Helen B. Cruickshank

Helen Burness Cruickshank was a Scottish poet and suffragette, and an important focal point of the Scottish Renaissance. At her home in Corstorphine, various Scottish writers of note would meet.

Born in Hillside, near Montrose, Angus, 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 the Civil Service, working first in London for the Post Office from 1903 to 1912, and then, from 1912, in Edinburgh, where she spent most of her adult life. She joined the Women's Social and Political Union and actively campaigned for the Suffragette cause. She was also a committed Scottish nationalist, an active member of the Saltire Society, and a founder member of Scottish PEN, which she served in various ways. She encouraged the work of the young Christopher Murray Grieve (Hugh MacDiarmid), of James Leslie Mitchell (Lewis Grassic Gibbon), and other writers, and was sympathetic in her appreciation of the poetry of Violet Jacob and Marion Angus.

Helen Cruickshank 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 (1978).