To a Haggis: Robert Burns' work is a reminder never to underestimate the power of poetry
Robert Burns ‘supercharged’ haggis and turned it into ‘an international icon of Scottish culture’
What use poets and other assorted artistic dreamers? What has a rhyming couplet ever done for us? Well, if said poet was Robert Burns, quite a lot, as a new academic paper makes clear.
In To a Haggis, Scotland’s national bard “took an existing national symbol and supercharged it so that it became an international icon of Scottish culture”, said Professor Gerard Carruthers, of Glasgow University.
And so it is that, as Scotland marks the 225th anniversary of the very first Burns Supper, held in 1801 on the fifth anniversary of his death, similar events will be held all over the world, attended by members of the Scottish diaspora but also intrigued guests eager to discover what all the fuss is about.
Of course, not every poet has anything like the impact of Burns, whose Auld Lang Syne was recently suggested as “the closest thing the world has to a shared anthem” and whose work inspired African-American civil rights activist Maya Angelou as a young girl.
But still, here’s ‘To a Poet’ and may Scotland keep on producing many more.
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