Robin Robertson’s poetry can move from the Scottish north-east coast to post-war America, and from the intimacy of a single poem to the broad narrative reach of a book-length work. A poet and editor, he has built a career across collections, translation and long-form writing. His books include A Painted Field, Swithering, The Wrecking Light and The Long Take; their recognition has come through awards for individual poems, collections and narrative writing.
From Scone to a life in books
Robertson was born in 1955 in Scone, Perthshire, and was brought up on Scotland’s north-east coast. He spent most of his professional life in London, where he worked in publishing before becoming poetry and fiction editor at Jonathan Cape. Earlier editorial posts included Penguin Books and Secker and Warburg. The combination of a Scottish upbringing and a long working life in London provides a useful frame for a career that connects Scottish literary settings with a broad range of international writing.
His work has not been confined to his own poetry. In 2004, he edited Mortification: Writers’ Stories of Their Public Shame, a collection of seventy commissioned pieces by international authors. He also translated poetry and drama: The Deleted World (2006) was a new version of work by the Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer, and his translation of Euripides’ Medea appeared in 2008 and was dramatised for stage and radio. He later translated Euripides’ Bacchae, published in 2014.
Robertson’s poems have appeared regularly in the London Review of Books and The New York Review of Books, and have been included in anthologies. He served as a trustee of the Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry and is now a trustee emeritus. These roles place his work within a wider literary life: as a poet, editor, translator and participant in institutions devoted to poetry.
Collections and recognition
Robertson’s first collection, A Painted Field, appeared in 1997. It won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and the Scottish First Book of the Year Award. Slow Air followed in 2002, then Swithering in 2006. The latter won the Forward Prize for Best Collection. Its poem “Selkie”, written in memory of Michael Donaghy, draws on the figure of the seal-person: a man removes his skin, plays music until dawn, then returns to the sea. The poem’s narrative gives a clear example of how a folkloric figure can carry the force of personal remembrance.
In 2004, Robertson received the E. M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2009. That year, “At Roane Head” won the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem, completing his set of Forward Prizes. The poem was included in The Wrecking Light (2010), which was shortlisted for the Forward Prize, the Costa Poetry Award and the T. S. Eliot Prize.
Hill of Doors, published in 2013, was shortlisted for the Costa Book Award for Poetry. The following year, Robertson shared the international Petrarca-Preis with Adonis. His Sailing the Forest: Selected Poems appeared in 2014, gathering work from across his career. The title sits alongside such collection titles as The Wrecking Light and Hill of Doors, while the selected poems offer readers a way into a body of work that had already been recognised at first-book, collection and single-poem level.
The long view: from selected poems to The Long Take
Robertson’s move into long-form writing brought a different kind of recognition. The Long Take, published in 2018, is a narrative poem that won the Goldsmiths Prize for innovative fiction. It was also shortlisted for the 2018 Man Booker Prize. In 2019, it won the Walter Scott Prize, making Robertson the first Scot and the first poet to receive that award. Its subject reaches beyond Scotland: the work’s post-war American setting and concerns with displacement and memory give it a distinct place among his books.
The sequence of awards matters because it shows the range of Robertson’s writing rather than one isolated success. His first collection was recognised as a debut; Swithering and “At Roane Head” brought prizes for a collection and a single poem; The Long Take was honoured as innovative fiction and as historical fiction. In 2019 he also contributed to A New Divan: A Lyrical Dialogue Between East and West. His 2020 collection, Grimoire, continued a publishing career spanning more than two decades.
Why Robin Robertson deserves a place in British Legacy
Robertson’s place in British literary life is grounded in specific achievements. A poet born in Perthshire and brought up on Scotland’s north-east coast, he has made work recognised by the Forward Prize, the Costa and T. S. Eliot shortlists, the Goldsmiths Prize and the Walter Scott Prize. His awards span a first collection, a complete collection, a single poem and a book-length narrative poem. That range makes his career more than a sequence of accolades: it records sustained work across different poetic forms and changing scales.
His contribution also reaches beyond writing his own poems. As an editor at major publishing houses, a translator of Tranströmer and Euripides, and a trustee of the Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry, Robertson has worked in several parts of literary culture. His books place Scottish experience alongside wider settings and traditions, while his translation and editorial work brings other writers into English-language readerships. The Long Take in particular demonstrates how a poet can move into narrative writing and receive recognition across categories. For British Legacy, Robertson represents a Scottish literary voice whose career connects poetry, publishing, translation and an expanding sense of what a contemporary poem can do.
Sources
Robin Robertson — revision 1371550546
Adapted in part from Robin Robertson by Wikipedia contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Text has been edited and combined with the existing article; this adapted text is shared under the same licence. Contributor history.