Description
Book SynopsisSydney Goodsir Smith, Poet: Essays on His Life and Work offers the first substantial work to assess his life and writings since his premature death in 1975. Considered a major figure in the second wave of Hugh MacDiarmid’s ‘Scottish Literary Renaissance’, Smith’s unique body of work has largely fallen from critical discussion of post-war Scottish literature. This book remedies this by showing how his work may have fallen out of favour, and then by reappraising his distinctive and varied achievements in poetry, drama, art and art criticism, the novel and translations. Early career and established academics explore the many strands of his work as the best way of giving this multifaceted literary figure renewed attention.
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments and a Note on the Poems Notes on Contributors Introduction Richie McCaffery 1 Sydney Goodsir Smith: A Centenary Appreciation Patrick Crotty 2 Skail Winds and Scattered Personalities: The Formation of Identity in Sydney Goodsir Smith’s Early Poetry Emma Dymock 3 ‘My Elder Brother in the Muse’: Sydney Goodsir Smith and Hugh MacDiarmid Margery Palmer McCulloch 4 Refraction, Intertexts and Diegesis in Sydney Goodsir Smith’s under the Eildon Tree Christopher Whyte 5 Nationalism in the Poetry of Sydney Goodsir Smith J. Derrick McClure 6 ‘Huntress, Slayer, White Unmortal Queyne’: Women in the Work of Sydney Goodsir Smith Monika Szuba 7 ‘Order and Adventure’: Sydney Goodsir Smith’s Translations Stewart Sanderson 8 Sydney Goodsir Smith: Gangrel Rymour, European Scot Tom Hubbard 9 Unreal Edinburgh: From Li Po to Kynd Kittock John Corbett 10 Reveries of a ‘Gangrel Scriever’: Gowdspink in Reekie and Oliver Goldsmith Mario Relich 11 ‘Your maist inebriant savant’: A History of Sydney Goodsir Smith’s Carotid Cornucopius Richie McCaffery 12 The Merrie Life and Dowie Death of Colickie Meg: An Unpublished Carotidian Drama Paul Barnaby 13 Sydney Goodsir Smith’s the Wallace in Context David Robb 14 Sydney Goodsir Smith, Artist and Art Critic Alan Riach and Alexander Moffat Selective Glossary of Sydney Goodsir Smith’s Scots Words Annotated Bibliography of Publications by and about Sydney Goodsir Smith Index
