Dear David,
I'm delighted that you sent this. I know Sandy Moffat's work and have met him, and a long time ago I interviewed MacDiarmid (a year before he died) and MacCaig. I've met Alan Bold also and heard Sorley MacLean read his poems.
If anyone is interested in more, the interviews are in my edition, Hugh MacDiarmid: Man and Poet (Edinburgh UP and National Poetry Foundation [co-published]). It also includes interviews I did with Seamus Heaney and John Montague.
Scotland produced an amazing set of writers in what is called the Scottish Renaissance. This says "the second half of the twentieth century," but most of these were writing in the first half. MacDiarmid's first Scots lyric, "The Watergaw," came out in 1922, also an Annus Mirabilis in Scotland. His great long poem, A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle, was published in 1926.
Liz Lochhead should have been in here also. She is still writing. She was Scotland's second Makar, and Jackie Kay is the current one. We would say "poet laureate." Liz and Jackie and Carol Ann Duffy--currently Britain's poet laureate--all grew up in Glasgow.
I hope many readers try some of this work.
Cheers,
Nancy
