Poet/professor at Ormidale Pavilion

On Wednesday, 19th November, as a guest of the Saltire Society, Professor Alan Riach will be at Brodick’s Ormidale Pavilion, speaking about his work as Professor of Scottish Literature at Glasgow University. Not content with being a leading academic, he has published five collections of poetry, and on 19th November he will be talking about his own work and about what he calls ‘unlocking the genius of our country’. Despite his leading status, there is no trace of elitism about him. He is a great entertainer as well as a rivetingly intriguing speaker, and anyone who hears him will take away a fresh influx of energy and possibility.

Professor Riach came back to Scotland from a long stint of working in New Zealand, and arrived as a fresh voice that still retains its distinctive energy. Never conventional, he is filled with belief in Scotland and its many creative voices, and his own poetry is fearlessly energetic. Island poets should not miss this chance to hear a leading academic on the importance of poetry, and of the poetic vision in shaping what our country can become.

A sample of his work follows, written to MacDiarmid on Whalsay:

Glass of Cold Water, Mid-Afternoon

Some like it hot, after dinner, but poets know their
preference: A house at home in Arctic winds in
the outbreak of war, the North Sea when it was
the German, spike-helmetted, silver and black,
glittering (ever the best in uniform, the Nazi sky
and ocean, inhumanly and humanly unmerciful). And
you’re there trying hard, doing what you can to help
the listed poems escape. Weather is one thing,
daily, accumulating change. This is another: this
is the climate. Set yourself against it: the words
lean on the window-panes and rattle their frames
like iron bars; night and the stormtroops lean in.