Poet, writer and musician Don Paterson was born in Dundee, Scotland, in 1963. He won an Eric Gregory Award in 1990 and his poem 'A Private Bottling' won the Arvon Foundation International Poetry Competition in 1993. He was included on the list of 20 poets chosen for the Poetry Society's 'New Generation Poets' promotion in 1994. In 2002 he was awarded a Scottish Arts Council Creative Scotland Award.
His first collection of poetry, Nil Nil (1993), won the Forward Poetry Prize for Best First Collection. God's Gift to Women (1997) won the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, and The Eyes, adaptations of the work of Spanish poet Antonio Machado (1875-1939), was published in 1999. He is also editor of 101 Sonnets: From Shakespeare to Heaney (1999) and of Last Words: New Poetry for the New Century (1999) with Jo Shapcott. His plays include The Land of Cakes and A'body's Aberdee, both performed by Dundee Repertory Theatre. His latest collection of poems, Landing Light (2003), won both the 2003 T. S. Eliot Prize and the 2003 Whitbread Poetry Award.
Don Paterson is poetry editor for the London publishers Picador and he reviews for several national newspapers. An accomplished jazz guitarist, he works solo and with the jazz-folk ensemble, Lammas. He lives in Kirriemuir, Scotland.
Biography from: contemporarywriters.com |
