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Rab Wilson

b.1960

POEMS LISTEN BIBLIOGRAPHY

Rab Wilson was born in the Ayrshire village of New Cumnock in 1960. After an engineering apprenticeship with the National Coal Board he left the pits following the miner’s strike of 1984-5 to become a psychiatric nurse.

His first main published work was his version in Scots of the famous medieval Persian work The Ruba’iyat of Omar Khayyam; this was followed by three collections of his own poetry ‘chiefly in the Scots language’. He collaborated with the artist Hugh Bryden in adaptations of Horace’s satires in Scots, and with Calum Colvin in a book of responses to Robert Burns. He has edited an anthology of contemporary poetry from Dumfries and Galloway writers; and written a series of poems as the first James Hogg Creative Resident. 

Rab Wilson was on the Parliamentary Working Group on the Scots Language, 2009-2010, and is the Scriever in Residence for the National Trust for Scotland.  

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Read the poems

  • The Greater Sea
  • Holy Gordon’s Prayer
  • Labour
  • Lorry Load o Christmas Trees

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Selected Bibliography

The Ruba'iyat of Omar Khayyam in Scots (Edinburgh: Luath, 2004)
Accent o the Mind: poems, chiefly in the Scots language (Edinburgh: Luath, 2006)
Life Sentence: more poems chiefly in the Scots language (Edinburgh: Luath, 2009)
'Ye're there Horace!': Horace's first buik o satires owerset and adaptit intil Scots (Dumfries: Roncador Press, 2010)
1957 Flying Scot: a sonnet redoublé (Dumfries: Roncador Press, 2011)
A Map for the Blind: poems, chiefly in the Scots language (Edinburgh: Luath, 2011)
Burnsiana: artworks and poems inspired by the life and legacy of Robert Burns (with Calum Colvin) (Edinburgh: Luath, 2014)
Hairst: the James Hogg Creative residency (Yarrow: Weproductions, 2015)

From the Library Catalogue

Publications about Rab Wilson
Publications by Rab Wilson

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Rab Wilson

June 2010
Mining, Pablo Neruda, Scots poetry, Arabic translation and more with Rab Wilson and Ryan.
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