first read poems by Norman MacCaig in the late 1950s and, over the following decade, I heard him read his poems, read book reviews by him, heard him on the radio, and came to recognise him around Edinburgh. It was not, however, till 1970, when he became a colleague in the Department of English Studies at the University of Stirling, that I met him properly, and we were to remain friends till his death in 1996.

Despite his sociability, in his sociability, there was a defensiveness, an elusiveness. Many people, beguiled by his witty affability, felt flattered to believe that they knew him quite well. I seldom felt that I knew him very well, and I was aware that our friendship allowed me into some of his compartments but not into others of which I was, at best, dimly aware. The liveliness of his language, the categoricalness of his pronouncements, the acuity of his ironies, all had a pre-emptive force in obviating certain questions and lines of enquiry. Nonetheless, he was excellent company. His poems, too, are excellent company. In the subsequent chapters, looking at the poetry from different angles, I argue that he does become more open in his poems as he advances in years. How open remains debatable. In the first chapter, reference is made to his two early collections, later renounced by him, and mention is made of a friend's question as to when MacCaig would be providing the answers to the poems. My contention is that he did not wish the poems to be ‘solved’ and that, although he could see clearly that there was no poetic future for him in such obscurity, he remained for some years reluctant to emerge more fully into transparency. In ‘Escapist’, written in 1964, and ‘Escapism’, written in 1981, he acknowledges some reticence in himself, a preference for the fictional and the aesthetic over grubby, demanding actuality. Is the acknowledgement itself part of a defensive pose?