Tom Leonard

Tom Leonard (22 August 1944 – 21 December 2018) was a Scottish poet, writer and critic. He was best known for his poems written in the Glaswegian dialect of Scots, particularly his Six Glasgow Poems and The Six O'Clock News. His work frequently dealt with the relationship between language, class and culture.

He is survived by his wife and two sons who are in the process of trying to make as much of his work available again in print or via kindle. Read his poem below to see why.

(NB: Tom's version of Mother Courage is https://www.amazon.co.uk/Courage-Children-Bertolt-Leonard-Paperback/dp/B00XDGPEFO - Amazon seems to show other versions here)

A life

There were some who seemed to spend their lives “being a writer”.

And he had spent his life not being a writer.

That way lay safety. An invisibility. A freedom.

Those he met saw him as “that writer” and would never understand that this was not how he had chosen to see himself.

He accepted their seeing him as “that writer” almost with a kind of irony.

But then he began to accept that he was a writer.

It was a matter of language and consciousness. The link between the two.

He had to choose to accept the responsibility of the outer that he had preserved from himself, that he had left to the perception of others.

For as he grew older he stood in a separate relationship to himself.

He was able to body himself conceptually as a totality.

And though he had never been a storyteller, he saw that he had been telling a story all his life.

It became important to him that somebody heard the story, now that he realised he had been telling it.

Yet all that remained to be told was that he had been telling it.

And all that remained was the need for the last understanding, the sign that someone had heard the story, and the teller was no longer necessary.

Tom Leonard

2012