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William Soutar

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William Soutar by Benno Schotz 1959

William Soutar (1898-1943). Sculpture by Benno Schotz (1891-1984), 1959. Photo by Stephen C. Dickson, 2014. Licensed under Creative Commons, courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

William Soutar (28 April 1898 - 15 October 1943) was a Scottish poet and diarist, who wrote in both English and Scots.[1]

Life[]

Youth and education[]

Soutar was born on 28 April 1898 on South Inch Terrace,[2] Perth, the only child of John Soutar (1871–1958), master joiner, and his wife, Margaret (Smith) (1870–1954), who wrote poetry. His parents belonged to the United Free Church of Scotland.

William was educated at Southern District School, Perth, and then at Perth Academy, 1912-1916.

Career[]

Soutar joined the wartime Royal Navy in 1916. By the time he was demobilized in November 1918, he was suffering from what would be diagnosed in 1924 as ankylosing spondylitis,[3] a form of chronic inflammatory arthritis.[4]

Soutar began to study medicine at the University of Edinburgh in 1919, but switched to English. He did not excel academically, but began to contribute to the student magazine. He began to keep a diary on 18 April 1919. He earned an M.A. in 1923.

His debut collection, Gleanings by an Undergraduate (1923), appeared at his father's expense, as did several others.

During that period he made contact with Hugh MacDiarmid, then in Montrose, and with Ezra Pound. MacDiarmid at the time was abandoning poetry in English in favor of "synthetic Scots", a literary language compiled from dialects and earlier writers such as Robert Henryson and William Dunbar.

Soutar's work correspondingly altered radically, and he became a leading figure of the Scottish Literary Renaissance, whom posthumous editors would dub "one of the greatest poets Scotland has produced."[5]

His family adopted an orphaned cousin of his, 7-year-old Evelyn, in 1927, and this became a spur to him to write also for children. Seeds in the Wind (1933) was a volume of "bairn-rhymes" in Scots.[6]

By 1930 Soutar was bedridden with his disease. He died in 1943 of tuberculosis contracted in 1929. He is buried in Perth's Jeanfield and Wellshill Cemetery.[7]

Writing[]

Soutar's collected poems, edited by MacDiarmid, were published in 1948.

Soutar's journal, Diary of a Dying Man, also published posthumously, is considered to 'put him into the rank of the great diarists'.[8]

Cinquain[]

A form of verse Soutar used was the cinquain (now known as American cinquains),[9] which he preferred to call "epigrams". He took up this form in the latter half of the 1930s with such enthusiasm that he became an even more prolific practitioner than its originator, Adelaide Crapsey, had been.[10]

Critical reputation[]

Interest in Soutar's work, in Scots and English and for adults and children, has revived considerably since the 1980s, although none of his verse was in print for his centenary in 1998.[11]

Recognition[]

In 2014 Soutar was the subject of a BBC radio programme: The Still Life Poet by Liz Lochhead.

In popular culture[]

Benjamin Britten set 12 Soutar poems for tenor voice and piano in the 1969 song cycle Who Are These Children? (op. 84).[12]

Erik Chisholm set a range of Soutar's verse, including Summer Song, A Dirge for Summer, and the humorous settings The Prodigy, The Braw Plum and The Three Worthies.[13]

James MacMillan set several Soutar's Scots-language poems in a style that drew on traditional folk song:[14] "Scots Song" (aka 'The Tryst', 1991), "Ballad" (1994) and "The Children" (1995) were collected as Three Scottish Songs in 1995.[15]

The album In a Sma' Room, with settings by Debra Salem, Kevin Mackenzie and Paul Harrison, appeared in 2021.[16][17]

Publications[]

Poetry[]

  • Gleanings by an Undergraduate. Paisley, Scotland, UK: Alexander Gardner, 1923.
  • Conflict. London: Chapman & Hall, 1931.
  • The Solitary Way: Poems. Edinburgh & London: Moray Press, 1934.
  • Poems in Scots. Edinburgh & London: Moray Press, 1935.
  • Brief Words: One hundred epigrams. Edinburgh & London: Moray Press, 1935.
  • A Handful of Earth. Edinburgh & London: Moray Press, 1936.
  • Riddles in Scots. Edinburgh & London: Moray Press, 1937.
  • In the Time of Tyrants: Poems. Perth, Scotland: privately published, 1939.
  • But the Earth Abideth: A verse sequence. London: Andrew Dakers, 1943.
  • The Expectant Silence. London: Andrew Dakers, 1944.
  • Collected Poems (edited by Hugh MacDiarmid). London: Andrew Dakers, 1948.
  • Poems in Scots and English (edited by William Russell Aitken). Edinburgh: Oliver Boyd, 1961; Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1984.
  • William Soutar. Glasgow: National Book League, 1980.
  • A Selection from 'Seeds in the Wind'. Edinburgh: Hubbub, 1985.[18]
  • Poems of William Soutar: A new selection (edited by William Russell Aitken). Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1988.
  • Into a Room: Selected poems (edited by Carl MacDougall & Douglas Gifford). Glendaruel, Scotland, UK: Argyll / Perth, Scotland, UK: Perth & Kinross Council, 2000.
  • Flowers of Life: A selection of cinquains (edited by Brian Strand). Rothesay, Isle of Bute, UK: QQ Press, 2005.

