Marking the Centenary of Celebrated Local Poet, Alastair Reid
Born on 22 March 1926, Galloway’s Alastair Reid became one of Scotland’s greatest poets.
As Wigtown Festival Company vice chair Nicholas Walker, reflects – that was just one aspect of his life. Each year he is honoured through the Alastair Reid Pamphlet Prize, one of the Wigtown Poetry Prizes. And this year’s book festival will also be marking his centenary, watch out for details when the programme is unveiled.
Image credit: L. Poirot
Alastair Reid, born 100 years ago this weekend in Whithorn, grew up in the Machars of Galloway, the son of a local minister and a local doctor. His childhood was rooted in place, “bound by the rhythms of the soil, always outdoors, helping at neighbouring farms, haunting small harbours, looking after animals, or romping in the oat and barley fields that lay between our house and the sea.” It was a life shaped by his environment.
Attention and Curiosity
That settled world ended in 1944 when Reid was conscripted into the Royal Navy. Service taught him, as he later put it, “to live portably”, a skill that became central to both his writing and his life. After the war he studied classics at St Andrews, then moved to the United States. Four years later he settled in Spain, relishing new landscapes, language and cultures that helped, he believed, “to sharpen the edge of attention.” That quality - of attention and curiosity - runs through all his work.
Reid valued writing for its simplicity and freedom. It “allowed me to own my own time, to travel light”. Travel was not only practical but philosophical, perhaps seeking escape from the constraints of Calvinist Scottish society, wryly parodied in his poem Scotland. Reid accumulated dozens of “permanent” addresses and friendships across Spain, Latin America, the Caribbean, New York and even a houseboat on the Thames.
Making a Living from Writing
Friends shaped his career. Robert Graves helped make “my best English better” and showed that a living could be made from writing. William Shawn, editor of The New Yorker, published more than 100 of Reid’s poems and articles over almost five decades. Reid worked with friends Jorge Luis Borges, Pablo Neruda and others translating their poetry with the belief that a translator’s duty was to “make the thrill of the original come across”.
Reid was also a travel writer, essayist, novelist and children’s writer; yet he began as a poet. In the preface to his 1978 poetry collection Weathering, he referred to “the fine attention” a poet gives to words insisting the “essential act of putting‑well‑into‑words” matters as much in prose as in poetry.
Galloway Tributes
Reid often returned to Galloway. He championed Wigtown’s bid to become Scotland’s National Book Town, later being a trustee and, until his death in 2014, patron. The Alastair Reid Pamphlet Prize commemorates him annually, and this year’s Wigtown Book Festival will mark his centenary with a dedicated event and tributes across the programme.