Online guide to Scottish Poets

Ian Abbot1947 - 1989

Ian Abbot was born in Perth in 1947. Though he studied for a while at the Universities of Edinburgh and Stirling, he lost his interest in academia and moved to Whitebridge, Inverness where he worked in agricultural and physical...

Patricia Aceb.1969

Patricia Ace was born in England and has lived in Perthshire since 1993. Her collection Fabulous Beast was published in 2013, and her work has been included in several recent anthologies.

Helen Adam1909 - 1993

Helen Adam was born in Scotland but spent much of her life in America, as a writer and visual artist. Her poems were included in Donald Allen's influential anthology The New American Poetry  (1960), but she disappeared from view...

Donald Adamsonb.1943

Donald Adamson is a poet and translator, and a teacher of creative writing and translation studies.

Margot Robert Adamsonb.1898

Margot Robert Adamson translated early Scots and English poetry from the Bannatyne and other manuscripts into modern English in A Treasury of Middle-English Verse (Dent, 1930). In her own poetry she touches on Edinburgh and East Lothian, notably in...

James Aitchisonb.1938

James Aitchison is a Scottish-born writer who has published seven collections of poetry.

Alasdair Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair1695 - 1770

Modern poetry in Scottish Gaelic begins with the brilliant, controversial figure of Alexander MacDonald, better known as Alasdair Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair.

Sandra Alland

Sandra Alland is a Scottish-Canadian writer, filmmaker and interdisciplinary artist based in Scotland. She has published three books of poetry in Canada, as well as a pamphlet of stories in Scotland. Her most recent poetry collection, Naturally Speaking (Espresso),...

Alexander Anderson1845 - 1909

Railwayman, poet and librarian, Alexander Anderson was the author of the famous poem about the wakeful bairnies, 'Cuddle Doon'.

Linda Andersonb.1950

Linda Anderson was born in Aberdeen. After attending Aberdeen University, she began teaching at Newcastle University in 1978, where she has worked ever since.

Marion Angus1865 - 1946

Coming late in her life to poetry, Marion Angus wrote during the 1920s, frequently in her native Scots, poems  suggesting social and emotional rejection, and on the ballad-themes of lost love and unquiet spirits.

J. K. Annand1908 - 1993

James King Annand was born and brought up in Edinburgh. His bairn rhymes continue to delight Scots children, but he was also the author of poetry for adults, and an active promoter of the Scots language. His children's poems...