Norman Mac Caig Norman Mac Caig If you

Norman Mac. Caig

Norman Mac. Caig ‘If you want a book which will last forever … get Norman Mac. Caig’s Collected Poems. ’ Glasgow Evening Times

Norman Mac. Caig’s Background Norman Mac. Caig was born in Edinburgh in 1910.

Norman Mac. Caig’s Background • Although Norman Mac. Caig spent all his childhood and his later life in Scotland's capital, his mother's Highland past was a great influence on the young poet. • Mac. Caig's mother was from Scalpay, Harris. The Gaelic heritage inherited on visits to his mother's family on the islands was to have a lasting effect on him.

Norman Mac. Caig’s Background • During the war Norman Mac. Caig refused to fight because he did not want to kill people who he felt were just the same as him. He spent time in various prisons because of his pacifist views. • Having spent years educating young children, he then went on to teach university students when in 1967 he became the first Fellow in Creative Writing at Edinburgh University. Mac. Caig later held a similar post while teaching at the University of Stirling.

Norman Mac. Caig’s Background • As he became older, Mac. Caig’s fame spread, and he received such honours as the OBE and the Queen's Medal for Poetry. • By the time of his death in January 1996, Mac. Caig was known widely as ‘the grand old man of Scottish poetry’.

Wondering how long it takes to write a poem? When asked how long it took him to write a poem, Norman Mac. Caig said: ‘About two fags’.

‘Country Dance’ The room whirled and coloured and figured itself with dancers … And there, in the band, an old fiddler sawing away in the privacy of music. He bowed lefthanded and his right hand was the wrong way round. Impossible. But the jig bounced, the grace notes sparked on the surface of the tune. The odd man out, when it came to music, was the odd man in. There’s a lesson here, I thought …

‘Frogs’ Frogs sit more solid than anything sits. In midleap they are parachutists falling in a free fall. They die on roads with arms across their chests and heads high.

‘Frogs’ I love frogs that sit like Buddha, that fall without parachutes, that die like Italian tenors. Above all, I love them because, pursued in water, they never panic so much that they fail to make stylish triangles with their ballet dancer's legs.

‘Basking Shark’ To stub an oar on a rock where none should be, To have it rise with a slounge out of the sea Is a thing that happened once (too often) to me. But not too often – though enough, I count as gain That once I met, on a sea tin-tacked with rain, That room-sized monster with a matchbox brain.

‘Basking Shark’ He displaced more than the water. He shoggled me Centuries back – this decadent townee Shook on a wrong branch of his family tree. Swish up the dirt and, when it settles, a spring Is all the clearer. I saw me, in one fling, Emerging from the slime of everything. So who’s the monster? The thought made me grow pale. For twenty seconds while, sail after sail, The tall fin slid away and then the tail.