Robert Crawford

Crawford writes in a modern English, with a few nods to dialect words, with an occasional made-up word or a word borrowed from technical science. The main forms he uses are short and lyrical. He has translated from the 17th-century Latin of the Aberdeenshire poet Arthur Johnston.

The voice of this poetry is engaging and likeable. – Peter McDonald, Literary Review

Leaving this aside, what's appealing about Crawford is the musicality of his language, the surety of his lines and use of enjambement, all abundantly on display in his new Selected Poems. The pieces included here from his first collection, A Scottish Assembly (1990), still feel fresh and energetic, the work of a young writer in the best sense – inventive, varied, alive with the possibilities inherent in the act of putting words together.

He has won several prizes, notably 1988 Eric Gregory Award 1993 Scottish Arts Council Book Award for Identifying Poets 1999 Scottish Arts Council Book Award for Spirit Machines 2007 Saltire Society's Scottish Research Book of the Year for Scotland's Books; The Penguin History of Scottish Literature, He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. In August 2011 he was elected a fellow of the British Academy.

He was a founder of the international magazine Verse in 1984 and worked as poetry editor for the Edinburgh publisher Polygon in the 1990s. With Simon Armitage, he is co-editor of The Penguin Book of Poetry from Britain and Ireland since 1945 (1998) and, with Mick Imlah, he co-edited The New Penguin Book of Scottish Verse (2000). He publishes poetry and occasional works of criticism in the London Review of Books and the Times Literary Supplement.

Robert Crawford FRSE FBA (born 1959) is a Scottish poet, scholar and critic. He is currently Professor of English at the University of St Andrews.