In Memoriam James Joyce

poetry by MacDiarmid

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June 29, 2026

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"In Memoriam James Joyce" is a poem by the Scottish poet Hugh MacDiarmid, born Christopher Murray Grieve. MacDiarmid was a leading figure in the Scottish literary renaissance, advocating for a revival of Scottish culture and poetry. He developed a "synthetic Scots" language, blending various Scots dialects and folk traditions, to express his critiques of modern society and explore complex themes.

While MacDiarmid's early work focused on lyrics and longer pieces like A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle, his later style, as seen in In Memoriam James Joyce (1955), shifted towards Scotticized English and then standard English. This poem, published in A Kist of Whistles (1947), reflects his engagement with metaphysical speculation and his belief in the cosmopolitan nature of Celtic achievement, drawing inspiration from the experimentalism of James Joyce.12

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English literature
Celtic Modernism: Yeats, Joyce, Jones, and MacDiarmid
…to establish, as in his In Memoriam James Joyce (1955), the truly cosmopolitan nature of Celtic consciousness and achievement. MacDiarmid’s masterpiece in the vernacular, A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle (1926), helped to inspire the Scottish renaissance of the 1920s and ’30s.
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…to establish, as in his In Memoriam James Joyce (1955), the truly cosmopolitan nature of Celtic consciousness and achievement. MacDiarmid’s masterpiece in the vernacular, A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle (1926), helped to inspire the Scottish renaissance of the 1920s and ’30s.
Read More