“From Scotland to the World”: The Poetry of Hope Mirrlees, Helen Adam, Muriel Spark, and Veronica Forrest-Thomson

The four poets that provide the material for this chapter did not know each other and they probably did not know each other’s work. However, they had important formative experiences in common: They were all educated in Scotland and they all left Scotland after that early education. Yet, they all ret...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Humanities (Basel) 2019-12, Vol.8 (4), p.184
Main Author: McMillan, Dorothy
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adam, Helen (1909-1993)
Anthologies
Ballads
Essays
Forrest-Thomson, Veronica
Mirrlees, Hope
Poetry
Poets
Scottish literature
Spark, Muriel (1918-2006)
Womens literature
Woolf, Virginia (1882-1941)
Citations: Items that this one cites
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Summary:The four poets that provide the material for this chapter did not know each other and they probably did not know each other’s work. However, they had important formative experiences in common: They were all educated in Scotland and they all left Scotland after that early education. Yet, they all retained special, although different, ties to that country, to its history, and its writing. They were all “modern” in their poetry, sometimes bizarrely so: Of each of them it could be said, “There was no one like her.” This strangeness they also share, as they share a willingness, even desire, to shock, a muddling of contemporary and archaic, of real and legendary. Veronica Forrest-Thomson’s “Hold on to your seat-belt Persephone” is an indicative phrase. I aim to show that these serially inimitable modern writers have complicated and intertwined Scottish and international connections.
ISSN:2076-0787
2076-0787
DOI:10.3390/h8040184