Robert Garioch: Collected Poems

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1904598072 ISBN 13: 9781904598077

Publisher: Polygon An Imprint of Birlinn Limited, 2004

Garioch's most well-known work is his satirical and humorous verse written in Scots, such as the Edinburgh Sonnets, Embro to the Ploy and The Canny Hen. These poems offer shrewd observations of the city and its inhabitants, and Garioch himself acknowledged the influence of another of Edinburgh's great poets, Robert Fergusson, in this respect. Garioch was also well-known as the translator into Scots of authors as disparate as Apollinaire, Pindar and the nineteenth-century Roman poet Guiseppe Belli, with whom he felt a particular affinity. He also wrote an autobiographical work, Two Men and a Blanket, in which he recounts his experiences as a prisoner-of-war in Italy and Germany in the 1940s. Towards the end of his life, he was Writer-in-Residence at Edinburgh University, and also worked as lexicographer and transcriber in the School of Scottish Studies, Edinburgh University. He died in 1981. This is the first major volume of Robert Garioch's poetry in over twenty years. Unlike the previous edition of his work (1983), it follows Garioch's own ordering of his poems, includes his own notes, as well as editorial explanations for readers unfamiliar with Garioch's Edinburgh background and

About the Author:

Robin Fulton was born in Arran and educated at Edinburgh University. He is a published poet, whose work has appeared in German, Spanish and Swedish, and is the translator of a number of modern Scandinavian poets, including Tomas Transtromer, Henrik Nordbrandt and Olav H. Hauge. He was editor of Lines Review between 1967 and 1976, and also edited the first edition of Garioch's complete works (1983) and A Garioch Miscellany (1986). He has lived in Norway for many years.