Donald Adamson was born and brought up in Dumfries, but has lived abroad, most recently in Finland, where he lectured at the Universities of Helsinki and Jyväskylä until his retirement.
In 1995 he was awarded a Scottish Arts Council writers’ bursary; he has published two pamphlets and two full length collections, and his work has been included in many anthologies. He has translated Finnish poets: The Gift of Imperfect Lives (2002) includes several versions of poems by Lassi Nummi, and a selection of his Finnish versions is included in How to address the fog: XXV Finnish poems 1978-2002 (Carcanet/Scottish Poetry Library, 2005), one of the XXV European Originals series of bilingual anthologies.
Adamson is a member of the Solway Festival Poets and gives readings in many different venues, and he has collaborated with songwriters and musicians. He was a co-founder and editor of Markings literary magazine.
His poem ‘Fause Prophets’, which in 1999 won the Herald Millennium Poetry Competition, was buried in a time capsule under the walls of the Scottish Poetry Library.