This Life, This Life

Andrew Greig is one of the leading Scottish writers of his generation. He has published eight collections of poetry, many of these with Bloodaxe, including The Order of the Day (Poetry Book Society Choice, 1990), This Life, This Life: New & Selected Poems 1970-2006 (2006), and As Though We Were Flying (2011), which was shortlisted in the poetry section of the Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust Book Awards in 2012. His most recent poetry titles are Getting Higher: the complete mountain poems (2011), Found at Sea (2013) and Later That Day (2020), all from Polygon. Known as ‘the poet laureate of climbing’, he publishes his collected poems of mountain adventures real and metaphorical as Getting Higher with Birlinn in 2011. Two books on his Himalayan expeditions have become classics in their field, as have Preferred Lies (a meditation on golf, self-recovery, Scotland) and At the Loch of the Green Corrie (fishing for Norman MacCaig, catching much else besides). His seven novels include That Summer (Faber, 2000), The Return of John Macnab (Headline, 1996) and its late sequel Romanno Bridge (Quercus, 2008), In Another Light (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2004), which was Saltire Scottish Book of the Year, and most recently, Fair Helen (Quercus, 2013). His memoir, You Know What You Could Be: tuning into the 1960s (with Mike Heron) was pubilshed by Quercus in 2017. He lives in Edinburgh and Orkney with his wife, novelist Lesley Glaister.

'Andrew Greig is a Scottish poet of sensitivity and resilience. He deals with high-risk situations - from mountaineering to love - and is particularly good at presenting the gamut of feelings involved in rites of passage: high endeavour, commitment, holding back, drift, release' - Edwin Morgan. 'When I first read the poems, I started writing down the ones I was really impressed by, but I gave that up after I'd written down 4 of the first 5. I doubt if there is a weak one in the collection. They interest me for their subject-matter and use of it - very subtle, often very unexpected, always on a nicely serious level, not without wit' - Norman MacCaig 'It is now a commonplace to say that most exciting new writing comes from north of the Border. If further proof were needed, Greig provides it' - Erica Wagner, The Times. 'A lyric poet of rare gusto' - Peter Porter, Observer 'I regret to say my students prefer your Western Swing to Gunslinger' - Ed Dorn.