duncan Munro Glen was a Scottish poet, literary editor and Emeritus Professor of Visual Communication at Nottingham Trent University. He became known with his first full-length book, Hugh MacDiarmid and the Scottish Renaissance. His many verse collections included from Kythings and other poems (1969), In Appearances (1971), Realities Poems (1980), Selected Poems 1965–1990 (1991), Selected New Poems 1987–1996 (1998) and Collected Poems 1965–2005 (2006). His Autobiography of a Poet appeared with Ramsay Head Press in 1986. He edited Akros magazine for 51 numbers from August 1965 to October 1983. His work to promote Scottish poets and artists included Hugh MacDiarmid and Ian Hamilton Finlay, among others. Some of his poetry was translated into Italian.
James Robertson is a Scottish writer who grew up in Bridge of Allan, Stirlingshire. He is the author of several short story and poetry collections, and has published six novels: The Fanatic, Joseph Knight, The Testament of Gideon Mack, And the Land Lay Still, The Professor of Truth, and To Be Continued…. The Testament of Gideon Mack was long-listed for the 2006 Man Booker Prize.
Tom Hubbard was the first librarian of the Scottish Poetry Library and is the author, editor or co-editor of over thirty academic and literary works.
Alexander Scott (1920–1989) was a Scottish poet, playwright and scholar born in Aberdeen. He wrote poetry in both Scots and Scottish English as well as plays, literary reviews and critical studies of literature. AS a writer, scholar, dramatist, broadcaster, critic and editor, he showed a life-ling commitmemt to Scottish literary culture. He was latterly a tutor and reader of Scottish literature at the University of Glasgow, where he was instrumental in establishing Scotland's first Department of Scottish Literature in the academic year 1971–72.
Walter Perrie is a Scottish poet, author, editor and critic. He has also published under the pseudonym Patrick MacCrimmon.
Marion Emily Angus (1865–1946) was a Scottish poet who wrote in the Scots vernacular or Braid Scots, defined by some as a dialect of English and others as a closely related language. Her prose writings are mainly in standard English. She is seen as a forerunner of a Scottish renaissance in inter-war poetry – her verse marks a departure from the Lallans tradition of Robert Burns towards that of Hugh MacDiarmid, Violet Jacob and others.
Alan Riach is a Scottish poet and academic.
Poetry of Scotland includes all forms of verse written in Brythonic, Latin, Scottish Gaelic, Scots, French, English and Esperanto and any language in which poetry has been written within the boundaries of modern Scotland, or by Scottish people.
John Macmillan Herdman is a Scottish novelist, short story writer and literary critic. He is the author of seventeen books including five novels and various works of shorter fiction, a play, two critical studies and a memoir, and he has contributed to twenty other books. His work has been translated, broadcast and anthologized, and taught at universities in France, Australia and Russia.
Robert Crombie Saunders was a poet, editor, journalist and teacher, and a significant figure in the Scottish Literary Renaissance of the 20th century. His poetry is in both English and Scots, and he identified with the 'Lallans' movement, which sought to revive Scots as a serious literary medium.