The Many Days: Selected Poems of Norman McCaig

By Norman MacCaig

A centennial celebration of the Scottish poet. "[A] testament to his apperception and skill in crafting verse on the impulse of things seen and thought." —PN Review

By the time of his death in January 1996, Norman MacCaig was known widely as the grand old man of Scottish poetry, honored by an Order of the British Empire (OBE) and the Queen's Medal for Poetry. This book is a celebration of MacCaig's life—published in 2010, the hundredth anniversary of his birth—and it features 100 of his best poems, edited by his son Ewen.

Praise for Norman MacCaig

"I have always loved the mixture of strictness and susceptibility in Norman MacCaig's work. It is an ongoing education in the marvelous possibilities of lyric poetry." —Seamus Heaney


"I have read or re-read every poem (in the Collected Poems), and I think it one of the greatest literary experiences of my life." —Sorley MacLean


"Whenever I read his poems, I'm always struck by their undated freshness; everything about them is alive, as new and essential, as ever." —Ted Hughes

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Feb 12, 2021
• ISBN: 9780857907806

Norman MacCaig

Norman MacCaig was born in Edinburgh in 1910. His formal education was firmly rooted in the Edinburgh soil: he attended the Royal High School, Edinburgh University and then trained to be a teacher at Moray House. Having spent years educating young children he later taught Creative Writing, first at Edinburgh University, then at the University of Stirling. He died in 1996.

Book preview

Ineducable Me

Ineducable me

I don’t learn much, I’m a man

of no improvements. My nose still snuffs the air

in an amateurish way. My profoundest ideas

were once toys on the floor, I love them, I’ve licked

most of the paint off. A whisky glass

is a rattle I don’t shake. When I love

a person, a place, an object, I don’t see

what there is to argue about.

I learned words, I learned words: but half of them

died for lack of exercise. And the ones I use

often look at me

with a look that whispers, Liar.

How I admire the eider duck that dives

with a neat loop and no splash and the gannet that suddenly

harpoons the sea. – I’m a guillemot

that still dives

in the first way it thought of: poke your head under

and fly down.

Climbing Suilven

I nod and nod to my own shadow and thrust

A mountain down and down.

Between my feet a loch shines in the brown,

Its silver paper crinkled and edged with rust.

My lungs say No;

But down and down this treadmill hill must go.

Parishes dwindle. But my parish is

This stone, that tuft, this stone

And the cramped quarters of my flesh and bone.

I claw that tall horizon down to this;

And suddenly

My shadow jumps huge miles away from me.

Sleeping compartment

I don’t like this, being carried sideways

through the night. I feel wrong and helpless – like

a timber broadside in a fast stream.

Such a way of moving may suit

that odd snake the sidewinder

in Arizona: but not me in Perthshire.

I feel at rightangles to everything,

a crossgrain in existence. – It scrapes

the top of my head and my footsoles.

To forget outside is no help either –

then I become a blockage

in the long gut of the train.

I try to think I’m an Alice in Wonderland

mountaineer bivouacked

on a ledge five feet high.

It’s no good. I go