MacCaig / McCaig The Poems of Norman MacCaig

1. Auflage 2011
ISBN: 978-0-85790-008-1
Verlag: Polygon
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 584 Seiten

This collection of Norman MacCaig's poems is offered as the definitive edition of his work. It has been edited by his son, Ewen. A prolific writer, MacCaig left about 600 unpublished poems after his death; 99 have been selected for inclusion here. The aim of the selection process was to sustain the overall quality of the 1990 Collected Poems, which was compiled by the poet. Unusually, MacCaig's creativity did not decline with age, and most of the unpublished poems date from his seventies and early eighties, adding significantly to his published work from that period. Insight to the writer's life and work is provided in an appreciative introduction by author and critic Alan Taylor, focusing on MacCaig's life and times, and in a collection of MacCaig's words on his own and others' writing.

Norman MacCaig was born in Edinburgh in 1910. His formal education was firmly rooted in the Edinburgh soil: he attended the Royal High School, Edinburgh University and then trained to be a teacher at Moray House. Having spent years educating young children he later taught Creative Writing, first at Edinburgh University, then at the University of Stirling. He died in 1996.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Maccaig, Norman

McCaig, Ewen

Leseproben

Editorial Note

Ewen McCaig1

THIS is the third collected (paperback) edition of my father’s poems. The first was published in 1985; the second, published in 1990, added later poems but was otherwise identical. Both bore the title, Collected Poems. This edition, The Poems of Norman MacCaig, contains more poems and other material. It is offered as the definitive (though not complete) MacCaig, because I believe the surviving poems not included here are below the standard set by the previous collection and therefore not suitable for publication.2

When my father died in 1996 he left a large number of unpublished poems. Ninety-nine were selected for inclusion here, giving 792 in all. Contextualisation of the poetry is provided in Alan Taylor’s introduction and in a selection of my father’s own words.

Two editorial issues had to be resolved. One was the order of presentation. Previous editions of the Collected Poems (compiled by my father) presented material from the original books in order of publication, though with exclusions and additions of individual poems. Here, the poems are presented in order of writing. The other issue was the inclusion of work unpublished at the time of his death. He usually disparaged the published gleanings from the estates of other poets and his admonition, ‘Don’t let them publish a lot of rubbish after I’m dead!’ still sounds in my mind. I must now justify the inclusion of unpublished poems and describe the selection process undertaken to reject the ‘rubbish’.

The specifics of producing another collection after his death would not have interested my father towards the end of his life and they were never discussed. However, I was helped in resolving these issues by knowledge of my father’s way of working and a perception of his wishes based on many conversations.

Norman MacCaig was born in 1910. He wrote poetry from school age, but took many years to find his voice. The MacCaig his readers would recognise emerged in about 1947, when he adopted a more lucid and disciplined style. Poems written before then were disowned, including two early books: Far Cry and The Inward Eye. He later published fourteen ‘slim volumes’ as he termed them. These were: Riding Lights (1955); The Sinai Sort (1957); A Common Grace (1960); A Round of Applause (1962); Measures (1965); Surroundings (1966); Rings on a Tree (1968); A Man in my Position (1969); The White Bird (1973); The World’s Room (1974); Tree of Strings (1977); The Equal Skies (1980); A World of Difference (1983); Voice-Over (1988). The Collected editions contain most poems from the slim volumes plus a selection of others that had not been published in books, or at all.

When altering his style in 1947 he also changed his approach to organising his work, writing on loose sheets rather than in notebooks. Each sheet contained a single poem, with its serial number and the month and year of writing. From time to time, usually in preparation for publication, he would unwillingly type a selection of poems, preserving their numbers and dates. Minor amendments were often made during, or following, this process. Many of the typescripts contain holograph amendments. The amendment process never entirely stopped, even following publication: his own copies of the books, including the final Collected Poems, contain a small number of amendments, which are reflected here.

He kept up this organisational approach for the rest of his life. The earliest poem included here is numbered 54 and was written in December 1947; the last, number 3,897, was written in January 1992. He therefore wrote about 3,900 poems during his forty-five years of mature production, of which 693 were published in the 1990 Collected and some 400 remain in manuscript. In total, about 1,100 still exist. The missing 2,800 were not good enough, so he destroyed them.

