Robert Alan Jamieson is an Edinburgh-based writer, tutor and editor. He was born in Lerwick, Shetland on Up Helly Aa, 1958 and grew up in the crofting community of Sandness. He attended the University of Edinburgh as a mature student and subsequently held the William Soutar Fellowship in Perth. He was a co-editor of Edinburgh Review, 1993-98, and writer in residence at the universities of Glasgow and Strathclyde, 1998-2001. Since then he has been instrumental in the development of  creative writing at  the University of Edinburgh.

RAJ is the author of three novels, two collections of poetry and two plays, and has edited a number of anthologies. Through his occasional work with the organisation Literature Across Frontiers, his poetry in Shetlandic Scots has been translated into more than a dozen languages, and he has translated over 20 contemporary European poets into Shetlandic Scots. His collaboration with the painter Graeme Todd was published by the Fruitmarket Gallery as Mount Hiddenabyss (2000). He also wrote the libretto for Beyond the Far Haaf, a symphonic cantata by  David Ward, premiered by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra in 1992. His most recent publications are Nort Atlantik Drift (Luath, 2007)  The Cutting Down of Cutty Sark (Poetry Scotland, 2007) and, as co-editor with Dilys Rose, V: New International Writing from Edinburgh (Edinburgh Review 2007)

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Extracts from Ansin t'Shaetlin : responses to the language question

Too-Holy Land (poetscards)

Extracts from Ootadaeks  (poem sequence)

Varg  British Council translation project

photo Eleni Koukoula