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Professor Alan Riach

Born in Airdrie, Lanarkshire, Alan Riach is the author of eight books of poems: This Folding Map (Auckland University Press / Oxford University Press, 1990), An Open Return (Untold Books, New Zealand, 1991), First and Last Songs (Auckland University Press / Chapman, Edinburgh, 1995), Clearances (Hazard Press, NZ / Scottish Cultural Press, 2001), Homecoming (Luath Press, Edinburgh, 2009), The Winter Book (Luath, 2017), Wild Blue: Selected Poems (Wydawnictwo Maski, Poland, 2014), and The MacDiarmid Memorandum (Scotland Street Press, 2023).

He worked in New Zealand from 1986 to 2000, where he was Associate Professor of English and a Pro-Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Waikato, specialising in twentieth-century literature. He has published extensively on Hugh MacDiarmid, and on the poetry of modern Scotland more generally.