Travels in Scottland: Poems for Walter Scott @250

Welcome to the fifth collection by Wyvern Poets, in collaboration with the University of Dundee. 2021 marks the 250th anniversary of the birth of Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832), father of the historical novel and, effectively, of a new kind of mass ‘time travel’. Scott’s prolific output exported an image of his homeland with global appeal, if not always scrupulous authenticity. Stuart Kelly’s 2011 biography, Scott-land, is subtitled The Man Who Invented a Nation, perhaps without too much exaggeration. Scott’s antiquarian vision transformed a turbulent past into a pre-industrial landscape for the Romantic imagination, virtually overwhelming its place of origin or at least melding with it, as he rapidly became one the best-selling authors on earth. John Davidson’s ‘The Salvation of Nature’ (1891), fantasised a future Scotland bought out by an entertainment conglomerate. The World’s Pleasance Company, Ltd. demolishes anything built after 1700, ‘rewilding’ Scotland into a kind of neo-medieval theme park re-staging the past for tourists. Davidson’s story was both satirical exaggeration and backhanded tribute to Scott’s work for bringing history to life in a certain form. Hence this collection considers the many ways in which Scott’s evocative, but also problematic reimagining of his homeland remains relevant to our time and beyond.