Robin Fulton


Robin Fulton is a Scottish poet and translator, born on 6 May 1937 on the Isle of Arran. Since 2011 he has published under the name Robin Fulton Macpherson.

Biography

The son of a Church of Scotland minister, Robin Fulton was born in Arran in 1937. After attending primary school in Arran and then Glasgow, he had his secondary schooling in Golspie, Sutherland when his parents moved to the Scottish Highlands. After taking a degree in English Language and Literature at Edinburgh University, he went on to gain an MA in 1959 and a PhD with a thesis on “Social Criticism in Scottish Literature 1480-1560” in 1972. From 1969 to 1971 he also held the Writers' Fellowship at Edinburgh University. Formerly he had taught school but afterwards moved to what was then the District College of Stavanger in Norway, rising to senior lecturer before retiring in 2006.
Fulton’s literary engagement with Scotland continued, however. Having edited Lines Review and the associated press from 1967-1976, he was later responsible for editing the selected poems of Iain Crichton Smith and was especially dedicated to editing and contextualising the work of Robert Garioch. Collections of his own poems began appearing in 1963, initially in Scotland, then from English and US presses. He has also translated many Scandinavian poets, which has gained him the Swedish Artur Lunkvist Award, Swedish Academy Awards and the Bernard Shaw Translation Prize.

Principal publications

Poetry

  • A Manner of Definition
  • Instances
  • Inventories
  • The Spaces between the Stones
  • The Man with the Surbahar
  • Tree Lines
  • Between Flights
  • Following a Mirror
  • Selected Poems 1963 – 1978
  • Fields of Focus, a Poetry Book Society Recommendation
  • Coming down to Earth and Spring Is Soon
  • From a High Window and other poems
  • Homing: ten poems
  • A Northern Habitat: Collected Poems 1960-2010, as Robin Fulton Macpherson
  • Unseen Islands and other poems, Marick Press 2019
  • ''Arrivals of Light''

Poetry in translation

Criticism

  • Contemporary Scottish Poetry: Individuals and Contexts
  • ''The Way the Words Are Taken: selected essays''

Translated authors

An Italian Quartet: Versions after Saba, Ungaretti, Montale, Quasimodo Blok's "Twelve"