Poets' Pub by Alexander Moffat 1980

Welcome to Poets' Pub

› More about the painting

Poets' Pub is part of the Scottish Poetry Library's multi-media essay 'Access to Scottish Poetry'. The essay offers an introduction to 20th century Scottish poetry through the eight poets represented in the painting Poets' Pub (1980) by Alexander Moffat.

Click on the list at the right to read the essay on the eight poets.

Each of the eight poets is linked with a decade, from the 1920s to the 1990s.

A collection by the poet from that decade is considered in detail, with references given to a range of other work by them held in the Library, including audio recordings and background material, as well as a selection of weblinks.

Click below to read the essay chronologically, decade by decade.

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Featured poets and writings

• Hugh MacDiarmid, Sangschaw (1925)
• Sorley MacLean, 17 Poems for 6d: in Gaelic, Scots and English (1940) (with Robert Garioch).
• Sydney Goodsir Smith, Under the Eildon Tree (1948)
• Norman MacCaig, The Sinai Sort (1957)
• Edwin Morgan, The Second Life (1968)
• Robert Garioch, Doktor Faust in Rose Street (1973)
• George Mackay Brown, The Wreck of the Archangel (1989)
• Iain Crichton Smith, Ends and Beginnings (1994)

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Poets' Pub was originally designed and produced by Andrew Heavens for the Scottish Poetry Library, 2002.

Details from Poets' Pub by Alexander Moffat are reproduced by kind permission of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery: ©Alexander Moffat 1980, ©Trustees of the National Galleries of Scotland

The project is supported by:

The poets

George Mackay Brown

Robert Garioch

Norman MacCaig

Hugh MacDiarmid

Sorley MacLean

Edwin Morgan

Iain Crichton Smith

Sydney Goodsir Smith