Jim Carruth

Jim Carruth is a poet, editor and awards and events programmer. His first pamphlet, Bovine Pastoral, came out in 2004 and was followed by a further four chapbooks which formed the Haltered Chronicles sequence. Killochries, a verse novella published in 2015, was shortlisted for the Saltire Scottish Poetry Book of the Year, the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry prize and the Fenton Aldeburgh prize for first collection. Far Field (Polygon, 2023) was the final book in the Auchensale trilogy following Black Cart and Bale Fire. The three books explore the changing rural landscape and the experiences of those who work there.

Jim has collaborated with several musicians and artists. The fruit of his ongoing partnership with sculptor Andy Scott can be seen in the works Lifeline (2007), Arria (2011) and The Kelpies (2014). He was awarded a Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship in 2009 and has been the winner of the McCash poetry prize, the McLellan poetry prize and the Callum Macdonald Memorial award.

He is the co-founder and current chair of St Mungo’s Mirrorball, a network of Glasgow-based poets, and has been an artistic advisor for StAnza, Scotland’s international poetry festival. Since 2008 he has devised and run Clydebuilt: a mentoring programme for developing poets. In 2014 he became Glasgow’s Poet Laureate.

Jim has had a long career working in the fields of health inequalities and community regeneration and currently works on the family farm in Renfrewshire.