BURNS NIGHT: TWO REVIEWS OF *MODERN* SCOTTISH POETRY
Leon Cych
DOUGLAS DUNN, DANTE'S DRUM-KIT, FABER, 6.99
DOUGLAS DUNN, (ed.) FABER BOOK OF TWENTIETH CENTURY SCOTTISH
POETRY
Douglas Dunn, born in 1942, belongs to a generation of poets
that includes Seamus Heaney, Michael Longley and Tony
Harrison. Like Heaney and Harrison, he comes from a background
that could be seen as provincial and working-class, yet like
them he was a first generation academic success. All three
have been teachers and lecturers as well as poets and
translators. (Dunn is now a professor of English at the
University of St.Andrews, although he worked as a librarian
for many years). Another thing they have in common is a shared
belief in the values of formalism, put to use in a poetry
which moves from the personal to the social to a principled
engagement with politics. Community and family values have
remained important to these poets, in a way which distances
Dunn from his putative mentor, Larkin. It is difficult to
imagine Larkin, or any of the 'chaps' from oxford writing as
Dunn did recently, a pamphlet called Poll Tax : The Fiscal
Fake. But then, perhaps the pressures for a poet to write for
a general audience, and the hope that it will be read, are
more urgent in Scotland.
As someone who left Scotland 20 years ago, I have little sense
of the grass-roots politics there, and how writers such as
Dunn or James Kelman relate to this. Likewise, I have as
little sense of the poetic community there as I have of that
in Huddersfield, Newcastle or Belfast. I have to infer the
current state of affairs from magazines and new books.
Certainly in 1974, which was before I started writing, I had
no sense of how the poetry business operated in Glasgow.
although Liz Lochhead, Tom Leonard, Edwin Morgan, Stewart Conn
et al must have been active then. Now of course it is totally
different, with Scottish poets well represented in the New
Generation promo, and Duffy, Kay, Jamie, Crawford, Herbert and
many others, all under 40, promising to provide good poetry
for many years to come. Arguably the last big grouping to
reach prominence was the Northern Ireland poets and that is
now some time ago, and despite the posturings of the
Huddersfield self-publicists, it seem obvious that for the
forgeable future, influentual poetry will speak in any of a
variety of Scottish accents.
It is therefore opportune that Faber have brought out Douglas
Dunn's new book and his edition of Twentieth Century Scottish
Poetry now. The anthology is a large and generous one, some
420 pages of poetry with a long and cogent essay by Dunn, who
by the way, excluded himself. This sort of anthology generally
serves 3 purposes. Leaving aside the question of whether a
single book can (or should) define the canon in a particular
area, it will be used, among other purposes, as an
introduction to the field, as a present, either for a friend
or someone who wants a reference book,and as a teaching text
for undergraduates, evening classes, and other poetry courses.
In each of these areas, it will succeed admirably. For anyone
who wants one representative book of modern Scottish poetry,
it will do nicely, and I cannot imagine a poetry lover who
finds this stuffed into their Xmas stocking feeling
disappointed. As a teaching anthology it will also be useful,
and should provoke students to go off and read more widely. As
far as I can judge, Dunn has made a real effort to be
inclusive, although another 30 pages would have allowed him to
represent the younger poets more fully. (obviously deadlines
meant that for instance, the latest work of W.N.Herbert and
Kathleen Jamie could not be included).
It would be easy to quibble over some selections and omissions
( it is a pity that A.C.Jacobs was not included, and Thomas
A.Clark is a major omission, especially since Clark's work
helps put Kenneth White into persective ) but nearly always,
Dunn's selections are judicious and assured. It could be
argued that women are under-represented, but personally I
cannot think of a Scottish woman poet active between say,
1955-75, and being published. It is good to see John Davidson
(an influence on Eliot ) represented, and poems by Violet
Jacob, Marion Angus, Helen B.Cruickshank, Rachel Annand
Taylor, Muriel Spark and Elma Mitchell in the first third of
the book, but Dunn has rightly given more space to the major
figures such as Edwin Muir and Hugh Macdiarmid. All three
linguistic traditions, Braid Scots, English and Gaelic, are
represented, with Robert Garioch, Norman MacCaig, Sorley
MacLean and Iain Crichton Smith shown to advantage. The Gaelic
poets, such as MacLean, Aongus MacNeacail, George Hay Campbell
and Derick Thomson are given in Gaelic with an English version
following in italics. (but where are the younger Gaelic poets
such as Christopher Whyte and Meg Bateman). William
MacIllvanney, Tom Leonard, Liz Lochhead, Gerry Mangan and
Frank Kuppner, and Edwin Morgan speak for and about Glasgow,
while Robert Crawford, W.N.Herbert and Kathleen Jamie speak
for the East Coast. It is also good to see the relatively
neglected Veronica Forrest-Thompson included.
