
New Collected Poems
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The new introduction by Matthew McGuire of the Department of Scottish Literature, University of Glasgow, illuminates the range of Crichton Smith's achievement as a poet of Scotland and Europe, rooted in local tradition and, in Edwin Morgan's words, 'open to the whole intellectual world'.
cover image: Marion MacPhee, Sound of Shiant (monotype, 2002). Copyright (c) Marion MacPhee www.marionmacphee.co.uk.
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Poem of the WeekThe late Ian Crichton Smith was brought up in Lewis in the Outer Hebrides and his 1984 collection 'The Exhiles' draws poignantly on the area's history of emigration. The little piece below deals not in the generalities of loss, and sometimes the impossibility of return, but tells a very particular story - and is all the more powerful for that. It can be found in Ian Crichton Smith: New Collected Poems, an updated and splendidly comprehensive compendium devoted to this most sympathetic and generous-spirited of modern Scottish poets.
Returning Exhile
You who come home do not tell me
anything about yourself, where you have come from,
why your coat is wet, why there is grass in your hair.
The sheep huddle on the hills as always,
there's a yellow light as if cast by helmets,
the fences made of wire are strung by the wind.
Do not tell me where you have come from, beloved stranger.
It is enough that there is light still in your eyes,
that the dog rising on his pillar of black knows you. I hope the publication of Ian Crichton Smith's New Collected Poems, as bounteous and loving as they are musically haunting and lyrically graceful, signals a resurgence of interest in this exhilarating and visionary poet.
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Content
- Cover
- Title Page
- Dedication
- ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
- Table of Contents
- INTRODUCTION
- SELECTED FURTHER READING
- from THE LONG RIVER(1955)
- The Dedicated Spirits
- 'Some days were running legs'
- Poem of Lewis
- Anchored Yachts on a Stormy Day
- from THE WHITE NOON (1959)
- False Summer Leans
- In Luss Churchyard
- Highland Sunday
- End of the Season on a Stormy Day - Oban
- School Teacher
- The Widow
- Statement by a Responsible Spinster
- Night Walk 1
- Night Walk 2
- Seagulls
- Room for Living
- Beautiful Shadow
- For the Unknown Seamen of the 1939-45 War Buried in Iona Churchyard
- The Window
- from THISTLES AND ROSES(1961)
- Old Woman
- Luss Village
- A Note on Puritans
- Schoolgirl on Speech-day in the Open Air
- Dying is not Setting Out
- John Knox
- About that Mile
- Sunday Morning Walk
- Love Songs of a Puritan
- Kierkegaard
- By Ferry to the Island
- Culloden and After
- A Young Highland Girl Studying Poetry
- For Angus MacLeod
- Studies in Power
- Home
- For My Mother
- DEER ON THE HIGH HILLS (1962)
- from THE LAW AND THE GRACE (1965)
- Old Woman
- The Witches
- Two Girls Singing
- Old Highland Lady Reading Newspaper
- Lenin
- The Argument
- Johnson in the Highlands
- Face of an Old Highland Woman
- The Clearances
- 'It is the old'
- At the Firth of Lorne
- The Law and the Grace
- Hume
- Rythm
- Preparation for a Death
- Encounter in a School Corridor
- To Forget the Dead
- The Chess Player
- Envoi
- from THREE REGIONAL VOICES(1668)
- The Departing Island
- Old Woman
- Money-man Only
- Returning Exile
- She Teaches Lear
- from FROM BOURGEOIS LAND (1969)
- Entering Your House
- Hamlet
- Epitaph
- 'It was the heavy jokes'
- In Youth
- The Wind Roars
- Young Girl Singing Psalm
- At the Sale
- 'More than twenty years ago'
- 'I take it from you'
- 'To hell with this poetry reading'
- 'What's your Success?'
- 'Children, follow the dwarfs'
- BEN DORAIN (1969)
- from LINES REVIEW (1969)
- Old Woman with Flowers
- Glasgow
- The House We Lived In
- Return to the Council House
- School Sports, at the Turnstiles
- Mr M.
