Sydney Goodsir Smith

Sydney Goodsir Smith was a Scottish poet, artist, dramatist and novelist. He wrote poetry in Scots and was a major figure of the Scottish Renaissance.

He studied medicine at Edinburgh, history at Oxford and art in Italy. His published work includes three volumes of poems, Skail Wind (1941), The Wanderer (1943) and The Deevil's Waltz (1946); a book of lyrics, Late into the Night (1947); a comic novel set in Edinburgh, Carotid Cornucopius (1947); and the long poem, Under the Eildon Tree (1948).

Smith was one of the outstanding poets of his generation. He gained a Rockefeller Atlantic Award in 1947, and in 1951 was one of the prize-winners in the Festival of Britain Scots Poetry Competition organised by the Arts Council.