Juvenile[]

  • Seeds in the Wind: Poems in Scots for children. Edinburgh: Grant & Murray, 1933.
    • revised & enlarged (illustrated by Colin Gibson). London: Andrew Dakers, 1943.
  • A Bairn's Song, and other Scots verse for children (edited by Tom Hubbard; illustrated by Sheila Cant). Edinburgh: Mercat Press, 1999.

Journal[]

Wha_Wud_Be_A_Tattiebogle_by_William_Soutar

Wha Wud Be A Tattiebogle by William Soutar

  • Diaries of a Dying Man (edited by Alexander Scott). Edinburgh & London: W. & R. Chambers, 1954; Edinburgh & New York: Canongate, 1991. ISBN 0-86241-347-8
    • also published asThe Diary of a Dying Man. Edinburgh: Chapman, 1991.


Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.[19]

See also[]

v · d · eScots makars
1370 –1460: John Barbour  • Huchoun  • James I  • Sir Gilbert Hay  • Andrew of Wyntoun  • Richard Holland
18th century – 20th century: Allan Ramsay  • Robert Fergusson  • Robert Burns  • Robert Louis Stevenson  • Alicia Ann Spottiswoode  • William Soutar  • Robert Garioch  • Sydney Goodsir Smith  • Tom Scott  • George Campbell Hay  • Alexander Scott  • Hamish Henderson  • William Neill
Official appointment (from 2004): Edwin Morgan  • Liz Lochhead  • Jackie Kay

References[]

Notes[]

  1. ↑ William Soutar 1898-1943 Biography, Writing Scotland, BBC Two. Web, Feb. 28, 2015.
  2. ↑ William Soutar Perth Walks - Perth and Kinross Countryside Trust
  3. ↑ University of Edinburgh. Graduates' Association (1995). University of Edinburgh journal, Volumes 37-38. University of Edinburgh. p. 239. OCLC 1831427. https://www.google.com/search?tbm=bks&q=William+Soutar+Ankylosing+spondylitis#sclient=psy-ab&hl=en&tbo=1&tbm=bks&source=hp&q=That+mysterious+illness+aboard+ship+was+ultimately+identified+as+%27ankylosing+spondylitis&pbx=1&oq=That+mysterious+illness+aboard+ship+was+ultimately+identified+as+%27ankylosing+spondylitis&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_sm=s&gs_upl=5313l5313l0l6688l1l1l0l0l0l0l156l156l0.1l1l0&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&fp=b257b4608e4cf0c6&biw=1280&bih=828. 
  4. ↑ ODNB entry.
  5. ↑ Carl Mac Dougall & Douglas Gifford: Introduction: Into a Room: Selected Poems of William Soutar (Perth and Kinross Libraries, Perth, 2000). Template:ISBN.
  6. ↑ Scottish Poetry Library. Retrieved 16 August 2013.
  7. ↑ Friends of William Soutar site. Retrieved 16 August 2013.
  8. ↑ Joy Hendrey: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography 2004.
  9. ↑ Brian Strand, ed., Flowers of Life, a Selection of William Soutar's Cinquains (Rothesay: QQ Press, 2005) Template:ISBN
  10. ↑ Goodwin, K.L., "William Soutar, Adelaide Crapsey, and Imagism," SSL 3 (Columbia: University of South Carolina, 1965), 96-100.
  11. ↑ ODNB entry.
  12. ↑ Who are these children?, Hyperion CDA67459, 2005.
  13. ↑ Erik Chisholm: Songs, Delphian DCD34259, 2021
  14. ↑ 'The Children', composer's notes
  15. ↑ Three Scottish Songs, Boosey & Hawkes
  16. ↑ The Scotsman, 25 February, 2021.
  17. ↑ Debrasalem.co.uk.
  18. ↑ Published after Soutar's Death, William Soutar, Web, Feb. 28, 2015.
  19. ↑ Search results = au:William Soutar, WorldCat, OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc. Web, Feb. 28, 2015.

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