The Touch of Time

Stewart Conn was born in Glasgow in 1936 and grew up in Ayrshire, the setting for much of his early poetry. Since 1977 he has lived in Edinburgh, where until 1992 he was based as BBC Scotland's head of radio drama. He was Edinburgh's first Makar or Poet Laureate in 2002-05. His poetry books include Stolen Light: Selected Poems (1999), Ghosts at Cockcrow (2005), The Breakfast Room (2010) and The Touch of Time: New & Selected Poems (2014) from Bloodaxe. His other publications include a memoir, Distances (Scottish Cultural Press, 2001), and two anthologies, 100 Favourite Scottish Poems (SPL/Luath Press, 2006), a TLS Christmas choice, and 100 Favourite Scottish Love Poems (Luath Press, 2008). He has won three Scottish Arts Council book awards, travel awards from the Society of Authors and the English-Speaking Union, and the Institute of Contemporary Scotland's first Iain Crichton Smith award for services to literature. An Ear to the Ground was a Poetry Book Society Choice, Stolen Light was shortlisted for Saltire Scottish Book of the Year, and The Breakfast Room won the Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust Book Awards Poetry Book of the Year Prize.