Scottish Poems

In time for Burns Night (the annual celebration of Scottish culture that takes place on January 25, the birthday of Robert Burns)--a sweeping literary tour of Scotland from the Middle Ages to the present, the only single-volume collection of Scottish poetry currently available. Scottish poetry has a long and distinguished history in three languages--English, Scots, and Gaelic--and all are well represented here. The most renowned and beloved poets--Robert Burns, Sir Walter Scott, Robert Louis Stevenson, Hugh MacDiarmid, and Muriel Spark among them--mingle with their lesser-known but equally distinctive compatriots, including many of those who have emerged from the recent Scottish poetry renaissance. The poems are organized by theme: from matters of the heart to subjects spiritual and philosophical to the poetry of place. All of the verse is marked by a characteristic energy, wit, satire, and passionate lyrical intensity, and all demonstrates the power of art that proudly emanates from, but is never limited by, the place of its birth.