Zonal

Don Paterson was born in Dundee in 1963. His previous poetry collections include Nil Nil, God's Gift to Women, Landing Light, Rain and 40 Sonnets. He has also published three books of aphorisms, translations of Antonio Machado and Rainer Maria Rilke and several books of criticism and theory including an ambitious ars poetica, The Poem. His poetry has won many awards, including the Whitbread Poetry Prize, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, the Costa Poetry Award, all three Forward Prizes and the T. S. Eliot Prize on two occasions. He was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 2009. He is Professor of Poetry at the University of St Andrews, and since 1997 he has been Poetry Editor at Picador Macmillan. For many years he has also worked as a jazz musician and composer. He lives in Edinburgh.