Andrew Greig: An Overview

Fifteen years before I went to Edinburgh University and met a clutch of student writers who would prosper and continue to be friends, there had been another bunch of young poets there. By the mid-80s, they had begun to publish books, and seemed rather dashing and intriguing individuals to a youngster like me with literary ambitions – they were living as full-time writers, despite being in their early 30s. I heard that three of them had been dubbed 'The Golden Triangle' because of their great promise. These three were Ron Butlin, Brian McCabe and Andrew Greig.

McCabe is now back at Edinburgh University, as the current Writer in Residence. As with his co-writers in the triangle, he has forged a parallel career in fiction and poetry and is probably best known for his careful, atmospheric short stories. Butlin has been busy recently, with a new colletion of stories, a New & Selected Poems, and he published his latest novel page:m/Books/Belonging-9781852429157(Belonging) to great acclaim this year.

Of the three, Andrew Greig took the longest to succumb to fiction: though he had written two non-fiction books – both accounts of mountaineering trips - his first novel Electric Brae did not appear till the early 90s, but in the past decade, it has had four successors, including 2004's In Another Light, named Scottish Book of the Year, leading to a reputation as one of the country's leading novelists.

This year sees the publication of Greig's This Life, This Life (Bloodaxe), a sizeable selection of his poems going back to his late teens and his days as a student poet in Edinburgh. A pamphlet and six collections are cherry-picked, and 20 pages of recent poems complete the book.

Though the first, early poems in the book are conventional lyrics, by Greig's first full collection Men On Ice, he is already drawn to the rangy, extensive and interlinked poems which he would later return to in the book length-sequence Western Swing. Both 'Hoof' and 'Captain Zen?' show a Beat influence, though applied to the rather non-Beat subject of climbing. It was this book, a cult read in the mountaineering community, which would lead to invitations to take up the sport himself.

In the mid-80s, Greig co-wrote another book-length sequence with Kathleen Jamie - A Flame In Your Heart - which later formed the basis for one of his novels. His most highly-regarded collection followed in 1990: The Order of the Day drew comparisons with the work of Edwin Morgan, whose work has awoken Scottish poets to the possibilities of balancing the conventional lyric with the expansive, the experimental, the extraordinary. Greig's poetic work fits squarely into this moveable feast of a mode.

The new poems continue to draw on the moods and observations of 2001's Into You – his 'most Scottish' collection which developed slowly over a decade blighted at times by serious health problems. The new poems relate a happy middle-age of marriage and delight in the dual landscapes of the Lowlands and Orkney which Greig moves between domestically. The book ends with 'This Pilgrimage', a long and amusing poem, acting as a rigorous self-exploration which sees Greig look back at the pleasures and regrets of his life.