Scottish Authors > Marion Angus Poet 1866-1946

Marion Angus was born in 1866 in Aberdeen. Her childhood was spent in Arbroath, where her father was a minister of the United Presbyterian Kirk. After his death, Angus moved to Aberdeen, living much of her adult life there with her sister and mother (who came from the Borders). Her poetry, mainly in Angus Scots, ranges around the north east of Scotland, what Angus herself calls "the cauld east countra" in her poem, Gathering Shells. Marion Angus was an early member of Scottish PEN. She died in 1946, in Arbroath.

Marion Angus contributed poetry and stories to journals when quite young, but began writing seriously later in life. Her work was published in Hugh MacDairmid's Northern Numbers (1921-2), and in The Lilt and other poems (1922), The Tinker's road (1924), Sun and candlelight (1927), The Singin' lass (1929), The Turn of the day (1931), Lost country and other verses (1937). A Selected poems was edited by Maurice Lindsay (1950), and contains a personal memoir by Helen Cruickshank. Angus's poems are influenced by the ballads and Scottish folk song. Generally short and deceptively simple, they are spare and elliptic; while sometimes described as "fey", at their best they are powerful and disturbing.

Characteristically compressed is The Turn of the day. The opening suggests the coming of new life and hope:

Under the cauld, green grass

I hear the waukenin' burn

But the speaker, paradoxically, does not welcome spring. This poem, like much of Angus's work, subtly subverts reader expectations, and suggests strong emotions, loss and grief. Much of her poetry deals with disappointment or love denied, and with death and mortality. Compassion and a tenderness for the poor and excluded are implied, too, as in The Wild lass and Welcome, in a world often characterised by Angus as wintry and menacing.

Dorothy Porter in Cencrastus, Spring 1987 writes of Angus's "covert narratives" in poems which often suggest "secret stories", as in the disquieting The Blue jacket and The Can'el. Although Angus creates voices both male and female, her subjects are most often women, such as Jean Cam'bell, or the independent woman speaking in Invitation:

Luve, come clasp me

Whaur the twa burns rin,

A' but the white soul o' me

That ye can never win

Places are important in her work, too, often suggesting a sense of "otherness" (as in The Tinker's road, and the Seaward toon), of the numinous, and sometimes of menace and unease. There is a brooding, as well, on the Scottish past and tradition in poems like The Fiddler and Remembrance Day.

Marion Angus wrote some fine English poems, including Alas! poor Queen and Anemones, but her work in Scots is especially significant, not only for the development of later poets, but a an achievement in its own right.

Carol Anderson

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