Brian Holton

Brian Holton, born in Galashiels and educated at the universities of Edinburgh and Durham, has published twenty books of translated poetry: he and Yang Lian won the inaugural 2021 Sarah Maguire Prize for Poetry Translation for Anniversary Snow (Shearsman Books, 2019), 2022 and 2023. He has also translated Yang Lian’s Venice Elegy (Edizioni Damocle, 2019), and his Narrative Poem (Bloodaxe Books, 2017). Holton’s collections of classical poems in Scots are Staunin Ma Lane (Shearsman Books 2016), Hard Roads an Cauld Hairst Winds: Li Bai an Du Fu in Scots (Taproot Press 2022),   and Aa Cled wi Clouds She Cam  (Irish Pages 2023), the last two shortlisted for Scots Book of the Year 2022 and 2023.

Holton has won prizes both for his own poetry in Scots and for his translations into both Scots and English. He is a recovering academic who taught Chinese language and literature at Edinburgh, Durham, and Newcastle, and translation at Newcastle and the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. He has lectured at universities and given readings and workshops at major literary festivals in the UK, Spain, Italy, Holland, New Zealand, China, the USA, and Canada. He lives in Melrose in the Scottish Borders.