Том Леонард: Поэт, писатель и критик из Глазго

Scottish poet, writer and critic

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

Leonard was born in Glasgow in 1944. His father was a train driver who had moved to Scotland from Dublin in 1916. His mother, also of Irish descent, came from Saltcoats and had previously worked at the Nobel dynamite factory in Ardeer. Tom was the youngest of four children he had two brothers and one sister. He commenced study on a degree at the University of Glasgow in 1967, but left after two years. He returned to the university during the 1970s in order to complete a degree in English and Scottish Literature. He joined a group of new and distinctive authors, including Philip Hobsbaum, Alasdair Gray, Liz Lochhead, James Kelman, Aonghas MacNeacail and Jeff Torrington, of whom Hobsbaum was the nucleus. With Alasdair Gray and James Kelman, he became Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow in 2001, retiring in 2009.

Leonard, in his corpus, was highly critical of the effect of formal education on literature. In The Proof of the Mince Pie he argues that literature exams in schools and universities reduce art to a kind of "property" that is to be "acquired", with exams being the venue in which students present evidence of their acquisition. In Poetry, Schools, Place he argued that exams also have the effect of marginalising traditions of poetry for which a gradable vocabulary of criticism has yet to be worked out. These are said to be traditions of poetry that have emerged since the First World War that do not see poems as "treasure chests of valuables" that the student may remove one by one and display to the examiner. In his introduction to Radical Renfrew, Leonard discussed the impact that formal education has had in creating a "canon" of literature that excludes vast amounts of literature deemed inappropriate for teaching. He suggests that the teaching of poetry has the effect of installing in people's minds the idea that a "real" poem is one that an English teacher would approve for use in a class and that requires explanation and guidance from such a teacher. The effect is the view that the 'best' poems are those that come to be set in exams and that the people best able to pass these exams will be the people best able to understand and write poetry. Leonard traced these views back to the nineteenth century invention of literature as a "subject" in schools. This involved the creation of a canon of "set books", overseen by central authorities that ensure the canon embodies desirable social, moral and political values. Literature that is not considered to embody these values is excluded, along with works thought to belong to another "subject" in the curriculum. and disprove the belief that Scotland at that time was a cultural wasteland,, a belief perpetuated by claims such as those of T. S. Eliot, who once claimed that Scotland has no literary culture. Radical Renfrew wished to dispel this idea, and Leonard in his introduction suggests that in denying the existence of a native Scottish culture, the Scottish people have been denied "the right to equality of dialogue with those in possession of Queen's English or 'good' Scots." In 1993, he released Places of the Mind, a biographical novel based on the seminal Scottish author James Thomson. Best known for his epic poem The City of Dreadful Night, Thomson’s life and works are captured by Leonard in a study of poetry, alcoholism and freethinking. His most overtly political work followed in 1995, as Leonard published another collection, entitled Reports From The Present. It compiles Leonard's corpus of work from 1982 to 1994, with the collection incorporating political satires, collages, essays, "antidotes, anecdotes and accusations" ranging from explorations of the differences between poetry and prose to scathing attacks on the forces of power that corrupt culture for financial or political gain. He published Definite Articles: Selected Prose 1973–2012 in May 2013, a compilation gathering forty years of essays, articles, reviews and journal entries.

Alongside his literary output, Leonard was vocal on a number of political issues. In 1991, he published On the Mass Bombing of Iraq and Kuwait, Commonly Known as The Gulf War with Leonard's Shorter Catechism, in which he was highly critical of British and American involvement in Iraq and Kuwait during the Gulf War. Leonard voiced his support for the cultural boycott of Israel in response to its policies towards Palestine. He co signed a letter to the Glasgow Herald with writers including Liz Lochhead, AL Kennedy and Iain Banks, criticising the inclusion of Israeli dance troupe Batsheva in the 2012 Edinburgh International Festival. He previously voiced support for an "independent Scottish Socialist Republic", but was opposed to the 2014 independence referendum, criticising the SNP and the referendum process on his journal.

Kirkwood, Colin (1985), "Vulgar Eloquence: Tom Leonard's Intimate Voices, 1965 1983", in Parker, Geoff (ed. ), Cencrastus No. 20, Spring 1985, pp. 21 24,