About Don
Don Paterson was born in Dundee. He is the author of seventeen books of poetry, aphorism, criticism, poetic theory and memoir. His most recent poetry collection is The Arctic (2023). His poetry has won many awards, including the Whitbread Poetry Prize, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, the Costa Poetry Award, and three Forward Prizes; he is the only poet to have won the T.S. Eliot Prize on two occasions. His books are published by Faber in the UK, and Graywolf, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and Norton Liveright in the US. He is a Professor Emeritus at the University of St Andrews, where he taught in the School of English for many years. For twenty-five years was also Poetry Editor at Picador Macmillan. He is a Fellow of the English Association, the Royal Society of Literature, and the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He received the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 2010. He has also pursued a parallel career as a jazz musician, and continues to record and perform. His interests include music theory, digital music technology, art and US billiards. He lives in Kirriemuir, Angus, where he enjoys visits from his ‘grown-up’ children.