Don Paterson

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Scottish poet, writer and musician (born 1963)

title: "Don Paterson" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["1963-births", "living-people", "academics-of-the-university-of-st-andrews", "aphorists", "costa-book-award-winners", "fellows-of-the-royal-society-of-edinburgh", "fellows-of-the-royal-society-of-literature", "formalist-poets", "journalists-from-dundee", "musicians-from-dundee", "officers-of-the-order-of-the-british-empire", "people-from-dundee", "poets-from-dundee", "print-editors", "scottish-journalists", "scottish-poets", "the-new-yorker-people", "t.-s.-eliot-prize-winners"] description: "Scottish poet, writer and musician (born 1963)" topic_path: "arts" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Paterson" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Scottish poet, writer and musician (born 1963) ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox writer "]

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nameDon Paterson
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imageDON PATERSON READS AT BRIDLINGTON POETRY FESTIVAL.jpg
captionat 2013 Bridlington Poetry Festival
birth_nameDonald Paterson
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birth_placeDundee, Scotland
death_date
nationalityScottish
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notableworksNil Nil (1993); God's Gift to Women (1997); Landing Light (2003)
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awardsEric Gregory Award;
Forward Poetry Prize;
T. S. Eliot Prize;
Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize
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Donald Paterson (born 1963 in Dundee) is a Scottish poet, writer and musician. His work has won several awards, including the Forward Poetry Prize, the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. He was recipient of the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry 2009.

Career

Paterson won an Eric Gregory Award in 1990 and his poem "A Private Bottling" won the Arvon Foundation International Poetry Competition in 1993. He was included on the list of 20 poets chosen for the Poetry Society's 1994 "New Generation Poets" promotion. In 2002, he was awarded a Scottish Arts Council Creative Scotland Award.

His first collection of poetry, Nil Nil (1993), won the Forward Poetry Prize for Best First Collection. God's Gift to Women (1997) won the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. The Eyes, adaptations of the work of Spanish poet Antonio Machado (1875–1939), was published in 1999. He is the editor of 101 Sonnets: From Shakespeare to Heaney (1999) and of Last Words: New Poetry for the New Century (1999) with Jo Shapcott. Paterson's collection of poems Landing Light (2003) won both the 2003 T. S. Eliot Prize and the 2003 Whitbread Poetry Award. He has also published three collections of aphorisms, The Book of Shadows (2004), The Blind Eye (2007) and Best Thought, Worst Thought (2008). Orpheus, his version of Rilke's Die Sonette an Orpheus, was published in 2006.

Paterson taught in the school of English at the University of St Andrews and was the poetry editor for London publishers Picador for more than 25 years.

In 2012, Paterson wrote an open letter in The Herald criticising Scotland's arts funding council Creative Scotland.

In 2012–2013, he was the Weidenfeld Visiting professor of European Comparative Literature in St Anne's College, Oxford.

Paterson's memoir Toy Fights: A Boyhood was published Faber & Faber in January 2023.

Honours and awards

He was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2008 Birthday Honours. He was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry 2009. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2004. In 2015, Paterson was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Bibliography

Poetry

;Collections

He also has contributed to

;Anthologies

  • 101 Sonnets, 1999
  • Last Words, 1999, with (Jo Shapcott)
  • Robert Burns, poems selected by Don Paterson, 2001
  • New British Poetry with Charles Simic, Graywolf Press, 2004,

;List of poems ::data[format=table] | Title | |Year | |First published | |Reprinted/collected | |---|---|---|---| | "Wave" | 2014 | The New Yorker | | ::

Plays

Radio drama

Aphorisms

  • The Book of Shadows Picador, 2004,
  • The Blind Eye (2007)
  • Best Thought, Worst Thought (2008)

Criticism

  • Smith: A Reader's Guide to the Poetry of Michael Donaghy (2014)

Critical studies and reviews of Paterson's work

References

References

  1. Foundation, Poetry. (29 July 2020). "Don Paterson".
  2. "Don Paterson | Poet".
  3. "Picador".
  4. "Don Paterson".
  5. Miller, Phil. (15 February 2016). "Acclaimed poet reveals he is writing play about Jimmy Savile".
  6. Paterson, Don. (14 September 2012). "A post-Creative Scotland".
  7. "St Anne's College, Oxford > About the College > Weidenfeld Visiting Professorship in Comparative European Literature".
  8. {{London Gazette. (14 June 2008)
  9. (1 December 2009). "The Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry 2009".
  10. (31 December 2009). "Don Paterson awarded Queen's Medal for Poetry". BBC News.
  11. [http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/poetry/article6972944.ece]{{dead link. (September 2024)
  12. (2023-09-01). "Paterson, Don".
  13. "Professor Don Paterson OBE FRSE". The Royal Society of Edinburgh.
  14. (3 March 2014). "Wave".

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