Speaking in Tongues

Letters

Vol. 18 No. 5 · 7 March 1996

From W.S. Milne

Question: When is a book review like a Jobs Wanted column? Answer: When it is Robert Crawford writing on The Poetry of Scotland by Roderick Watson (LRB, 8 February). There is a difference, however, from the normal procedure in that he sets out his own job description – ‘To the best of my knowledge, nobody has been asked to do a new Oxford anthology’– and then applies for the post himself: Watson’s anthology of Scottish poetry ‘merits an excited welcome; it sets a new agenda that future anthologists cannot ignore; I would like to be one of those anthologists who try to surpass it.’ Well, so would I, as indeed would many others, including, I am sure, Tom Hubbard, whose excellent anthology of contemporary poetry in Scots (that ‘local dialect, once but no longer an accepted literary language’, Marilyn Butler writes so wrongly of in the same issue), The New Makars, Professor Crawford chooses to ignore. If the job ever appears perhaps it can be advertised in the LRB?

W.S. Milne
London SW18

Vol. 18 No. 8 · 18 April 1996

From Robert Crawford

If W.S. Milne (Letters, 7 March) thinks that in reviewing Roderick Watson’s fine anthology The Poetry of Scotland I was writing an open letter to Oxford University Press setting out the case for a new Oxford Book of Scottish Verse which I would like to edit, he is absolutely correct. Sadly, Oxford feel that a new Scottish Oxford anthology would be uneconomic. It’s lucky that Edinburgh University Press and Penguin are more optimistic about publishing Scottish anthologies. I was surprised to see W.S. Milne praising an anthology of modern Scots poetry which does not include work by Edwin Morgan, Tom Leonard or Kathleen Jamie.

Robert Crawford
University of St Andrews, Fife