Edwin Morgan(1920-2010), Scotland’s first modern Makar, was one of the country’s most playful and curious poets. His vast body of work teems with humanity, from the short lyrics such as ‘Aberdeen Train’, to the documentary realism of ‘Death In Duke Street’, to the anger of ‘Flowers of Scotland’, to the epic scope of his Beowulf translation. His most distinctive poems might be his ‘concrete poetry’, linguistic experiments in which word-play comes to the fore. Even if they seem nonsensical at first glance, these poems make sense as soundscapes, or as stories about language itself.
For St Andrew’s Day, here is his brilliant ‘Canedolia’ which, in its inventive use of Scottish place-names, is a celebration of the whole country and says something about its people. As Morgan wrote in his introduction to the 1961 collection Sovpoems, ‘Experiment if you like, but love the world’.
Canedolia an off-concrete Scotch fantasia oa! hoy! awe! ba! mey! who saw? rhu saw rum. garve saw smoo. nigg saw tain. lairg saw lagg. rig saw eigg. largs saw haggs. tongue saw luss. mull saw yell. stoer saw strone. drem saw muck. gask saw noss. unst saw cults. echt saw banff. weem saw wick. trool saw twatt. how far? from largo to lunga from joppa to skibo from ratho to shona from ulva to minto from tinto to tolsta from soutra to marsco from braco to barra from alva to stobo from fogo to fada from gigha to gogo from kelso to stroma from hirta to spango. what is it like there? och, it’s freuchie, it’s faifley, it’s wamphray, it’s frandy, it’s sliddery. what do you do? we foindle and fungle, we bonkle and meigle and maxpoffle. we scotstarvit, armit, wormit, and even whifflet. we play at crossstobs, leuchars, gorbals, and finfan. we scavaig, and there’s aye a bit of tilquhilly. if it’s wet, treshnish and mishnish. what is the best of the country? blinkbonny! airgold! thundergay! and the worst? scrishven, shiskine, scrabster, and snizort. listen! what’s that? catacol and wauchope, never heed them. tell us about last night well, we had a wee ferintosh and we lay on the quiraing. it was pure strontian! but who was there? petermoidart and craigenkenneth and cambusputtock and ecclemuchty and corriehulish and balladolly and altnacanny and clauchanvrechan and stronachlochan and auchenlachar and tighnacrankie and tilliebruaich and killieharra and invervannach and achnatudlem and machrishellach and inchtamurchan and auchterfechan and kinlochculter and ardnawhallie and invershuggle. and what was the toast? schiehallion! schiehallion! schiehallion! [from The Second Life (Edinburgh University Press, 1968)]
Read more about Edwin Morgan and concrete poetry at the National Poetry Library website.
To mark his centenary in 2020, Polygon published the Edwin Morgan Twenties, five slim volumes of poems introduced by leading Scottish writers and critics.
