Ken Cockburn is a poet based in Edinburgh. His first collection Souvenirs and Homelands was shortlisted for a Saltire Award in 1998, and a second collection On the Flyleaf was published by Luath Press in 2007. He was awarded the Arts Foundation Fellowship for Literary Translation 2008, and has twice re-ceived commendations in The Stephen Spender Poetry Prize.Formerly Fieldworker and Assistant Director at the Scottish Poetry Li-brary, he has run countless poetry sessions for children and adults in-doors and outdoors, in schools, libraries, museums, care homes and gar-dens. He also runs Edinburgh Poetry Tours, presenting guided walks with poems in Edinburgh’s Old Town.

plenty wit, and enough sighs ALEC FINLAYList the things that matter, and what is likely to appear are stories, and buildings, the birds that fly between them, the hills and streams and skies that surround them, the ordinary stuff of everyday life lived along side the felt presence of ancient recent history. Ken Cockburn's new collection captures all this... in a gloriously demotic voice that remains deeply immersed in the long traditions of poetry, he paints space, and place; and in his hands, language finds a mouth. JEN WEBB