Morris Blythman

Morris Blythman (1919–1981), also known by his pen name Thurso Berwick, was a poet, song maker, schoolteacher, folk revivalist, publisher and political activist. He is considered one of the architects of the Scottish Folk Revival alongside his wife Marion Blythman, Hamish Henderson and Norman and Janey Buchan.^[1] As an activist he was primarily concerned with Scottish nationalism, republicanism and the broad, unaligned, popular protest to the siting of the Polaris nuclear weapons system in the Holy Loch.

As a poet he published exclusively under his pen name, Thurso Berwick – conceived to represent his ambition for a political solidarity that would span Scotland from Thurso in the north to Berwick in the south. His published poetic output, somewhat in the "Synthetic Scots" style of Hugh MacDiarmid, was initially regarded in the mainstream of Scottish modernism alongside luminaries such as Edwin Morgan.^[2] Hamish Henderson considered Blythman a member of 'The Clyde Group' which included MacDiarmid, John Kincaid, George Todd, T. S. Law and Alexander Scott.^[3] However, like Henderson, Blythman would latterly be drawn primarily into political song-making seeing himself as participating in a "'sub-literary' tradition of partisan and often scurrilous satirical verse and song, which has enlivened every conflict and controversy in Scottish history".^[4]

Morris is the father of journalist and writer Joanna Blythman.