Mick Imlah was born in Aberdeen in 1956 and spent his early years in Milngavie before the family moved to Kent. He graduated from Oxford with a First in English in 1979 and, still in his twenties, became editor of Poetry Review. His first collection, Birthmarks (Chatto & Windus, 1988) was followed by individual poems and a pamphlet but it was not until 2008 that his second collection, The Lost Leader, was published by Faber & Faber. It won the Forward Prize. Meanwhile Imlah had succeeded Andrew Motion as poetry editor at Chatto, leaving in 1993 to become poetry editor of the Times Literary Supplement. He remained there until his untimely death from motor neurone disease in 2009.