A Northern Habitat

In the 1960s and 1970s Robin Fulton Macpherson was active in Scottish literary life as a poet, reviewer and essayist, for many years editing Lines Review. His home base since 1973 has been Norway, and in the decades since then he has built a solid reputation as a translator of Scandinavian poets, such as Tomas Tranströmer, Kjell Espmark and Harry Martinson from Swedish, and Olav H. Hauge from Norwegian. James McGonigal has described his earlier poems as "detached, meditative, lyrical and melancholy, often with a sense of deep psychological disturbance just beyond the edge of his local landscapes." In his later poems, other commentators have noted a dry wit, a capacity for praise, and a quiet voice that says more than it seems to. Among the older generation, Edwin Morgan and Robert Garioch praised his work, as did Norman MacCaig ("what interests me most is his refusal to be content with simple statements") and Iain Crichton Smith ("a mind of great inventiveness"). As McGonigal points out, while "he may have felt side-lined by poetic fashion, the more astute of the younger generation of Scottish poets have not failed to register his presence."