In the book Seven poets Alexander Moffat talks about the background to and setting of Poets' Pub:

I'd already painted a number of writers, but all were personal friends... and my portrait of Norman MacCaig had become quite well known. But it was Peter de Francia who made a very serious suggestion that I should paint that specific generation of Scottish poets. I think his actual words were, 'before it's too late'. (...) He knew it was a unique phenomenon. (...) The poets have played the leading role, both in their verse and prose, in shaping the artistic conscience of this country. (...) In this painting I've attempted to evoke the romance of Edinburgh's Bohemian life of the late 1950s and early 1960s (when I came on the scene). The poets are together in a space suggesting Milne's, the Abbotsford and the Café Royal, the so-called 'poets' pubs'. The main figure is that of Sydney Goodsir Smith, who died before the series got underway. I think all of the others would have wanted Sydney to be the central figure; he was the great character of all the poets...

Published to mark the exhibition of portrait paintings by Alexander Moffat which opened at the Third Eye Centre on 20 Feb 1981, the exhibition also included videos of interviews with six of the poets.

The book features:

• foreword by Chris Carrell, Director, Third Eye Centre, Glasgow
  
  
• the painting Poets' Pub by Alexander Moffat, together with sketches and separate portrait-paintings of the individual poets featured (except Sydney Goodsir Smith, who had died before the project was conceived)
  
  
• an interview with Alexander Moffat by Timothy Hyman
  
  
• introduction by Neal Ascherson
  
  
• six poets interviewed by Marshall Walker, with a selection of their poems, ie MacCaig, Crichton Smith, Brown, Garioch, MacLean and Morgan (Goodsir Smith is again excluded, as noted above, as is MacDiarmid, who died a month before the interviews took place)
  
  
• photographic portraits of the six poets listed above, by Jessie Ann Matthew
  
  
• biographical and bibliographical details of contributors, compiled by Hamish Whyte.

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Seven poets Alexander Moffat

Featuring Hugh MacDiarmid, Norman MacCaig, Iain Crichton Smith, George Mackay Brown, Robert Garioch, Sorley MacLean, Edwin Morgan / illus. Alexander Moffat, Jessie Ann Matthew.

Glasgow: Third Eye Centre, 1981