Hugh MacDiarmid Poems Discovered

From the lost and found file, we bring you some recently discovered, unknown poems by legendary Scots writer Hugh MacDiarmid. The poems were found in Dumfriesshire, his birth place, and they were written under his real name, Christopher Murray Grieve, when the poet was only 22. All together Ron Addison has uncovered 15 poems from the Old Library archives. The poems were originally published in the Eskdale and Liddesdale Advertiser at the outbreak of the first World War. From Scotland Now:

The first of these appeared in the town’s newspaper exactly a century ago, on 23rd September 2014, and like the others had not seen the light of day since.

Titled – ‘A Recruit’s Farewell to Eskdale’ – it was written while Grieve was stationed at Sheffield barracks during the early stages of First World War, and aged just 22. [...]

Addison’s search through the back-copies of the Eskdale and Liddesdale Advertiser began after he became convinced that the then budding poet must have been eager to comment on the Great War in which he was to see active service in Greece.

Having spent months searching for hard evidence, his theory was confirmed with what he describes as “an incredible find.”

“You can imagine my delight when I turned a page and there amongst the adverts for liver pills was a wee poem by ‘C.M.G’, that’s what he was writing under. I was stunned,” he says.

After celebrating with a double whisky nearby in one of Grieve’s regular drinking haunts, Addison knew he was onto something important.

“It was a frenzy,” he said. “Well as much as you can get into a frenzy when dealing with old newspapers. In the following days I unearthed another fourteen missing poems”which appeared over a two year period to 1916.”

Read on at Scotland Now, read some more of MacDiarmid's poems here, and if you must, you too can celebrate with a double whiskey!