Stuart A. Paterson who lives near Dalbeattie in Dumfries and Galloway, was born in 1966, and was raised in a Scots speaking household in Ayrshire. He is a past recipient of an Eric Gregory Award. ‘Saving Graces’ was published in 1997 by Diehard while he was Dumfries & Galloway’s writer-in-residence.
He returned to Scotland to live by the Solway Coast in Galloway in 2012 after 14 years in England & in 2014 received a Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship from the Scottish Book Trust. ‘Border Lines’, a collection of Galloway poems, was published by Indigo Dreams in 2015, and has recently won the Best Poetry Pamphlet category in the 2016 Saboteur Awards in London. Stuart is the Scots Language Centre’s ‘Virtual Poet-in-Residence’ 2015-16.
‘Aye’ is Stuart’s first collection of poetry wholly in Scots & shows the poet totally at home in his first, native language. There are poems on everything from space to spiders, being a ‘Scot’ to being a sot. Published by Tapsalteerie Press, and with a foreword by writer, editor and Scots language activist Dr. Joy Hendry, it is now available to buy at £6 (inc. p&p).
From the foreword:
I can’t help observing that no way would ‘Aye’ have won a Gregory Award, as Stuart did. It’s ‘cool’ these days to write in Scots, as many poets have realised, and the results are not always edifying – some produce poetry hovering on sentimentality, work only vestigially Scots, or an egotistical, ill-informed, self-invented mishmash that offends the ear, the eye and the mind. This is the real thing.
Order your copy of ‘Aye’ from Tapsalteerie here – http://www.tapsalteerie.co.uk/product/aye-stuart-paterson/
Stuart can be found on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/patersonpoetry/
