_______________________________
Who is Norman MacCaig?
Norman Alexander MacCaig DLitt FRSE FRSL ARSA OBE (14 November 1910 – 23 January 1996) was a Scottish poet and teacher. His poetry, in modern English, is known for its humour, simplicity of language and great popularity.
MacCaig’s first two books were deeply influenced by the New Apocalypse movement of the thirties and forties, one of a number of literary movements that were constantly coalescing, evolving and dissolving at that time. Later he was to all but disown these works, dismissing them as obscure and meaningless. His poetic rebirth took place with the publication of Riding Lights in 1955. It was a complete contrast to his earlier works, being strictly formal, metrical, rhyming and utterly lucid. The timing of the publication was such that he could have been associated with The Movement, a poetic grouping of poets at just that time. Indeed many of the forms and themes of his work fitted with the ideas of The Movement but he remained separate from that group, perhaps on account of his Scottishness—all of the Movement poets were English. One label that has been attached to MacCaig and one that he seemed to enjoy (as an admirer of John Donne) is Metaphysical.
In later years he relaxed some of the formality of his work, losing the rhymes and strict metricality but always strove to maintain the lucidity. He became a free verse poet with the publication of Surroundings in 1966. Seamus Heaney described his work as “an ongoing education in the marvellous possibilities of lyric poetry.” Ted Hughes wrote, “whenever I meet his poems, I’m always struck by their undated freshness, everything about them is alive, as new and essential, as ever.” Another poet, beside Donne, whom MacCaig claimed was a great influence on his work was Louis MacNeice. Although he never lost his sense of humour, much of his very late work, following the death of his wife in 1990, is more sombre in tone. The poems appear to be full of heartbreak but they never become pessimistic.
An example of this is his poem “Praise of a Man” which was quoted by Gordon Brown in the eulogy he gave at the funeral of Robin Cook in 2005:
The beneficent lights dim
but don’t vanish.
The razory edges
dull, but still cut.
He’s gone:
but you can see
his tracks still, in the snow of the world.
A verse of MacCaig’s poem Moorings is cited on the reverse side of the new 10-pound polymer banknote that was introduced by the Royal Bank of Scotland in 2017.