- In the Classics Room
- Hear us, O Lord
- Homage to George Orwell
- from Transparencies A Sequence
- Shall Gaelic Die?
- from POEMS TO EIMHIR (1971)
- from HAMLET IN AUTUMN (1972)
- On a Summer's Day
- Dead for a Rat
- Dear Hamlet
- How often I feel like you
- Russian Poem
- Party
- Dipping Your Spoon
- Shane
- Chaplin
- End of Schooldays
- For Keats
- For John Maclean, Headmaster, and Classical and Gaelic Scholar
- Gaelic Songs
- Not to Islands
- For Ann in America in the Autumn
- In the Chinese Restaurant
- The Small Snags
- Children in Winter
- Lear and Carroll
- Give Me Your Hand
- Christmas, 1971
- The Letter
- In the Time of the Useless Pity
- Finis not Tragedy
- Everything Is Silent
- from LOVE POEMS AND ELEGIES (1972)
- 'You lived in Glasgow'
- 'You told me once'
- 'My sailor father'
- 'That island formed you'
- The Space-ship
- On Looking at the Dead
- 'Of the uncomplicated dairy girl'
- 'Tinily a star goes down'
- Contrasts
- Moonlight over the island
- 'The chair in which you've sat'
- Argument
- 'The world's a minefield'
- The place without music
- At the Scott Exhibition, Edinburgh Festival
- from PENGUIN MODERN POETS 21 (1972)
- By the Sea
- Jean Brodie's Children
- If You Are About to Die Now
- The White Air of March
- from ORPHEUS AND OTHER POEMS (1974)
- The Island
- In the Dark
- Orpheus
- Breughel
- Poem for Auden
- The Glass of Water
- from POEMS FOR DONALDA (1974)
- Helplessly
- The Present
- The Shadows
- Tonight
- from THE PERMANENT ISLAND (1975)
- Young Girl
- You are at the bottom of my mind
- Going Home
- To an Old Woman
- The Old Woman
- At the Cemetery
- At the Stones of Callanish
- What Is Wrong?
- Eight Songs for a New Ceilidh
- Oban
- Sighting the Mountains of Harris
- The Sea and the Rocks
- Song of Remembrance
- 1941-1942
- The Minister*
- The Rain
- Song
- Love Song
- The Highlands
- Luss
- Bareness
- On the Street
- Innocence
- The Island
- When We Were Young
- Poem
- My Poetry
- One Girl
- Freud
- The White Swan*
- The Little Old Lady
- Conversation
- The Melodeon of the Spirit
- Predestination
- For Derick Thomson
- The Prodigal Son
- The Poppy
- Saturday
- Deirdre
- The Heroes
- Autumn Song
- The Fool
- To My Mother
- The Old Woman
- On a Beautiful Day
- The Stone
- Raven
- On a Misty Evening
- The TV
- from THE NOTEBOOKS OF ROBINSON CRUSOE AND OTHER POEMS (1975)
- My Uncle
- The Prodigal Son
- Ceilidh
- The Sound of Music
- Incident
- Chinese Poem
- The Notebooks of Robinson Crusoe
- from IN THE MIDDLE (1977)
- In Yellow
- When Day is Done
- The Torches
- My Child
- The Chair
- The Scream
- Women
- Tears Are Salt
- The Old School Books
- Clouds
- None Is the Same as Another
- from THE EMIGRANTS (1983)
- Lewis
- The Herring Girls
- Climbing and Climbing
- We Will Walk
- Berries
- When I am Reading
- On an Autumn Day
- Vancouver
- You
- Let us Raise
- from THE EXILES (1984)
- Returning Exile
- There is no Sorrow
- Next Time
- The Exiles
- Always
- In the Spring
- Youth
- Australia
- Prince Charles
- No Return
- Reading Shakespeare
- Speech for Prospero
- 'You'll take a bath'
- Autumn
- Owl and Mouse
- 'Iolaire'
