Description
Hugh MacDiarmid’s famous poem, A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle, was published in 1926 – the year in which Margaret Tait, born in Orkney in 1918, had her eight birthday…
Traces of MacDiarmid’s influence may also be found in Margaret Tait’s poems – but her poem Jean Waits for the Drunk Man Thistle-Gazer is a more direct response. Echoing MacDiarmid’s monologue, she uses Lallans but adopts a different viewpoint – that of Jean, the Drunk Man’s wife.
