Don Paterson

Don Paterson OBE, FRSE, FRSL
at 2013 Bridlington Poetry Festival
Born	Donald Paterson 1963 (age 60–61) Dundee, Scotland
Nationality	Scottish
Notable works	Nil Nil (1993); God's Gift to Women (1997); Landing Light (2003)
Notable awards	Eric Gregory Award; Forward Poetry Prize; T. S. Eliot Prize; Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize

Donald Paterson OBE FRSE FRSL (born 1963 in Dundee)^[1] is a Scottish poet, writer and musician. His work has won several awards, including the Forward Poetry Prize, the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. He was recipient of the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry 2009.

Career

Paterson won an Eric Gregory Award in 1990 and his poem "A Private Bottling" won the Arvon Foundation International Poetry Competition in 1993.^[2] He was included on the list of 20 poets chosen for the Poetry Society's 1994 "New Generation Poets" promotion.^[2] In 2002, he was awarded a Scottish Arts Council Creative Scotland Award.^[1]

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 the editor of 101 Sonnets: From Shakespeare to Heaney (1999) and of Last Words: New Poetry for the New Century (1999) with Jo Shapcott. Paterson's collection of poems Landing Light (2003) won both the 2003 T. S. Eliot Prize and the 2003 Whitbread Poetry Award.^[3] 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.^[1]

Paterson teaches in the school of English at the University of St Andrews and was the poetry editor for London publishers Picador for more than 25 years.^[3] An accomplished jazz guitarist, he works solo and for ten years ran the jazz-folk ensemble Lammas with Tim Garland.^[4][5]

In 2012, Paterson wrote an open letter in The Herald criticising Scotland's arts funding council Creative Scotland.^[6]

In 2012–2013, he was the Weidenfeld Visiting professor of European Comparative Literature in St Anne's College, Oxford.^[7]

Paterson's memoir Toy Fights: A Boyhood was published by Faber in January 2023.

Honours and awards

He was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2008 Birthday Honours.^[8] He was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry 2009.^[9][10] In 2015, Paterson was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.^[11]

Bibliography

Poetry

Collections

• Nil Nil. London: Faber and Faber. 1993.  (winner of the Forward Poetry Prize for Best First Collection)
• The Eyes, after Machado, Faber and Faber, 1999, ISBN:9780571200559
• White Lie, Graywolf Press, 2001, ISBN:9781555973537
• Landing Light, 2003
• Orpheus after Rilke, 2006
• Rain. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2009. ISBN 9781466880689.  (winner of Forward Poetry Prize)
• Selected Poems, Faber and Faber, 2012, ISBN:9780571281787
• 40 Sonnets, Faber and Faber, 2015, ISBN:9780571310890 (shortlisted for the 2016 Griffin Poetry Prize)
• Contributor to A New Divan: A Lyrical Dialogue Between East and West, Gingko Library, 2019, ISBN:9781909942288
• Zonal, Faber and Faber, 2020, ISBN:9780571338245
• The Arctic, Faber and Faber, 2022, ISBN:9780571338184

Anthologies

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

List of poems

Plays

• 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 and Faber. 2010. ISBN 978-0-571-26399-8. https://books.google.com/books?id=iykaqtYqDmkC. 
• Smith: A Reader's Guide to the Poetry of Michael Donaghy (2014)
• The Poem. Faber and Faber. 2018. ISBN 9780571206629. 

Critical studies and reviews of Paterson's work

• Chiasson, Dan (April 19, 2010). "Forms of attention : Don Paterson's 'Rain'". The New Yorker 86 (9). https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/04/19/forms-of-attention. 
• Don Paterson: Contemporary Critical Essays. Edinburgh, U.K.: Edinburgh University Press. 2014. ISBN 9780748669424. OCLC 903488793. 

References

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

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