Life
1955- ; Scottish poet and novelist; reviews Irish works; former software engineer, ed. Cambridge College of Arts and Technology; write in res. at Dundee Univ.; teaches at St. Andrew's; poetry collections incl. Common Knowledge (1991), The Asylum Dance (2000), and Selected Poems (2006); has written novels of adolescent, drink, drugs and homosexuality incl. The Dumb House (1997) and Burning Elvis (2000), Living Nowhere (2003), and A Lie About My Father (2006); forthcoming, The Devil's Footprints (2007); lives in Fife.
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Works
Poetry , The Hoop (Manchester: Carcanet 1988), 80pp.; Common Knowledge (London: Secker and Warburg 1991), 60pp.; The Myth of the Twin (London: Jonathan Cape 1992), 55pp..; Feast Days (London: Secker & Warburg 1992), 51pp.; with Callum Innes, Evidence ([London:] Morning Star Publ. 1996), n.p., fol.; A Normal Skin (London: Jonathan Cape 1997), 60pp.; The Asylum Dance [Cape Poetry] (London: Jonathan Cape 2000), 83pp.; The Light Trap (London: Jonathan Cape 2002), 83pp.; In Kansas [Pheonix Poetry Pamphs.] (Nîmes: Grand Phoenix Press [2003]), 13pp.; The Good Neighbour (London: Jonathan Cape 2005), 82pp.; Selected Poems (London: Jonathan Cape 2006), 111pp.
Fiction, The Dumb House: A Chamber Novel (London: Jonathan Cape 1997), 198pp., and Do. [in French], La maison muette, trans. by Catherine Richard (Paris: Métailié 2003), 199pp.; The Mercy Boys (London: Jonathan Cape 1999), 264pp.; Burning Elvis (London: Jonathan Cape 2000), 223pp., stories; The Locust Room (London: Jonathan Cape 2001), 276pp.; Living Nowhere (London: Jonathan Cape 2003), 373pp.; A Lie About My Father (London: Jonathan Cape 2006), 323pp.
Anthologies, with Robert Crawford & Kathleen Jamie, Penguin Modern Poets, 9 [n.s] (London: Penguin Books 1996), viii, 149pp.; ed., with Maurice Riordan, Wild Reckoning: An Anthology Provoked by Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” (London: Gulbenkian Press 2004), 254pp.; with Alec Finlay, Love For Love: An Anthology [Pocketbook Ser., 3] (Edinburgh: Morning Star Publs./Polygon 2000), 199pp.
Miscellaneous, review of Michael Longley, Collected Poems, in The Irish Times (7 Oct. 2006), Weekend [infra]; Also, ‘Who are the gay people? and other essays, in Bradley Rose, ed., A Radical Fairy's Seedbed: The Collected Series (San Francisco: Vortex Media/Nomenus [1997]) [5 chapbooks 1986-90]; David Morley, [audio-interview] The Writers at Warwick (2000).
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Reference
Contemporary writers: B. 19 March 1955, Dunfermline, Scotland; studied English and European Languages at Cambridge College of Arts and Technology; former computer software engineer; freelance writer since 1996; former Writer in Residence at Dundee University; teaches at the University of St Andrews; collections, The Hoop (1988), winner of a Scottish Arts Council Book Award; also Common Knowledge (1991), Feast Days (1992), winner of the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, and The Asylum Dance (2000), winner of the Whitbread Poetry Award and shortlisted for both the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Poetry Collection of the Year) and the T. S. Eliot Prize. The Light Trap (2001) was also shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize [&c.; online].
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