Robert Burns (1759-96) was born into a farming family in Ayrshire, Scotland. The publication in 1786 of his first book, Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish dialect, made him famous overnight and saw him fêted by Edinburgh society. But Burns made no money from his writing and quickly fell on hard times, returning to farming in Dumfries, and, when that failed, ... Read moreto work as an Excise officer. He devoted his final years to poetry and the writing of Scottish songs. Don Paterson was born in Dundee in 1963. His poetry has won many awards, including the Whitbread Poetry Prize, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, the Costa Poetry Award, all three Forward Prizes and, on two occasions, the T. S. Eliot Prize. He was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 2009. He is Professor Emeritus at the University of St Andrews and, for over twenty-five years, was Poetry Editor at Picador Macmillan. He also works as a jazz musician. Show Less