Merits of Morgan

Edwin Morgan (your report, 27 August) was probably as unpolitical a poet as has stepped to the rostrum of the muses in Scotland. But I don't think he merited the accolade of National Poet of Scotland.

It is doubtful if any of his poems wore the mantle of nationhood or espoused Scotland in terms of cultural aspiration, or asserted that sense of identity that distinguished the poetry of Burns and Macdiarmid in their wholeness.

That he was a voice of Glasgow is true. But not all Glasgow. The West End in particular. How many Glaswegians could recite an Edwin Morgan poem, a verse, or even lines, in the way that Ayrshire people could recite Burns?

While there is no doubt Edwin Morgan was a gentle, gracious and literary man, and it might be in some ways inappropriate to take issue with a status more put upon him than probably he would have chosen to put upon himself (self-effacing could have been a characteristic of him more than glory-chasing), I nevertheless aim this at the dubious practice of inflating and glorifying deceased personalities. Such practice does little honour to anyone, perhaps leastwise the deceased.

Ian Johnstone

Forman Drive

Peterhead, Aberdeenshire