Robert Alan Jamieson

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Robert Alan Jamieson, Crescent Arts Centre, Belfast 2005

Robert Alan Jamieson was born in Lerwick on the 28th of January, 1958, one of two Up Helly-Aa babies born that year. He is the third son of Bertie Jamieson of Melby, Sandness and his wife Agnes Christina (Chrissie) Anderson of Grobsness and Gonfirth. He was educated at Sandness Primary School, Aith Junior High School and the Anderson High School, Lerwick.

Alan began to publish stories and poems in The New Shetlander and Shetland Life in his late teens and was fortunate to enjoy the encouragement and support of John J. Graham, Laurence I. Graham and others such as Mary Blance and Rhoda Bulter. He was the first person to benefit from an arts development grant from the Shetland Islands Council in 1982, a controversial event which nonetheless helped create the climate for the establishment of the Shetland Arts Trust. His first novel Soor Hearts was published in 1983 and a second, Thin Wealth, set during the North Sea Oil boom, appeared in 1986. He was the recipient of a Scottish Arts Council writer's bursary that year, and a collection of poetry, Shoormal, followed. He was one of the founders of the short-lived broadsheet Briggistanes, along with Anne Dickie and the late John McKee.

Alan returned to full-time education in 1988, attending the University of Edinburgh, where he studied English Language and Literature. In 1989, Islesburgh produced his first play, 'An Aald Lion Lies Doon' and his third novel, A Day at the Office, was published in 1991, while he was a student. In 1992 the BBC SSO premiered a collaboration with the Yell-based composer, David Ward, entitled 'Beyond the Far Haaf'. Alan's libretto for this won the Shetland Literary Prize and he was awarded a second Scottish Arts Council bursary.

In 1993 Alan became co-editor, with Gavin Wallace, of Edinburgh Review. From late 1993, he lived for three years in Perth as community writer-in-residence, based at the William Soutar house. Alan returned to Edinburgh in 1996. He was awarded a third SAC writers bursary in 1997, and in 1998 was appointed Creative Writing Fellow at the universities of Glasgow and Strathclyde. In 2000, the Fruitmarket Gallery published his collaboration with the painter Graeme Todd, Mount Hiddenabyss.

Since 2001, Alan has been a member of the staff at the University of Edinburgh, where he tutors Creative Writing. He lives in Edinburgh with his wife, with whom he has three sons. He is a member of the editorial board of Edinburgh Review and one of the committee of the Scottish Universities International Summer School. He has also taken part in a number of events organised by Literature Across Frontiers and through this has translated the work of over twenty contemporary European poets into his own version of Shetlandic.

In 2007, Luath Press published his Nort Atlantik Drift, a sequence of 27 poems in his own distinctive brand of Shetlandic, accompanied by English notes and prose translations and a series of 90 black and white images; Poetry Scotland issued his 3,040 line narrative poem The Cutting Down of Cutty Sark, taken from a work-in-progress Boxing the Compass; and with Dilys Rose, he co-edited V: New International Writing from Edinburgh.