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William Soutar

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William Soutar byBenno Schotz1959
Pavement poem (William Soutar) Writers Museum, Edinburgh

William Soutar(28 April 1898 – 15 October 1943) was aScottishpoetand diarist who wrote in English and inBraid Scots.He is known best for hisepigrams.[1][2]

Life and works

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William Soutar was born on 28 April 1898 on South Inch Terrace[3]inPerth, Scotland,the child of John Soutar (1871–1958), master joiner, and his wife, Margaret Smith (1870–1954), they also had an adopted daughter Evelyn Soutar taken in when Margaret's first cousin died, who wrote poetry. His parents belonged to theUnited Free Church of Scotland.He was educated at Southern District School, Perth, and atPerth Academy,before joining thewartimeRoyal Navyin 1916. By the time he was demobilized in November 1918, he was suffering from what would be diagnosed in 1924 asankylosing spondylitis,[4]a form of chronic inflammatory arthritis.[5]

Soutar began to study medicine at theUniversity of Edinburghin 1919, but switched to English. He did not excel academically, but began to contribute to the student magazine. His first volume,Gleanings by an Undergraduate(1923), appeared at his father's expense, as did several others. He began to keep a diary on 18 April 1919. During that period he made contact withHugh MacDiarmid,then inMontrose,and withEzra Pound.MacDiarmid at the time was abandoning poetry in English in favour of "synthetic Scots", a literary language compiled from dialects and earlier writers such asRobert HenrysonandWilliam Dunbar.

William Soutar Trail, Perth

Soutar's work correspondingly altered radically, and he became a leading figure of theScottish Literary Renaissance,whom posthumous editors would dub "one of the greatest poets Scotland has produced."[6]His family adopted an orphaned cousin of his, seven-year-old Evelyn, in 1927, and this became a spur to him to write also for children.Seeds in the Wind(1933) was a volume of "bairn-rhymes" in Scots.[7]

By 1930 Soutar was bedridden with his disease. He died in 1943 oftuberculosiscontracted in 1929. He is buried in Perth'sJeanfield and Wellshill Cemetery.[8]His collected poems, edited by MacDiarmid, were published in 1948. His journal,The Diary of a Dying Man,appeared posthumously. One form of verse he used was thecinquain(now known as American cinquains),[9]which he preferred to callepigrams.[10]

Interest in Soutar's work in Scots and English and for adults and children, has revived considerably since the 1980s, although none of his verse was in print for his centenary in 1998.[11]Gang Doun wi' a Sang,Joy Hendry's celebration of the life and work of William Soutar, was produced atPerth Theatrefrom 12 to 27th October 1990.[12] In 2014 he was the subject of a BBC radio programme:The Still Life PoetbyLiz Lochhead.

Musical settings

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  • Benjamin Brittenset twelve Soutar poems for tenor voice and piano in the 1969song cycleWho Are These Children?(op. 84).[13]
  • Erik Chisholmset a range of Soutar's verse, includingSummer Song,A Dirge for Summer,and the humorous settingsThe Prodigy, The Braw PlumandThe Three Worthies.[14]
  • James MacMillanset several of his Scots-language poems in a style that drew on traditional folk song:[15]"Scots Song" (aka 'The Tryst', 1991), "Ballad" (1994) and "The Children" (1995) were collected asThree Scottish Songsin 1995.[16]
  • The albumIn a Sma' Room,with settings by Debra Salem, Kevin Mackenzie and Paul Harrison, appeared in 2021.[17][18]

Selected published works

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  • Gleanings by an Undergraduate(Paisley: Alexander Gardner, 1923)
  • Brief Words. One Hundred Epigrams(Edinburgh/London: The Moray Press, 1935)
  • Seeds in the Wind, Poems in Scots for Children(London: Andrew Dakers, 1943)
  • Diaries of a Dying Man(Edinburgh: Canongate Press, 1954)ISBN0-86241-347-8.In fact only a short selection
  • The Collected Poems of William Soutar,ed. Hugh MacDiarmid (London: Andrew Dakers, 1948)
  • Poems of William Soutar: a New Selection,ed. W. R. Aitken (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1988)ISBN0707305543
  • The Diary of a Dying Man(Edinburgh: Chapman, 1991)ISBN0906772311
  • At the Year's Fa': Selected Poems in Scots and English(Perth: Perth & Kinross Libraries, 2001)ISBN0905452356

External resources

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References

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  1. ^William Soutarwww.bbc.co.uk, accessed 4 May 2013
  2. ^ODNB entry by Joy Hendry.Retrieved 16 August 2013. Pay-walled.
  3. ^William Soutar Perth Walks- Perth and Kinross Countryside Trust
  4. ^University of Edinburgh. Graduates' Association (1995).University of Edinburgh journal, Volumes 37-38.University of Edinburgh. p. 239.OCLC1831427.
  5. ^ODNB entry.
  6. ^Carl Mac Dougall & Douglas Gifford: Introduction:Into a Room: Selected Poems of William Soutar(Perth and Kinross Libraries, Perth, 2000).ISBN1902831225.
  7. ^Scottish Poetry Library.Retrieved 16 August 2013.
  8. ^Friends of William Soutar site.Retrieved 16 August 2013.
  9. ^Brian Strand, ed.,Flowers of Life,a Selection of William Soutar's Cinquains (Rothesay: QQ Press, 2005)ISBN1-903203-47-3
  10. ^K. L. Goodwin, "William Soutar, Adelaide Crapsey and Imagism", SSL 3 (Columbia: University of South Carolina, 1965), pp. 96–100.
  11. ^ODNB entry.
  12. ^Gang Doun wi' a Sangtheatre programme, Perth Theatre, October 1990
  13. ^Who are these children?,Hyperion CDA67459, 2005.
  14. ^Erik Chisholm: Songs,Delphian DCD34259, 2021
  15. ^'The Children', composer's notes
  16. ^Three Scottish Songs,Boosey & Hawkes
  17. ^The Scotsman,25 February, 2021.
  18. ^Debrasalem.co.uk.
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