MacDiarmid, Hugh (məkdûr`mĭd, –mĭt), pseud. of Christopher Murray Grieve, 1892–1978, Scottish poet and critic, b. Langholm, Dumfrieshire. Passionately devoted to Communism and to Scottish independence from England, he was a founder of the Scottish Nationalist Party in 1928. He was the core figure in the "Scottish renaissance" of the interwar years. Among his many works are At the Sign of the Thistle (1934), essays; A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle (1962, rev. ed. 1971), a long poem castigating his fellow Scots; Collected Poems (1962), More Collected Poems (1971), and The Socialist Poems (1978). MacDiarmid was a masterful poet in both English and Scots, which he revived as a modern literary language.

Bibliography

See his autobiography, Lucky Poet (1943, rev. ed. 1972); studies by D. Glen (1972), A. C. Davis and P. C. Scott (1980).

MacDiarmid, Hugh

orig. Christopher Murray Grieve

(born Aug. 11, 1892, Langholm, Dumfriesshire, Scot.—died Sept. 9, 1978, Edinburgh) Scottish poet. In 1922 he founded the monthly Scottish Chapbook, in which he published his lyrics and sparked the Scottish literary renaissance. A radical leftist, he rejected English as a medium and scrutinized modern society in verse written in “synthetic Scots,” an amalgam of various dialects. A noted work is the extended rhapsody A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle (1926). He later returned to standard English in such volumes as A Kist of Whistles (1947) and In Memoriam James Joyce (1955). He is regarded as Scotland's preeminent poet of the early 20th century.