- Helen Cruickshank
Helen Burness Cruickshank (
15 May 1886 -2 March 1975 ) was a minor Scottish poet andsuffragette , better known for being a focal point of theScottish Renaissance . At her home inCorstorphine , various Scottish writers of note would meet.Born Helen Burness Cruickshank was in Hillside, near
Montrose, Angus , of local parents, she went to school in Montrose. Summer holidays were spent in Glenesk and the landscapes and people of Angus and its glens appear in her poetry. After leaving school, Cruickshank entered theCivil Service , working first inLondon for the Post Office from 1903 to 1912, and then, from 1912, in Edinburgh, where she spent most of her adult life. She joined theWomen's Social and Political Union and actively campaigned for the Suffragette cause. She was also a committed Scottish nationalist, an active member of theSaltire Society , and a founder member of ScottishPEN , which she served in various ways. She encouraged the work of the young CM Grieve (Hugh MacDiarmid ), of James Leslie Mitchell (Lewis Grassic Gibbon ), and other writers, and was sympathetic in her appreciation of the poetry ofViolet Jacob andMarion Angus . Helen Cruickshank devoted much of her life to other people (she cared for her elderly mother), yet published poetry over several decades, in "Scottish chapbook", "Northern numbers" and many other journals, and in "Up the Noran Water" (1934), "Sea Buckthorn" (1954), The "Ponnage pool" (1968), "Collected poems" (1971) and "More collected poems".Helen Cruickshank's best known poem is probably "Shy Geordie" which, like much of her work, is in Lowland Scots and draws on her Angus country heritage (the poem has been set to music by several people, including
Buxton Orr andJim Reid ). Many of her poems echoballad andfolksong and other traditional forms. "In Glenskenno Woods", "There was a sang" or "Fause friend" show a range of mood and tone, from lyrical to humorous, and her best work avoids the charge of sentimentality which might sometimes be levelled. She draws on the natural world for strong symbols about human life, as in the fine "Sea Buckthorn" (set to music byFrancis George Scott ), or in "Ponnage pool", prefaced with a quotation fromHugh MacDiarmid ; this deals with questions of personal identity::I mind o' the Ponnage Pule,:The reid brae risin',:Morphie Lade,:An' the saumon that louped the dam,:A tree i' Martin's Den:Wi' names carved on it;:But I ken na wha I am.
Cruickshank also wrote in English; her poem "Spring in
the Mearns " for instance, is a tribute toLewis Grassic Gibbon . Lines forWendy Wood celebrate another activist; this poem also illustrates Cruickshank's own passionate concern with social problems, her compassion and commitment to the fighting of poverty and injustice, shown, too, in a Lowland Scots poem such as "Song of pity" for refugees.Cruickshank cared for her mother for many years; she herself retired in 1946. She was awarded an honorary MA by
Edinburgh University in 1971, and two years later poor health forced her to leave her house in Corstorphine and move to Queensberry Lodge in the Canongate, where she died on2 March 1975 . Cruickshank recorded her long life and aspects of her times in her autobiography, "Octobiography" (1987), which was published posthumously.Helen Cruickshank is commemorated in Makars' Court, outside The Writers' Museum, Lawnmarket, Edinburgh.
Selections for Makars' Court are made by
The Writers' Museum ;The Saltire Society ;The Scottish Poetry Library .External links
* [http://www.geo.ed.ac.uk/scotgaz/people/famousfirst1293.html Helen Cruickshank bio]
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