Soutar, William

▪ British poet

born April 28, 1898, Perth, Perthshire, Scot.

died Oct. 15, 1943, Perth

      Scottish poet, second in importance to Hugh MacDiarmid among the writers of the Scottish Renaissance movement.

      Soutar was educated at Perth Academy and the University of Edinburgh. During World War I he served for two years in the navy and contracted osteoarthritis, from which he suffered thereafter. From October 1923 he was a semi-invalid, and, after the failure of an operation in May 1930, he was bedridden. He was saved from apathy and despair by his delight in the variety of nature and his devotion to the craft of letters. His “bairn-rhymes” in Scots, Seeds in the Wind (1933), are beast fables that express a mature insight into the life of things viewed with the “innocent eye” of childhood. In Poems in Scots (1935) he developed the ballad style toward the objective expression of individual lyricism. During his last 10 years his principal output in Scots consisted of “whigmaleeries,” humorous poems full of comic exaggeration, interweaving the fantastic and the familiar. He was fond of miniatures, publishing Riddles in Scots (1937), while as a poet in English he was at his best in the pointed epigrams of Brief Words (1935) and the short nature lyrics of The Expectant Silence (1944).

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