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. 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.

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.<!--in the 2010 New Year Honours.--> 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

  • (winner of Forward Poetry Prize)
  • (shortlisted for the 2016 Griffin Poetry Prize)

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

{|class='wikitable sortable' width='90%'

|-

!width=25%|Title

!|Year

!|First published

!|Reprinted/collected

|-

|"Wave"

|2014

|The New Yorker

|

|-

|}

Plays

  • The Land of Cakes (with Gordon McPherson) (2001)
  • A'body's Aberdee (2001)

Radio drama

  • Kailyard Blues (1999)
  • Ringing the Changes (1999) with (Jo Shapcott)
  • The Aberdee Brief (2000)
  • The Latecomers (2001)

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

  • Poet's official website
  • "Private Enterprise for the Public Good" John Stammers interviews Don Paterson. No 12 - Spring 1998 Magma, via Poetry Magazines
  • Paterson profile at Poetry Foundation
  • Profile at Scottish Poetry Library
  • Biography and bibliography at British Council Contemporary Writers site
  • Biography, poetry excerpts from Griffin Poetry Prize website