Rob A. Mackenzie was born in Glasgow. He studied law and then switched to theology. He spent a year in Seoul, eight years in Lanarkshire, five years in Turin, and now lives in Leith. He is reviews editor of Magma poetry magazine and runs literary publisher, Blue Diode Press. His reviews and articles on poetry have been published in many magazines and he occasionally translates poems from Italian.
His pamphlet, The Clown of Natural Sorrow, was published by HappenStance Press in 2005, followed by a collection, The Opposite of Cabbage (Salt, 2009). Another pamphlet, Fleck and the Bank, was published in 2012, a second full collection, The Good News, in 2013, and a third, The Book of Revelation, in 2020 – all published by Salt.