orig. Christopher Murray Grieve
born Aug. 11, 1892, Langholm, Dumfriesshire, Scot.
died Sept. 9, 1978, Edinburgh
Scottish poet.
In 1922 he founded the monthly Scottish Chapbook , in which he published his lyrics and sparked the Scottish literary renaissance. A radical leftist, he rejected English as a medium and scrutinized modern society in verse written in "synthetic Scots," an amalgam of various dialects. A noted work is the extended rhapsody A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle (1926). He later returned to standard English in such volumes as A Kist of Whistles (1947) and In Memoriam James Joyce (1955). He is regarded as Scotland's preeminent poet of the early 20th century.