No doubt Dunn was aware that Polygon was planning a book of
younger poets (now available as Dream State : The New Scottish
Poets ) and wished to avoid overlap, so complaining about
poets being missed out or some getting more space than others
is pointless. Dunn's Introduction, 'Language and Liberty' ,
takes issue with T.S.Eliot's essay, 'Was There A Scottish
Literature' and goes on to consider the relations between
language, literature, culture and politics. He sets the great
modernists such as Muir, MacDiarmid and MacLean in context,
and discusses the various influences on the younger poets,
while Burns, Sir Walter Scott and William MacGonagall look
down from the mantelpiece. Dunn has certainly filled in the
blanks in my map of Scottish poetry and I am sure that both
the general reader and the student of poetry will find Dunn's
account both informative and stimulating.
If we discount the Selected Poems 1964-83, Dante's Drum-Kit is
Dunn's 8th volume and presumably written during the period he
was editing the anthology. It is a large book, some 145 pages,
and unlike Muldoon's The Annals of Chile, not inflated by
printing 2 or 3 stanzas to a page. The book mixes longer poems
with short lyrics, sometimes grouped together, and while I
think the blurb's gush about 'dazzling technical adroitness'
is overstated, Dunn handles the technical elements with
confidence and dexterity. His rhythms are solid, his metric
competent, and his rhymes for the most part well handled.
Again, comparisons with Longley and Harrison come to mind ;
these are well-crafted poems. Dunn is decent and civilised bur
never dull, and while you couldn't call his work exciting or
radical, I suspect that this is the sort of poetry that most
poetry lovers recognise and like. Good Radio 4 stuff if you
like.
These are the poems of a man who at 50, is most of the way
through his professional life, and the book has a double
perspective. The title poem, some 16 pages of terza rima, is a
meditation on what might be to come, while various short poems
look back to childhood or adolescence. Dunn was a librarian in
Hull, and in Libraries: A Celebration he reflects on this life
(with P.Larkin for boss) with considerablymore affection that
one of his Hull proteges, Sean O'Brien displays in his library
poems in H.M.S. Glasshouse. There is also a series of poems on
the poor and dispossessed, Moorlander, The Crossroads of the
Birds, Bare Ruined Choirs, The Penny Gibbet, Gaberlunzie, Body
Echoes, Swigs, and Poor Peoples Cafes. Some of these are
contemporary while others are set in Scotland's past. It could
be argued that for some people, things have either changed
little or regressed to the 18th century, especially since some
politicians seem determined to return us to a state more
brutal than anything depicted by Hogarth. Dunn's poetry acts
as an honourable witness to the state of the nation and
invites us to respond. ( Not by agit-prop or exhortation ; he
depicts the scenes of down and outs for example, and leaves
the reader to construct their own response. )
It is not all dour politics of course ; Dunn is a good comic
poet when he wants to be. Extra Helpings is an affectionate
portrait of his schooldays and his eating habits with a fine
singable chorus, and there are poems on gardening, an ode to
his desk, and an account of the importance of Auden for the
young Dunn in 1960. The book finishes with another long public
poem, Dressed To Kill, written for a BBC film. While perhaps
less bitter than Hamish Henderson's Elegies for the Dead in
Cyrenaica, like them it is an eloquent account of the
brutality and pointlessness of warfare. Dunn's particular
concern is with Scottish soldiers, especially the kilted
Highland regiments, dubbed by the terrified Germans in world
War 1, the ladies from Hell. Dunn explores the irony that
besides being a dreadful business in its own right, the
British Empire's various wars since 1745 have largely been
fought by the poor from the Highlands and Glasgow. (For many
years the 51st Highland Light Infantry had a barracks in the
Maryhill district of Glasgow). For many Scots, risking
mutilation and death on behalf of the British Empire was
preferable to poverty and starvation. As Hamish Henderson put
it, 'We fought England's battles Sir/to the dreiping knife
Sir'. Dressed To Kill is a candid interrogation of the
violence inherent in Scottish popular culture and questons the
validity of notions of patriotism and nationalism. This work
along, with the Introduction to the Faber Book of Twentieth
Century Scottish Poetry should be required reading for members
of the Burns Cult, nationalists of any stripe, and
parochialists who want the Scotland of their choice and their
choice only, and canna thole onybuhdy else's unco notions.
(c) BRIAN DOCHERTY Jan 1995
Best Wishes,
Leon Cych (editor Poetry London Newsletter)
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* le...@easynet.co.uk *
* le...@poetry.demon.co.uk *
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