)on Paterson and Poetic Autonomy

ntifying Poets Rohert Crawford speculates that 'the poet who constructs an identity I allows that poet to identify with a particular territory is the paradigmatic modern , adding that 'the position of poets in Scotland is typical of this situation' (Crawford 3: 142). One purpose of this chapter is to illustrate the limits of a Scottish literary ism preoccupied by the search for 'poetic selves that may be identified with particurritories' (Crawford 1993a: 3). This approach is, at best, unaccommodating of the y of Don Paterson, which evinces no organic bond between voice and place, and ,not to repay critical interest in 'the articulation of cultural difference and the contion of territorial voices' (Crawford 1993a: 9 ) . Though Paterson playfully engages Scottish topoi and locales, and writes occasionally in Scots, he departs from .ford's notion of the identifying poet as realising 'a voice which articulates the culture z place which is [his] home' (Crawford 1993a: 2). In his introduction to New British y Paterson asserts: