Washington Irving (best known for his short stories Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow) was one of the first American writers to gain international success in Europe. Edinburgh - Holyroodhouse, Edinburgh, Scotland - Palace of Holyroodhouse, Canongate, Edinburgh, Midlothian EH8 8DX, UK

The most difficult thing for me to remember is that a poem is made of words and not of the expanding heart, the overflowing soul, or the sensitive observer. A poem is made of words. … It is brought to life by the reader and takes part in the reader’s change. (‘Notes on a Poetry of Release’) His believes one of his most powerful poems, ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’, was partly influenced by the pupils he taught there and his journey to the school past a railway siding, cattle market and abattoir. Edinburgh - Edinburgh Castle, Edinburgh, Scotland - Edinburgh Castle, Johnston Terrace, Edinburgh, City of Edinburgh EH1 2, UK He’s probably the only poet in the world to rhyme ‘sorrow’ with ‘Edinburgh’ – found elsewhere in this poem named Beautiful Edinburgh. David Nowell Smith, “These words take place”: W. S. Graham’s “The Nightfishing” ( Essays in Modern British and Irish Poetry 5, 2011).

Famous poets ( ranked #40 )

MacCaig's formal education was firmly rooted in the Edinburgh soil: he attended the Royal High School and then Edinburgh University where he studied Classics. He then trained to be a teacher at Moray House in Edinburgh and spent a large part of his life as a primary school teacher. During the war MacCaig refused to fight because he did not want to kill people who he felt were just the same as him. He therefore spent time in various prisons and doing landwork because of his pacifist views. Having spent years educating young children, MacCaig then went on to teach university students when in 1967 he became the first Fellow in Creative Writing at Edinburgh University, and he later held a similar post while teaching at the University of Stirling. MacCaig was into his thirties before he published two books of poems. These belonged to the Neo-Apocalyptic School, rampant on the ‘Celtic Fringes’ in the 1940s. Later, he disavowed them to the extent that one fancied that only an innate respect for scholarship prevented him destroying the copies lodged in the National Library of Scotland. As that school went, they weren’t bad. He came into his own, though, in his forties, with Riding Lights, published in 1955. At this point he might be, and was, mistaken for a Scottish relative of the Movement. Balquidder, speeds the midnight blaze......): The heath on the Scottish moor-lands is often set fire to, that the sheep may have the advantage of the young herbage produced in room of the tough old heather plants. This custom (execrated by sportsmen) produces occasionally the most beautiful nocturnal appearances, similar almost to the discharge of a volcano. The simile is not new to poetry. The charge of a warrior, in the fine ballad of Hardyknute, is said to be "like a fire to heather set."

P.H. Scott and A.C. Davis, The Age of MacDiarmid: essays on Hugh MacDiarmid and his influence on contemporary Scotland (Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing, 1980) Mario Relich, ‘Scottish tradition and Robert Garioch’s individual talent’, Lines Review No. 136, (March 1996) stanza XXVI: There, for retreat in dangerous hour...): The Celtic chieftains, whose lives were continually exposed to peril, had usually, in the most retired spot of their domains, some place of retreat for the hour of necessity, which, as circumstances would admit, was a tower, a cavern, or a rustic hut, in a strong and secluded situation. One of these last gave refuge to the unfortunate Charles Edward, in his perilous wanderings after the battle of Culloden. Poems for 6d: In Gaelic, Lowland Scots and English (with Somhairle MacGhill-Eathain) (Edinburgh: Chalmers Press, 1940) Norman MacCaig’s poetry began as part of the New Apocalypse Movement, a surrealist mode of writing which he later disowned turning instead to more precise, often witty observations. He was great friends with Hugh MacDiarmid and other Scottish poets he met with in the bars of Edinburgh to debate, laugh and drink. Although he was never persuaded by his literary friends to write in Scots, he was respected by friends such as MacDiarmid as having made an important contribution to literature.On the fleeter foot was never tied...): The present brogue of the Highlanders is made of half-dried leather, with holes to admit and let out the water; for walking the moors dry-shod is a matter altogether out of question. The ancient buskin was still ruder, being made of undressed deer's hide, with the hair outwards, a circumstance which procured the Highlanders the well-known epithet of Red-shanks.