Ancient Light

In the 1960s and 1970s Robin Fulton Macpherson was active in Scottish literary life as a poet, reviewer and editor. Since 1973 his home base has been in Norway and in the decades since he has built a solid reputation as a translator of Scandinavian poets, such as Tomas Tranströmer, Kjell Espmark and Harry Martinson from Swedish and Olav H. Hauge from Norwegian.

His A Northern Habitat: Collected Poems 1960-2010 (Marick Press, 2013) was described by Carol Rumens in The Guardian as "a major achievement, enriching the habitat of contemporary letters in our own archipelago and beyond." John Glenday, in Northwords Now, referred to the book as "a real treasure of a collection, a weighty, important reminder that Fulton Macpherson is a prominent figure in Scottish poetry... His poetry is enduring as granite. It will weather well", while Peter M. McDonald, in Rain Taxi, felt certain that "A Northern Habitat will stand the test of time. It is arguably the most important book yet from a Scottish poet in this new millennium."

Ancient Light is his third Shearsman collection, following 2020's Arrivals of Light.

"Many of these [ poems in Arrivals of Light ] consist of just a few lines but they're suffused with a remarkable keenness of eye and, especially, freshness of thought and phrase. The very title ... speaks to a sense of continuing revelation, or more accurately revelations." -Chris Powici, Northwords Now

Robin Fulton Macpherson was born in Arran in 1937, attended primary school in Arran and Glasgow and secondary school in Golspie, Sutherland. He attained an MA in 1959 and PhD in 1972 from Edinburgh University. From 1969 to 1971 he held the Writers' Fellowship, also at Edinburgh University. He was senior lecturer at Stavanger University in Norway from 1973 to 2006. His Selected Poems (1980) gathered work from five earlier volumes and was followed by two further collections (1982, 1990). Marick Press, Michigan, published A Northern Habitat: Collected Poems 1960-2010 and Unseen Isles and other poems. He edited Lines Review and the associated press from 1967-1976; Selected Poems by Iain Crichton Smith (1983); The Complete Poetical Works of Robert Garioch (1983) and revised Robert Garioch's Collected Poems (2004), and A Garioch Miscellany (1986). His essays have been collected in Contemporary Scottish Poetry (1974) and The Way the Words are Taken (1989). His work has been published in Swedish, German and Spanish translation. He has translated many Scandinavian poets, such as Tomas Tranströmer, Harry Martinson and Kjell Espmark from Sweden and Olav H Hauge, from Norway.