Scottish Poet and Publisher Derick Thomson ‘Transformed’ Gaelic Poetry [View all]

[MichaelMcGuire]

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Scottish Poet Derick Thomson has died at the age of 90.

Poet, publisher, scholar, dictionary-maker: Derick Thomson – or Ruairidh MacThòmais, as he was known in his native Scottish Gaelic – had an outsize influence on the language and culture from which he sprang.

Born and raised in the village of Bayble, in the remote Outer Hebridean Isle of Lewis, Thomson had a long career as Professor of Celtic at Glasgow University, and a parallel career as a publisher.

“It’s impossible to imagine the world of the Gaelic language without Derick Thomson – Ruairidh MacThòmais,” says Ronald Black, Gaelic editor for The Scotsman newspaper and editor of “An Tuil ,” an anthology of twentieth-century Scottish Gaelic poetry.

Black cites the 1951 co-founding of “Gairm” magazine as one of Thomson’s greatest achievements. The quarterly literary journal lasted more than 50 years, and launched many writing careers.

“It became the engine room for Gaelic literature, poetry and short stories in particular,” says Black.

Poet Aonghas Dubh MacNeacail agrees that Thomson’s influence stretched far beyond his poetry.

“This is a man who produced a dictionary, who produced a book on biology, who produced studies of the language for the general population. He was a man who worked in a huge, wide variety of fields.”

Still, it’s for his poetry that Thomson will best be remembered.

“He transformed Gaelic poetry,” says MacNeacail. “He was the first Gaelic poet to work in free verse really, and that released people like myself into using the language in new ways, using new rhythms.”

That break from centuries of tradition, says MacNeacail, also opened Gaelic poetry to the influence of contemporary European poetry.

An islander who spent most of his life in the big city, Thomson’s work explored the theme of exile, and the tension between the old ways and the new world. In one of his poems, “Clouds,” he talks about the “gaiety” and “brashness” with which he left his island. Then, describing the landmarks that he misses, he ends wistfully: {SNIP}

Read on: http://www.theworld.org/2012/03/remembering-scottish-poet-derick-thomson/


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