Poetry Commissions: Walter Scott 250

The theme of our 2021 Ambassadors’ commissions is Sir Walter Scott, as we commemorate 250 years from his birth.  In addition to wonderful new writing and recordings by the chosen poets, we present two new Gaelic translations by Ian MacDonald of Scott’s poems “Lochinvar” and “Proud Maisie”.

Scott’s biographer Stuart Kelly reflected that his work was “…full of specific place names: to a degree, he invented the idea of a poetry of place rather than a locus classicus. His poetry was swift, dangerous, uneven, sometimes ragged, suffused with a sense of the gothic and yet rooted in Augustan cadences.” You can read more about Scott’s life and poetry at this link