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Hugh MacDiarmid, Christopher Grieve, Langholm boy: poet, journalist, cultural revolutionary, pioneer of Scottish independence and leader of Scotland’s 20th-century cultural renaissance, transformed Scotland and what Scotland might be. In The MacDiarmid Memorandum, Alan Riach, poet and Professor of Scottish Literature at Glasgow University, presents his own poetic patchwork biography of MacDiarmid’s life, from a Langholm boyhood in a world of rivers, high moors and a library of books, to the post-World War One cultural revolution, to exile in Shetland with his second wife Valda in the 1930s, and their return – but not retirement – to mainland Scotland and Brownsbank Cottage, Lanarkshire.

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Join us at The Buccleuch Centre as Alan introduces MacDiarmid and reads a selection of the poems with images of paintings by the artists Alexander Moffat and Ruth Nicol. With Henry Jeffrey playing piano and Iain Bell playing the pipes, this promises to be a refreshing, challenging and above all highly enjoyable evening.

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This event is free to attend.

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