My father certainly never shaped his creative output with individual books in mind. The seed of each poem was a moment’s inspiration or memory and, as he told me, the poems were often completely forgotten almost as soon as written (something entirely credible to those who knew him well). Despite the themes that run strongly through his work, the poems, with few exceptions, were discrete events and book selections were made from the stockpile available at the time. He always had a large supply of unpublished poems, even after completing the selection for a book. This is partly because he believed in selecting only from new material. Poems that had appeared in periodicals or been used in readings were not allowed in books, so many poems did not appear in the fourteen individual collections, despite having been disseminated by the author in other ways. While he held to this principle closely, a few may have been read and publication in the Collected editions was allowed.

On looking through my father’s papers after his death I found about 600 unpublished poems.3 About 200 predated his change of style so, as he had publicly rejected all this early work, they were not considered for publication here. The rest were from his mature period and could be considered. It would have been excessively precious and a negation of responsibility to interpret his injunction not to publish ‘rubbish’ as an all-embracing ban – principles apart, there were too many good poems. Considerations of principle vary, depending on when the poems were written. I have no concerns about publishing a selection of poems from the period approaching and following the 1990 edition of the Collected Poems, because they were not available for inclusion. However, even when considering work that could have been in the 1990 collection, it is far from evident that all the poems were decisively rejected. For one thing, he had kept them despite having destroyed most of his unpublished work. Also, although he was keen to reject poor work, he was often indecisive about individual poems. It appeared that the process of selection for books caused him far more difficulty than writing the poems in the first place. He told me on a number of occasions that there were poems he later wished he had included in the 1990 collection and our conversations in his old age sometimes touched on the topic of his recent work, without any suggestion that it should remain forever unpublished. What he objected to was indiscriminate publication of juvenilia and other unworthy relics.

Other considerations may explain why some individual poems were never published. One is that he felt some poems were more suitable for public readings than print and his productivity meant there were always plenty available for the books. It seems right that poems he read to the public should be available in print after his death. A small number of poems may have been withheld because of content that could be related to individuals then alive. A practical consideration is that his strategy for ordering his work methodically was not put into effective practice. I believe that numerous poems must have lain unnoticed for years in the chaos of his papers.

Much of the unpublished work included here is from his later years. Of the 99 poems selected, nineteen date from 1961–79 and 25 are from 1980–86. All of these could have been included in the 1990 collection, although his tendency to hoard recent work made those from 1980–86 more likely to be bypassed. Forty-four date from 1987–92. Many of these were from 1987–89 and may have been considered for the 1990 Collected. However, it seems unlikely that many were genuine candidates, although a few others from this period were included. Despite his age, he had hoped to cap the Collected with another slim volume so, feeling that his productivity was diminishing, he became reluctant to include many recent poems there. His words to me were, ‘I’m not giving the buggers everything.’ Not many of the poems from 1989–1992 were typed and very few of the later ones appear to have been amended at all. The ambition to produce another book was defeated by age and tiredness.

Thirteen of the unpublished poems are undated and a few of these have been taken from sources such as magazine cuttings found among his papers.

My father left quite a number of poems in the fourteen books out of the collected editions, especially from the earlier volumes. Although these were not considered for this edition, a few inadvertently made their way into the selection process and two made it through to the final list. Bearing in mind his expressed regrets about poems excluded from the Collected Poems, I have allowed these two to remain.

Having decided that including unpublished work would not disrespect the author’s wishes, it remained to make a cautious selection. The 200 poems from his early period were disregarded. Some of the 400 mature poems were second-rate by MacCaig standards. Many others contained good things but were flawed, including some of the late poems that had not been revised. All such were rejected: editorial amendment has been limited to a very few corrections of obvious drafting errors. The chosen 99 are about a quarter of those remaining following the author’s own ruthless cull from about 3,200 to 400 – a long way from the bottom of the barrel.

The first task of selecting from the 400 poems was to prepare a shortlist, which I did in consultation with my sister. The 130 shortlisted poems were passed to Tom Pow and Alan Taylor, whose help in deciding the final set of 99 was invaluable. The objective was to select poems that, as a group, would not dilute...