- For Poets Writing in English over in Ireland
- Lost
- Hallowe'en
- Poem
- The Survivors
- The 'Ordinary' People
- At the Funeral of Robert Garioch
- Who Daily
- Envoi
- A LIFE (1986)
- Lewis 1928-1945
- Aberdeen University 1945-1949
- National Service 1950-1952
- Clydebank and Dumbarton 1952-1955
- Oban 1955-1982
- Taynuilt 1982-
- THE VILLAGE AND OTHER POEMS (1989)
- The Village
- Nothing Will Happen
- Not in Heaven
- Helensburgh
- The Drowned
- Villagers
- Photograph of Emigrants
- Incubator
- The Story
- At the Party
- After the Edinburgh Festival
- Stupidly
- In this Pitiless Age
- Slowly
- Meeting
- Marx
- The Women
- In Belfast
- Girl and Child
- Speeding-up
- TV
- Christmas
- The Country of Pain
- Poor Artist
- Against Apartheid 1
- Against Apartheid 2
- Snow
- Cat and Mouse
- The Leaves and Us
- In the Garden
- Rose
- Autumn Stubble
- The Cat
- Early Spring
- The Black Chest
- The Traveller
- Farewell my Brother
- Listen
- from THE BIRLINN (uncollected, 1977)
- The Storm
- ROMAN POEMS (uncollected, 1979)
- The Invasion
- Marcus Aurelius Speaks
- The Atoms
- from ENDS AND BEGINNINGS (1994)
- Poetry
- The Bible
- Old Lady
- As Time Draws Near
- Funeral
- An Old Man Praying
- Dying Man
- In Hospital
- Dogmas
- Come, Fool
- From the Mad Ward
- London
- Aberdeen
- Putting out the Ashes
- Hallowe'en
- The Fence
- Welcome
- The Gaelic Proverb
- The Poet
- Milton
- The Scholar
- Dream
- The Young Girls
- Books
- Others
- Insomnia
- from THE HUMAN FACE (1996)
- 'That ethnic differences should'
- from THE LEAF AND THE MARBLE (1998)
- from A COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (2000)
- The Old Man
- Those Who Talk to the Wind
- Autumn
- Names
- Ashes
- Old Lady
- On a Photograph by Dan Morrison
- Shorts
- Old Folks' Party
- In Winter
- Neighbour
- MacDiarmid
- All Day
- The Old Men
- Interviewer
- Time to Stop
- The Old Woman
- Parkhead
- For A.J. Macleod
- For Edwin Morgan
- Old Woman
- Leaves
- Not a Day for Dante
- Page after Page
- He Spoke
- from MY CANADIAN UNCLE (2000)
- UNCOLLECTED POEMS
- Crofter's Wife
- From the Train
- Art
- The Lesson
- Shylock
- Lear
- The Forest of Arden
- On an Icy Day
- On Seeing a Russian Version of Richard III at the Edinburgh Festival
- Van Gogh and the Visitors
- In Paisley Library
- Return to Aberdeen
- The Old Lady
- Predestination
- The Red Horse
- I Remember I Remember
- My Brother
- Old Characters
- Martha
- The Unemployed
- Autumn
- Reminder
- For Peter, Leaving for the RAF
- The Tape Runs
- Sometimes When I Am Alone
- On National Service
- Hallowe'en
- Top of the Pops
- By the Sea in Autumn
- The Autumn of Experience
- 'She goes off to be a missionary'
- Fairy Story
- Morality Play in Cambridge in the Open Air
- At Ely Cathedral
- Incident
- Those
- 'The Tiger' by Franz Marc
- 'Don Quixote' by Daumier
- Detail from 'The Triumph of Death' by Breughel
- Goya
- Botticelli's 'Primavera'
- The Cry of the Woman
- The Poet
- 'If in this summer'
- INDEX OF TITLES
- INDEX OF FIRST LINES
- About the Author
- Also by lain Crichton Smith from Carcanet Press
- Copyright
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