Andrew Sclater

Biography

Andrew Sclater has worked as an actor, gardener, lecturer, garden historian, and editor of Darwin’s letters.  He is interested in art and landscape and more, and more and more, in people. Though unpublished till recently, he has always thought of himself primarily as a poet. In 2010, while still unpublished, he was shortlisted for the inaugural Picador Poetry Prize. He held a Northern Promise Award from New Writing North in the following year.

In 2012, through the SBT, he is being mentored by the poet, naturalist, photographer and typographer Gerry Cambridge.  2012 also saw him participating in the Orkney Writers Course at the St Magnus International Festival, appearing in print in national magazines for the first time, and in residence during September at Hugh MacDiarmid’s Brownsbank Cottage.  Andrew has been supported by Apples and Snakes and ARC Stockton Arts Centre in performance development. He is increasingly being invited to read in public, both in Scotland and in Northern England. He is co-editing the second issue of the new poetry magazine, Butcher's Dog (www.butchersdogmagazine.com) for publication in spring 2013. He also builds drystane dykes, keeps dogs, rides a motorbike and lives in Edinburgh. He is concerned as to why sclatrie, in old Scots, means obscenities and scandals. 

Writing

CROONSPLITTER BORE

(for Luke Allan and the ghost of Vallay House)

Hie sacker pull
the minch out,
gie water lumb
and smoky draw

till every step
upon the stair’s
a heedy dunch
a clappet blaw.

The hooses knackt,
the flooer awa
wi clapshots gunge
aa canny haw,

the pimple blink
where leifish swam
in end of clutch
and ebble roar

to shore for sure
the shaw till shark
in doone the dark
will stare doom stair

it’s over there
narey a mumble
crumbling care
ti croonsplitter bore.

Comment

"My Mum was a Scot.  How could I not be delighted to win this award?  To be recognised with the promise of help from my motherland is like getting another piece of my childhood to play with!"