Don Paterson Interviewed by Boyd Tonkin

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One of the UK’s most decorated poets Don Paterson talks about his early life, creative life as a poet and jazz musician and about his latest poems.

Paterson won the Arvon Foundation International Poetry Competition in 1993 with his poem A Private Bottling. Since then, his poetry has won many awards including the Whitbread Prize, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, the Costa Poetry Award, all three Forward Prizes and the T S Eliot Prize twice. His most recent collection of poetry is The Arctic, the name of a bar frequented by survivors of various types of apocalypse. It is an eclectic collection that includes elegies for the poet’s father, tales of the love lives of gods and the childhood of psychopaths, and stories of troubled encounters between men and women. His recently published memoir, Toy Fights, is the story of his first 20 years growing up on a working-class council housing estate in the 1960s and 70s. It is also a story about schizophrenia, debt, working class anger, football, religious mania and the sexual excesses of the Scottish club band scene.

Paterson was born in Dundee in 1963. 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, on two occasions, the T S Eliot Prize. He was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 2009. He was professor of poetry at the University of St Andrews and, for over 25 years, was poetry editor at Picador Macmillan. He also works as a jazz musician. Here he talks to author, journalist, literary critic and chair of the 2016 International Booker Boyd Tonkin.