The Man Who Grasped

The Thistle Scottish poet Hugh MacDiarmid has left a lasting literary legacy.

- Dawn Geddes

ON the 125th anniversary of his birth, we look back at the life of Scottish poet and journalist Christopher Murray Grieve who used the pen name Hugh MacDiarmid.

The controversial writer, who is best known for his epic Scots poem A Drunk Man Looks At A Thistle, led the literary renaissance which helped shape the landscape of Scottish writing today.

Born on August 11, 1892 in Langholm, Hugh was the first child of postman James Grieve and Elizabeth Graham. Growing up, he lived in the Scottish Borders town’s library, where his mother was a caretaker. Easy access to books from an early age fuelled the young boy’s passion to read and sparked his lifelong love affair with literature.

Hugh attended Langholm School, before going on to study at Broughton High School and Junior Student Centre in Edinburgh. He thrived there, writing poetry and editing the school’s publication The Broughton Magazine.

On leaving his studies at 18, he decided to pursue a career with words. He established himself as a journalist and alternated between freelancing and being an employed “staffer” throughout his career. His first post was for the Edinburgh Evening News where he worked for a year.

Tragedy struck Hugh’s life in 1911 when his father James died of pneumonia at the age of 47. It was a devastating experience for the poet and he would reflect on it in the beautiful poems Kinsfolk and At My Father’s Grave.

Later that year he moved to South Wales for a job on the Monmouth shire Labour News before returning to Scotland to freelance for publications such as the Clydebank and Renfrew Press.