#makars

Edinburgh Park, Poets busts.

Each bust along Lochside Avenue has a short biography of the poet, on one side and one of their poems on the other.

Norman MacCaig was born as Norman Alexander McCaig in Edinburgh on 14th November 1910. He was educated at the Royal High School, Edinburgh, and the University of Edinburgh (MA with Honours in Classics, 1932). In 1940 he married Isabel Munro and they had two children. He won the Cholmondeley Medal in 1975 and in 1985 he was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry.

He made his living as a primary-school teacher. He was a lifelong pacifist and during World War II served a term in prison for his beliefs. There is a suggestion that this became a shadow over his subsequent career and that advancement was blocked because of it, if so it is an indictment of the aptitudes held then which are alien to many of us nowadays. He was one of the post-war Milne’s Bar crowd along with Tom Scott, George Mackay Brown, Robert Garioch and others including Hugh MacDiarmid, who became a close friend and with whom he had many an enjoyable flyting. He eventually left teaching and was appointed Edinburgh University’s first Writer in Residence in 1967.

. In 1970 he joined the English Department of Stirling University, becoming Reader in Poetry. He retired in 1978 and enjoyed a long period as a freelance poet. He died on 23rd January 1996.

The poem on his plinth is Notations of ten summer minutes, but of the poems I know of his I like one called Assynt and Edinburgh best.

Notations of ten summer minutes Norman MacCaig, April 1976.

A boy skips flat stones out to sea – each does fine till a small wave meets it head on and swallows it. The boy will do the same.

The schoolmaster stands looking out of the window with one Latin eye and one Greek one. A boat rounds the point in Gaelic.

Out of the shop comes a stream of Omo, Weetabix, BiSoDol tablets and a man with a pocket shaped like a whisky bottle.

Lord V. walks by with the village in his pocket. Angus walks by spending the village into the air.

A melodeon is wheezing a clear-throated jig on the deck of the Arcadia. On the shore hills Pan cocks a hairy ear; and falls asleep again.

Pairing: Cale Makar/Taylor Makar

Tags: a/b/o, sibling incest, first time, phone sex, rough sex, knotting, scenting

Summary: Cale might be a hockey player, but he's not that dumb.

Loch side Avenue, Edinburgh Park.

Today's wee walk has brought me to Edinburgh Park near South Gyle. The man made waterway here has a series of Scots poets busts.

There's no point in just looking at the art, you have to immerse yourself in it by reading the poets words.

Of the 12 poems here I like this one best, I use the main word in many of my posts.

The Voyeur

by Tom Leonard

what’s your favourite word dearie

is it wee

I hope it’s wee

wee’s such a nice wee word

like a wee hairy dog

with two wee eyes

such a nice wee word to play with dearie

you can say it quickly

with a wee smile

and a wee glance to the side

or you can say it slowly dearie

with your mouth a wee bit open

and a wee sigh dearie

A wee sigh

put your wee head on my shoulder dearie

oh my

a great wee word

and scottish

True Ways of Knowing.

If you’re wondering what’s happening to my Makar’s Court posts, they will return, but the beauty of Edinburgh, under it’s UNESCO City of Literature umbrella,  is that our Makars are everywhere.

These planters are on Rose Street well-known as the haunt of the new wave of Renaissance Makars of the 1950s. The likes Hugh MacDiarmid, Norman MacCaig and Robert Garioch quenched their thirst in the bars around this area.  Milne’s, the Abbotsford, and the Cafe Royal all accommodated them,, Milnes was my favourite of these, but they ripped the heart out of it over 10 years ago.  It was considered such a place of political foment and poetic fervour that the basement snug was then dubbed "Little Kremlin".

Robert Garioch will be turning in his grave seeing what they have done to their snctuary, in this snippet describes his anger at having the pub invaded by noisy visitors

describes his anger at having the pub invaded by noisy visitors:

‘Tak me, O Lucifer, frae out this mess. Hell’s bad, but this is fair abominable’ Doktor Faust in Rose Street,

Anyway the poem quoted on these two planters is called True Ways of Knowing.

Not an ounce excessive, not an inch too little, Our easy reciprocations. You let me know The way a boat would feel, if it could feel, The intimate support of water.

The news you bring me has been news forever, So that I understand what a stone would say If only a stone could speak. Is it sad a grassblade Can’t know how it is lovely?

Is it sad that you can’t know, except by hearsay (My gossiping failing words) that you are the way A water is that can clench its palm and crumple A boat’s confiding timbers?

But that’s excessive, and too little. Knowing The way a circle would describe its roundness, We touch two selves and feel, complete and gentle, The intimate support of being.