Robert Garioch

Robert Garioch Sutherland (1909-1981) inscription, Makars Court, Edinburgh. Photo by Gnomonic, 2013. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Robert Garioch Sutherland (9 May 1909 - 26 April 1981) was a Scottish poet and translator.

Life

Youth and education

Garioch was born in Edinburgh, the son of a decorator and a music teacher.

He attended the Royal High School before going to the University of Edinburgh.

Career

Garioch was conscripted into the Royal Corps of Signals in 1941, and married early the following year. However, whilst serving in Operation Torch in North Africa, Garioch was captured by German troops in November 1942 and spent the following 3 years as a prisoner of war (POW). While interned in Italy, he learnt the language sufficiently well to read also authors who wrote in a variety of native dialects.

After Garioch returned to the United Kingdom in 1945 he became a teacher, a job he held until taking early retirement in 1964.

Following his retirement he worked on a number of Scottish literary magazines, most notably Scottish International. He also spent a number of years in the 1970s as writer in residence at the University of Edinburgh.

Writing

Garioch's poetry was written almost exclusively in the Scots language, he was a key member in the literary revival of the language in the mid-20th century. However, his biggest influences were 18th-century poet Robert Fergusson and Italian dialect sonneteer Giuseppe Gioachino Belli.

His experience as a POW had a significant impact on Garioch's career, and he provides a vivid account of those years in his autobiographical Two Men and a Blanket (1975). Unlike many of his contemporaries, though, he wrote very little poetry concerning his war experiences. Instead he focused primarily on social causes and the plight of the 'wee man', a fact that may account for his enduring popularity (particularly on the readings circuit).

These facts, however, have distracted many critics from his extraordinary technical skill and the responsible scholarship of his handling of the Scots language, in which he surpasses all his contemporaries and even his great predecessor Hugh MacDiarmid (of whom he became critical). And there are weightier poems, such as 'The Wire', 'The Muir' or 'The Big Music', which entirely contradict the cosy persona which he sometimes adopted and was sometimes projected onto him.

Garioch also translated a number of works by other poets into Scots. He translated a large number of poems from Roman dialect by Giuseppe Gioachino Belli, who was a massive influence on his own poetry, as well as 2 plays by George Buchanan (which were originally written in Latin). He also rendered Pindar and Hesiod into Scots.

Recognition

Garioch is commemorated in Makars' Court, outside The Writers' Museum, Lawnmarket, Edinburgh. Selections for Makars' Court are made by The Writers' Museum, Saltire Society, and Scottish Poetry Library.

Publications

Poetry

• Seventeen Poems for Sixpence (with Sorley MacLean). Edinburgh: Chalmers Press, 1940.
• Chuckies on the Cairn: Poems in Scots and English. Hayes, UK: Chalmers Press, 1949.
• The Masque of Edinburgh. Loanhead, Midlothian, UK: Macdonald, 1954.
• Selected Poems. Edinburgh: Macdonald Publishers, 1966.
• The Big Music, and other poems. Thurso: John Humphries, at Caithress Books, 1971.
• Doktor Faust in Rose Street. Loanhead, Midlothian, UK: Macdonald, 1973.
• Collected Poems. Loanhead, Midlothian, UK: Macdonald, 1977; Manchester, UK: Carcanet, 1980;
  • (revised & edited by Robin Fulton). Edinburgh: Polygon, 2004.
• Complete Poetical Works (edited by Robin Fulton). Loanhead, Midlothian, UK: Macdonald, 1983.

Non-fiction

• Two Men and a Blanket: Memoirs of Captivity. Edinburgh: Southside, 1975.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

Robert Garioch reads "Sisyphus"

Audio / video

• Robert Garioch (cassette). British Council, 1967.
• Robert Garioch (CD). Glasgow: Scots Language Society, 2007.

See also

• List of British poets

References

Property by Robert Garioch

• Fulton, Robin (1986). A Garioch Miscellany. Edinburgh: MacDonald. ISBN 0-86334-057-1
• Lindsay, Maurice (ed.) (1979), As I Remember: Ten Scottish Authors recall How Writing began for Them. London: Robert Hale. ISBN 0-7091-7321-0
• "A Conversation with Donald Campbell" in Murray, Glen (ed.), Cencrastus 6 (Autumn 1981), 12-13.

External links

Poems

• "Elegy"
• Robert Garioch at the Scottish Poetry Library (2 poems)

Books

• Robert Garioch at Amazon.com

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