Sydney Goodsir Smith (26 October 1915 – 15 January 1975) was a New Zealand-born Scottish poet, artist, dramatist and novelist.
[3] In the late 1930s, Smith was introduced to the works of Hugh MacDiarmid by Hector MacIver, a literary critic who taught English at Edinburgh's Royal High School.
In a letter dated 1 November 1941 he informed MacDiarmid that he 'gave up writing English for Scots' after reading A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle (1926).
It was staged at the Kirk's Assembly Hall in a production by Peter Potter as part of the 1960 Edinburgh International Festival, with Ian Cuthbertson in the leading role.
Other works broadcast by the BBC as dramas or poetic dialogues include The Death of Tristram and Iseult (1947), The Vision of the Prodigal Son (1959), The Stick Up or Full Circle (1961), The Twa Brigs (1964), A Night at Ambrose's (1972), Macallister (1973), and Gowdspink in Reekie (1976).
Drawings collected by the architect Ian Begg were published in a book edited by Joy Hendry in 1998.