Iain Crichton Smith

Iain Crichton Smith was born on New Year’s Day in Glasgow in 1928. He wrote prolifically – poems, short stories and novels – while also teaching school-children on the mainland of Scotland. His first collection, The Long River, appeared in 1955, and there would be many more, along with twelve novels (in two languages). Iain Crichton Smith received the Queen’s Gold Medal for poetry and an OBE.. He died in 1998 in the same month as Ted Hughes. His 1992 Collected Poems was revised and expanded by Matthew McGuire in 2011 and became the excellent New Collected Poems.