Robert Garioch

Robert Garioch Sutherland (9 May 1909 – 26 April 1981) was a

After Garioch returned to the United Kingdom in 1945 he became a teacher, a job he held until taking early retirement in 1964. Following his retirement he worked on a number of Scottish literary magazines, most notably Scottish International. He also spent a number of years in the 1970s as writer-in-residence at the University of Edinburgh.

Works

Experience as a POW had a significant impact on Garioch's career, and he provides a vivid account of those years in his autobiographical Two Men and a Blanket (1975). While interned in Italy, he learnt the language sufficiently well to read also authors who wrote in a variety of native dialects.

Unlike many of his contemporaries, Garioch wrote very little poetry concerning his war experiences. Instead he focussed primarily on social causes and the plight of the 'wee man', a fact that may account for his enduring popularity (particularly on the readings circuit). These facts, however, have distracted many critics from his extraordinary technical skill and the responsible scholarship of his handling of the Scots language, in which he surpasses all his contemporaries and even his great predecessor

• Garioch, Robert and MacLean, Sorley (1940), Seventeen Poems for Sixpence, The Chalmers Press.
• Garioch, Robert (1949), Chuckies on the Cairn, The Chalmers Press.
• Garioch, Robert (1966), Selected Poems, Macdonald Publishers, Loanhead.
• Garioch, Robert (1973), Doktor Faust in Rose Street, Macdonald Publishers, Loanhead,
  ISBN 9780950210674
• Garioch, Robert, "Alastair Mackie's Poetry, in Annand, J.K. (ed.), 'Lallans Number 1: Mairtinmas 1973, The Lallans Society, pp. 10 - 12
• Garioch, Robert (1975), Two Men and a Blanket: Memoirs of Captivity, Southside, London,
  ISBN 0-900025-19-0
  .
• Garioch, Robert (1975), review of Bennygoak and Other Poems by
  ISSN 0307-2029
• Garioch, Robert (1983), Complete Poetical Works, Macdonald Publishers, Loanhead,
  ISBN 0-904265-93-5
  .

• Fulton, Robin (1986). A Garioch Miscellany. Edinburgh, MacDonald.
  ISBN 0-86334-057-1
• Lindsay, Maurice (ed.) (1979), As I Remember: Ten Scottish Authors recall How Writing began for Them. London, Robert Hale,
  ISBN 0-7091-7321-0
  .

• Robert Garioch: A Conversation with Donald Campbell in Murray, Glen (ed.), Cencrastus No. 6, Autumn 1981, pp. 12 & 13