Alex Cluness

Selected Bibliography

These Islands, We Sing — Anthology of Scottish Islands Poetry (edited by Kevin MacNeil)

Shetland & Other Poems (Shetland Times Ltd., 2002)

Disguise (pamphlet, Kettillonia Press)

2005 (2005)

Mend – poems by Alex Cluness (illustrated by Andrew Morrison)

Doing His Bit: A Shetland Soldier in the Great War — editor/intro by Alex Cluness (Robert M. Greig, editor: Alex Cluness; reissue c.1999)

Poems and contributions in The New Shetlander (multiple issues; edits & reviews also credited to A.C./Alex Cluness)

Appearances & programming at the Wordplay Book Festival (Shetland Arts)

Contributions / mentions in Northwords Now and other Scottish poetry journals.

Selected Biography & Criticism

He combined a sharp comic sensibility with serious craft; he loved family, sea and place; and, to many who knew him, he was as much a builder of communities as a maker of poetry.

Born and bred in Shetland, his poetry and the introductions to his work make it clear that he was formed by Shetland’s elemental landscape — the sea, the weather, the endurance of small communities. Those themes recur through the collections in which he set his attention to people and place in pared-down, often deceptively simple lines. His book Shetland & Other Poems collects many of those local, personal and observational pieces and positions him as a poet rooted in — and writing for — his island.

Before committing himself more fully to literary work, Cluness spent time in education. He taught English at Anderson High School in Lerwick, where colleagues remembered him as an outstanding teacher who connected easily with pupils and who brought the same warmth and energy to the classroom that he showed in public life. Those early years in education kept him close to the rhythms of Shetland lives and provided a route into shaping the next generation of readers and writers.

Beyond teaching, editing and literary stewardship were central to Cluness’s contribution. He was closely involved with The New Shetlander, Scotland’s long-running literary magazine based in Shetland; he served as an editor of the magazine with John Hunter following the earlier, celebrated editorial team of John and Lollie Graham, and that period helped sustain the magazine’s role as a forum for Shetland writing.

In the late 1990s, Alex submitted several short stories to The New Shetlander under the anonymous pen-name “Haaki”, which caused much curiosity for the editorial team. Sadly, Haaki’s identity was only revealed after his death.

Perhaps Cluness’s most visible institutional achievement was his role at Shetland Arts, where he served as the organisation’s first literature development officer. He worked in that role from around 2001 for several years, fostering new writing, setting up workshops, literary events and book groups, and creating connections between the islands’ writers and national networks. He was credited by Shetland Arts with being “responsible for an explosion of literary activity throughout the islands,” particularly through the establishment of the Wordplay book festival — an annual event aimed at readers, writers and children that quickly became a highlight of Shetland’s cultural calendar. The festival, and the emphasis on youth programming in its earliest years, reflected Cluness’s belief that literary culture should be participatory and inclusive rather than exclusive.

In 2007, Alex moved to Exeter in South West England to work for the Arts Council, following which he was a founding partner of the Literature Works agency, and the Exeter Poetry Festival. In 2011-2012 he worked as CEO at the Taigh Chearsabhaigh Trust in North Uist, before returning to the South West to resume his activities in the literary world.

Cluness’s published work includes Shetland & Other Poems (a Shetland Times edition) and pamphlets such as Disguise, which explore a range of voices and characters. Disguise in particular plays with persona — Cluness using different male point-of-view speakers to explore love, loneliness and longing — and shows his appetite for inhabiting varied inner lives while remaining attentive to language that is clear and direct rather than theatrical. Reviews of his poems frequently highlight the way Cluness holds the reader: deceptively plain stanzas that open into deeper emotional landscapes.

His editorial work — from the pages of The New Shetlander to essays and introductions — also demonstrates a critical ear and a local historian’s care for context. For instance, he edited and introduced Doing His Bit: A Shetland Soldier in The Great War, curating wartime reportage and adding value by situating it for contemporary readers. That combination of poetic imagination and editorial rigour made him an important bridge between Shetland’s past and its contemporary literary life.

One of the most consistent notes in tributes to Cluness is the way he supported other writers. Those who were starting out in Shetland writing in the 2000s recall his mentorship, practical advice and willingness to create opportunities — editorial slots, readings, workshopping sessions — that helped new voices be heard. Kevin MacNeil, a fellow island writer, described Cluness as “one of the best and most underrated poets I knew” and emphasised his role in promoting the work of others. For many emerging Shetland writers, Cluness offered precisely the mix of encouragement and editorial honesty that helps a writer develop.

Cluness’s humour is repeatedly mentioned in memorials: not merely a private comic temperament but a public resource that made meetings and events pleasurable and kept projects moving through their inevitable slumps. That humour — described by friends as “fizzing like a Roman candle” — sat comfortably beside a serious commitment to craft and to the cultural life of the islands.

He returned to live in Scotland in 2015. After his untimely death in January 2018, local papers and arts organisations paid warm tribute, remembering his achievements for Shetland Arts, his editorial stewardship, and the way he supported local writers and readers. Obituaries and memorial pieces emphasised his creative and literary gifts: he was mourned as a poet of genuine power who also had a rare ability to make others feel seen and supported. The local arts community’s response made it clear that his influence was institutional as well as personal — embedded in festivals, publications and a generation of writers who benefited from his work.

Cluness left behind a small but robust body of poems as well as a functioning cultural architecture: the festivals, the edited volumes, the magazine issues and the networks of writers that he helped sustain. Shetland & Other Poems and pamphlets such as Disguise continue to circulate in local bookshops and libraries, and his editorial work — whether introducing wartime reportage or steering a regional magazine — remains part of the documentary record of Shetland’s literary life. In a small community, such layered contributions have an outsized effect: they shape how people read, how stories are collected, and how next generations understand their literary inheritance.