Don Paterson

For those of a similar name, see Don Patterson (disambiguation).

Don Paterson OBE, FRSL
at 2013 Bridlington Poetry Festival
Born	1963 Dundee
Nationality	Scottish
Notable awards	Eric Gregory Award; Forward Poetry Prize

Don Paterson, OBE, FRSL (born 1963) is a Scottish poet, writer and musician.

Background

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. 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 collection of poems, Landing Light (2003), won both the 2003 T. S. Eliot Prize and the 2003 Whitbread Poetry Award. He has also published three collections of aphorisms, The Book of Shadows (2004), The Blind Eye (2007) and Best Thought, Worst Thought (2008). Orpheus, his version of Rilke's Die Sonette an Orpheus, was published in 2006.

Don Paterson teaches in the school of English at the University of St Andrews and is poetry editor for the London publishers Picador. An accomplished jazz guitarist, he works solo and for ten years ran the jazz-folk ensemble, Lammas, with Tim Garland.

He was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2008 Birthday Honours. He was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in the 2010 New Year Honours.

In 2012, Paterson wrote an open letter in the The Herald criticising Scotland's arts funding council Creative Scotland.

Works

Poetry collections

• Nil Nil, Faber & Faber, 1993, ISBN 9780571259328 — winner of the Forward Poetry Prize for Best First Collection
• God's Gift to Women, Faber & Faber, 1997, ISBN 9780571177622
• The Eyes after Machado, Faber & Faber, 1999, ISBN 9780571200559
• White Lie Graywolf Press, 2001, ISBN 9781555973537
• Landing Light (2003)
• Orpheus (2006), after Rilke
• Rain. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2009. ISBN 978-1-4668-8068-9. Winner of Forward Poetry Prize
• Selected Poems, Faber & Faber, 2012, ISBN 9780571281787
• 40 Sonnets, Faber & Faber, 2015, ISBN 978-0571310890 (shortlisted for the 2016 Griffin Poetry Prize)

As editor

• 101 Sonnets (1999)
• Last Words (1999) with (Jo Shapcott)
• Robert Burns, poems selected by Don Paterson (2001)
• New British Poetry with Charles Simic, Grayworf Press, 2004, ISBN 9781555973940

Drama

• The Land of Cakes (with Gordon McPherson) (2001)
• A'body's Aberdee (2001)

Radio drama

• Kailyard Blues (1999)
• Ringing the Changes (1999) with (Jo Shapcott)
• The Aberdee Brief (2000)
• The Latecomers (2001)

Aphorisms

• The Book of Shadows Picador, 2004, ISBN 9780330431842
• The Blind Eye (2007)
• Best Thought, Worst Thought (2008)

Criticism

• Reading Shakespeare's Sonnets: A New Commentary. Faber & Faber. 2010. ISBN 978-0-571-26399-8.
• Smith: A Reader's Guide to the Poetry of Michael Donaghy (2014)

External links

• Poet's official website
• "Private Enterprise for the Public Good" John Stammers interviews Don Paterson. No 12 - Spring 1998 Magma
• Paterson profile at Poetry Foundation
• Profile at Scottish Poetry Library
• Biography and bibliography at British Council Contemporary Writers site
• Biography, poetry excerpts from Griffin Poetry Prize website