Don Paterson was born in Dundee. Upon leaving school, he became a professional jazz musician and composer. His first poetry collection Nil Nil (1993) won the Forward Prize. Subsequent collections have been awarded the Whitbread Poetry Award and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. He is the only poet to have been awarded the T S Eliot Award twice. Paterson has also written drama for the radio and for the stage, and he has been Poetry Editor for Picador since 1997. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a Fellow of English Association; he was awarded the OBE in 2008,and the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 2010. His recent publications have included a commentary on Shakespeare’s sonnets. Paterson has taught Creative Writing at the Universities of Dundee and St Andrews.