Robert Crawford was born in Lanarkshire. His collections A Scottish Assembly (1990) and Talkies (1992) were published by Chatto & Windus. Subsequent titles, published by Cape Poetry, include: Masculinity (1996); Spirit Machines (1999); The Tip of My Tongue (2003); Full Volume (2008), shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize; Testament (2014); and The Scottish Ambassador (2018). Old World is published by Cape Poetry in 2025. He is the author of Scotland’s Books (Penguin, 2007) and co-editor of The Penguin Book of Scottish Verse; and has published major biographies of Robert Burns and T. S. Eliot. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and a Foreign Member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. He has won two Scottish Arts Council Book Awards as well as the Saltire Scottish Book of the Year Award. Author photo © Aisha Farr
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