Breaking the Ice: When Hugh MacDiarmid met Yevgeny Yevtushenko

Abstract

• In October 1962, the world stood on the edge of an abyss as the United States and the Soviet Union prepared for nuclear war over the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba. Five months earlier, the charismatic Soviet poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko broke the political pack ice of the Cold War to visit Hugh MacDiarmid, one of Scotland’s greatest modern bards. Jim Gledhill recounts their unusual meeting in the Scottish Borders.