Millennial Days: Religion as Consolation and Desolation in Contemporary Scottish Poetry

Abstract

This paper outlines the context of Scottish religious culture and ideology, and its impact on contemporary poets who grew up within it. Their work helps us to move beyond sectarian tensions between Protestant majority and Catholic minority by understanding the deep strategies by which these communities construct both ‘reality’ and poetry. Scottish poets in a postmodern world also find paths out of such cultural divides, by creative exploration of other spiritual traditions, and by offering a more balanced appreciation of the continuities in their own.