Edwin Morgan on Iain Crichton Smith

The Contribution of Iain Crichton Smith (2000) by Edwin Morgan:

Things that restrict and stifle have always been Smith’s target. In his own upbringing, the long arm of the Free Church became the focus of deep feelings of enmity which permeate many of his poems. The claim to be right, the claim to have the truth, the despising of pleasure, the indifference to art, the willingness to condemn and if possible punish the slightest backsliding, the inability to compromise, and perhaps worst of all, the incomprehension of any conception of creative change or growth: these were damning factors in Smith’s eyes.

'The Gaelic Proverb' (quoted in the above essay):

The Gaelic proverb says,
sad is the state of the house
without a child or cat.

But sad is the state of the child
who carries his house on his back
like a trapped snail.

And the cat who cannot go out
into the deep greenery
but sits on the spinster's lap
narrow and infertile,
as the wild sun goes down.

[pdf] Real People in a Real Place (1982): The islander has never had the chance of staying where he is: history has condemned him to departure, and afterwards to the choice of whether or not to return.