'MacDiarmid at 100'

Start date and time

Wednesday 31 August 2022

Location

Online

The Scottish Revival Network is organising a one-day conference on 31 August 2022 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Scottish poet and cultural provocateur Hugh MacDiarmid’s first appearance in print in August 1922 in the modernist ‘little magazine’ he edited, The Scottish Chapbook.

Organised by Dr Scott Lyall, PI for The Scottish Revival Network, and Dr James Benstead, RA for the network, the conference takes place in two sessions and includes a range of speakers from among the most renowned MacDiarmid research experts.

Morning session (9.45am to 12pm): ‘Readings and Revisions’:

• Patrick Crotty (University of Aberdeen) – ‘Chitterin’ lichts: Non-dictionary Textual Sources in Sangschaw and Penny Wheep, with particular reference to “The Watergaw”’
• Scott Lyall (Edinburgh Napier University) – ‘to “meddle wi’ the thistle”: The Scottish Chapbook, Modernism, and Renaissance’
• Michael Whitworth (University of Oxford) – ‘MacDiarmid the Spaceman’
• Alan Riach (University of Glasgow) – ‘The Ghost of John Nisbet: Hugh MacDiarmid’s first published work’

The session will be chaired by Jim Benstead (Edinburgh Napier University)

Afternoon session (2pm to 4pm): ‘Concepts and Peripheries’:

• Alexander Linklater (independent researcher) – ‘In Search of CMG: The Peculiar First Person in Hugh MacDiarmid’s Poetry’
• Fiona Paterson (University of Glasgow) – ‘Archipelagic Distinctions: Plurality, Particularity and Decentralisation in Hugh MacDiarmid’s “Vision of World Language”’
• Alex Thomson (University of Edinburgh) – ‘Provincializing MacDiarmid’
• Jim Benstead (Edinburgh Napier University) – ‘“no farther from the ‘centre of things”: peripheral citation in In Memoriam James Joyce’

The session will be chaired by Scott Lyall (Edinburgh Napier University)

More information can be found on The Scottish Revival Network website: www.revival.scot/macd-100/