THE death has taken place in Edinburgh of the senior poet, Norman McCaig, who was widely regarded as Scotland's finest living poet and its best since Hugh MacDiarmid. He was friendly with many Irish and broadcasters and his was greatly admired by prizewinner Seamus Heaney, particular, who was also a personal friend.
Born in Edinburgh in 1910, son of a chemist, he was a Low lander who was proud of Highland ancestry. He was to MacDiarmid and his Renaissance" of the 1940s 1950s but, though he greatly respected and liked the poet, he did not with his left wing politics Mac Diarmid, for his part, described Mr Caig as political", but McCraig was nonetheless a convinced pacifist who became a conscientious objector during the second World War.
He studied classics at Edinburgh University and became a primary schoolteacher and, later, a headmaster. His first collection of poems, Riding Lights, came out? in 1955 and was followed by several other volumes, culminating in? his Collected Poems of 1985? which he revised a few years later. He recorded his readings of his own poetry under the title As I Say It. In later life McCaig held various lecturing posts and won many literary awards, including the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 1986.
McCaig visited Ireland several times and Irish visitors to Scotland, in turn, found him a hospitable guide as well as a convivial, humorous, erudite personality qualities reflected in his poetry. This has been described as predominantly "metaphysical", sometimes introspective, but with a vein of sharp wit and waywardness peculiarly McCaig's own.