How a Scottish Poet Found His Voice in Rotterdam

In June 1978, Sorley MacLean stood in front of an audience in Rotterdam at Poetry International, a big poetry festival. He read his poems in Scottish Gaelic while poets from twenty countries read in their own languages. On June 15th, the fourth day of the festival, the concert hall was full of different languages—Catalan, Turkish, Flemish, Hebrew, Japanese, and more.

A newspaper critic named Vera Illès listened carefully that evening. When MacLean spoke, she heard his Gaelic as something special and ancient-sounding. After the festival, she wrote about what she had heard. She said the evening was successful because of all the different languages. "One of the attractions of this festival is the changing of different languages, which together form a feast of sound," she wrote.

Illès thought about what happens when you listen to poetry in a language you do not understand. She wrote that when poetry comes in a language you cannot follow word by word, you hear it as sound. She described the evening's languages carefully: the singing Catalan, the measured Gaelic of MacLean, the Turkish, the Flemish, the American English, the Japanese, and the Hebrew. MacLean's Gaelic was special—not strange, but ancient, as if the language itself carried the weight of many centuries.

Two weeks after the festival, a newspaper called De waarheid published an interview with MacLean. The headline used his own words: "I am the only poet in a family of singers, says Scottish poet Sorley MacLean." The interviewer began by saying how beautiful MacLean's language was. "I have never heard a poem in such a beautiful language as the poems of Sorley Maclean in Gaelic. One of the most beautiful and sonorous languages spoken by humans," the interviewer said.

MacLean explained why he wrote in Gaelic. "Because it is my first language," he said. "The language I learned at home. It is the language of the people I belong to." He said that eighty thousand people spoke Scottish Gaelic, and more were learning it. The language was not dead, though it was in danger.

When asked what was important in his work, MacLean talked about poetry itself. "That poetry is lyrical," he said. "I love poetry that is lyrical; I love poetry that is a medley—perhaps a philosophical medley—bursting into lyricism. And that goes back in time." He said he was socially engaged—he cared about society and people. He believed poetry should connect to real life and real problems, not just be beautiful words.

To explain what he meant, MacLean quoted the English poet John Keats. "For me the ideal is what Keats, a Romantic poet from the previous century, said about the highest kind of poetry: 'None approach here but those to whom the miseries of the world are miseries and will not let them rest.'" For MacLean, poetry was not just decoration. It was a response to suffering in the world.

The interviewer noted that MacLean's poems showed this engagement. He had written about the Second World War, when he fought in Africa. He wrote about fascism and about the lives of ordinary Scottish people. But the interviewer also noticed a problem. "Many poets everywhere in the world face a gap that separates them from people. This is clearly a problem for MacLean," the interviewer said.

MacLean agreed that this problem was real. "That problem exists in every country. I am aware of it," he said. "I have no answer for it." He said that only one poet had truly bridged this gap—Robert Burns, a famous Scottish poet from the past. Burns had become so well-known that he was part of his nation's common culture. But MacLean knew of no one else who had done this.

MacLean thought the problem came from larger forces. "It should be that the poet would be for everyone," he said. He said it has a lot to do with education and control of the media. The gap between poets and ordinary people was not natural. It was created by systems that did not teach people to read poetry and did not give poetry space in the media. Yet knowing this did not solve the problem. MacLean continued to write in Gaelic, even though most Gaelic speakers could not read his work.

Three months after MacLean's interview appeared, another important Scottish poet died. Hugh MacDiarmid died in Edinburgh at the age of eighty-six. Dutch newspapers published long articles about his death. MacDiarmid, born Christopher Murray Grieve, had published his first famous poem in 1926 called "A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle." He had also founded the Scottish National Party and was a communist.

A newspaper called NRC Handelsblad described MacDiarmid as "one of Scotland's great poets." The article listed his major works: "In 1926 he published 'A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle'; in 1930 'To Circumjack Cenrastus' and the 'First Hymn to Lenin', of whom McDiarmid was an enthusiastic admirer." But the newspaper also noted a problem: "His poetry, although greatly admired in literary circles, has remained a closed book for the majority of Scots, because he used old Gaelic, modern English and the contemporary dialect of the Lowlands as suppliers for his idiom." His poetry was too difficult for ordinary people to read.

MacDiarmid cared deeply about two things: Scottish nationalism and communism. He wrote poems about Lenin, the Russian communist leader. When people said he wanted to go back to the past, he disagreed. "When I began with these things, Scottish nationalism and Scottish language use in the twenties, the usual objection was made that I wanted to turn back the clock. But that is precisely what must happen when a clock is running wrong." He was not nostalgic. He was trying to fix something that was broken.

MacDiarmid was a strong personality. When he was listed in a book called Who's Who, he wrote that his hobby was "anglophobia"—a strong dislike of everything English. "This intense aversion to everything English was complemented in him by an equally intense love for Scotland." He did not believe in compromise.

MacDiarmid received many honors. He was a doctor of the University of Edinburgh, president of the Poetry Society, and a professor. But these honors did not make him happy with his own community. His autobiography was so controversial that the people of his birthplace, Langholm, once refused to give him official honors. Yet "he wished to be buried in Langholm." The greatest Scottish poet since Burns remained separated from the place that had made him.

Scottish and Dutch culture had been connected for many years. In 1921, a newspaper reported on an exhibition of modern Scottish art planned for Holland. Two years later, Dutch art was shown in Glasgow. The Dutch saw in Scottish culture something that reflected their own values.

Another Scottish poet, Edwin Muir, had died in 1959, and Dutch newspapers wrote about his life. Muir was born on the Orkney Islands in 1887 and moved to Glasgow when he was fourteen. He married a Scottish writer named Willa Anderson in 1919. He lived in many places—London, Prague, Italy—and taught poetry at universities in Edinburgh and Harvard. "Muir wrote extremely refined and simple poetry," one newspaper said. He published only six books of poetry, but they brought him great fame.

Poetry International was important for connecting Dutch and Scottish culture. The festival brought MacLean to Rotterdam in June 1978. He read his Gaelic poetry to a Dutch audience that could not understand the words but could hear the music. The festival had presenters who gave translations and introductions, so Scottish poetry became accessible to people who could not read Gaelic. Vera Illès's review placed MacLean's voice among other minority languages, each one beautiful because it was foreign, each one a different kind of sound.

But the interview with MacLean also showed a deep problem. He wrote in Gaelic, the language of his people, yet most of those people could not read his work. He believed poetry should be for everyone, yet he knew of no one who had bridged the gap between poets and ordinary people except Burns. He said the problem came from education and media control, forces that no single person could overcome. And still he wrote in Gaelic, still he believed poetry should be socially engaged, still he measured poetry by the highest moral standards.

MacDiarmid had faced a similar problem. His poetry was admired by literary people but remained difficult for most Scots. His own birthplace had rejected him, yet he wanted to be buried there. He had received every honor a poet could receive, yet remained separated from his own community. He had tried to fix a broken clock, to bring back a language and a national consciousness that had been suppressed. The Dutch newspapers that wrote about his death recognized him as great, but they also showed the gap between his achievement and his reach.

In Rotterdam in the summer of 1978, a Scottish poet stood before a Dutch audience and spoke in a language almost no one there could understand. A critic heard in that incomprehensibility something beautiful—the sound of a language presenting itself at its most beautiful, precisely because it could not be followed word by word. That was not a solution to the gap between poetry and ordinary people. But it was something. It was a moment when the gap itself became visible, when the problem MacLean had named became real and present in the room.