I’m a poet who writes in English, but also in Scots, which is what I consider to be my first language. You can read a sample here. I was raised in Ayrshire, home of bonnets, bobbins and Burns, and began writing verses and bairnrhymes while in my teens, eventually becoming confident enough to send off work for publication in my early 20s. I ran community writing groups and published an international literary review. Yes, in Kilmarnock. In 1992, I was awarded an Eric Gregory Award by the UK Society of Authors and a year later received an Arts Council writer’s bursary to travel and write abroad.
I first moved to Dumfries and Galloway in 1996, when I became the region’s writer-in-residence for two years. I carried out and organised workshops and events in most of the area’s schools and libraries, and got to know and love the area in a way which was to ultimately add to and enrich my own poetry. During that time, my second collection, Saving Graces, was released and nominated for a Saltire First Book Award, and I contributed to a number of anthologies and newspapers, including Dream State: The New Scottish Poets (Polygon), The Forward Book of Poetry, and Scottish Literature in the 20th Century (Scottish Cultural Press). I also won the 1997 UK Small Presses Poetry Slam in Birmingham. For which I received £50, a pewter tankard and my bus fare home. It was like being on Bullseye without the darts,
In 1998, I moved to Manchester where I worked in social care for 13 years, although I ran creative writing workshops in schools and the mental health sector. I returned to D&G in late 2012, to live in a beautiful spot on the Solway coast in the Stewartry, and have been writing continuously since I got here, mainly, but not only, about the fantastic surroundings, its history, its people. You can see and hear me in my natural surroundings in this Border TV broadcast from May 2014.
In early 2014, I was awarded a Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship by the Scottish Book Trust, and I’m off to live in France in November for a month, to write in the old hotel where Stevenson met his wife and where the Glasgow Boys spent many a summer painting and revelling. In the meantime, I’ll continue to live and work and write by the Solway, putting together more work for my next collections and enjoying the incredibly rich tapestry of life offered by Dumfries and Galloway.
I’ve collected a variety of poetry from the past 16 years on my poetry website and put daily updates and new work on my Facebook page. I’m happy and available to carry out school and group workshops, or perform readings, through the Scottish Book Trust Live Literature scheme, and can be contacted easily via Facebook. I hope you enjoy reading at least some of my work. Poetry is, after all, for the people.
Solways by Stuart A Paterson
It’s the kind of day you could
Scoop right out of the air
& put on a spoon, serve fresh
With contrails of clotted cream,
Slide slowly, luxuriously down,
Lick clean ‘til all that shows
Is the barest porcelain
Of the earth’s blue bowl.
The Solway frisks round Sandyhills
Playfully nipping at white
Frightened ankles, wagging tails
Of wave under sun which scolds
Each scampering breaker,
Each sand-parting belly roll.
Here, we measure time by tide,
Phases of moon, far weather fronts
On Criffel, Skidoo, the Isle of Man.
Those who visit must plan rather
Differently, plot narrow hours
Round TV weather forecasts,
Briefly leap through windows marked out
For them by yellow crescents
Filtered through a windblown hilltop mast.
On rare days such as this we
Coincide, take to the beach,
Smile at each other, tickle
The wet ears of a friendly tide.
When the sun goes, we each retreat
Like meeting tides no longer confluent,
Them to their bolt holes far up-river,
Me behind weathered & watchful eyes.
