Mick Imlah

Michael Ogilvie Imlah (26 September 1956 – 12 January 2009), better known as Mick Imlah, was a Scottish poet and editor.

Background[]

Imlah was brought up in Milngavie near Glasgow, before moving to Beckenham, Kent, in 1966. He was educated at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he subsequently taught as a Junior Fellow. He helped revive the historic Oxford Poetry before editing Poetry Review from 1983-6, and then worked at the Times Literary Supplement from 1992.^[1] His collection The Lost Leader (2008) won the Forward Prize for Best Collection,^[2] and was shortlisted for the 2009 International Griffin Poetry Prize.

Imlah died in January 2009, aged 52, as a result of motor neurone disease. He was diagnosed with this disease in December 2007.^[3] An issue of Oxford Poetry was dedicated to his memory. Alan Hollinghurst dedicated his 2011 novel The Stranger's Child to Imlah's memory; the final section of the novel has the epigraph 'No one remembers you at all' from Imlah's poem 'In Memoriam Alfred Lord Tennyson'. A selection of Imlah's poetry, edited by Mark Ford and with an introduction by Alan Hollinghurst, was published by Faber and Faber in 2010. A selection of his prose appeared in 2015.

Bibliography[]

As author[]

• The Zoologist’s Bath (Oxford: Sycamore Press, 1982), 15 pages, ISBN 978-0-906003-04-6
• Birthmarks, the first full book of his poetry (Chatto & Windus, 1988), 56 pages, ISBN 978-0-7011-3358-0
• Penguin New Poets 3: Glyn Maxwell, Mick Imlah, Peter Reading (1994), ISBN 978-0-14-058742-5
• Diehard, booklet (Clutag Press, 2006) ISBN 978-0-9547275-9-8
• The Lost Leader, the second full book of his poetry before his death (Faber and Faber, 2008), ISBN 978-0-571-24307-5

As editor[]

• Dr. Wortle's School by Anthony Trollope (Imlah wrote the introduction and notes; Penguin Classics, 1999), ISBN 978-0-14-043404-0
• The New Penguin Book of Scottish Verse (with Robert Crawford), 2000), ISBN 978-0-14-058711-1
• A Century of Poems (with Alan Jenkins), Times Supplements Ltd, 2002), 136 pp, ISBN 978-1-84122-064-2
• The TLS On Shakespeare (The Times, 2003), 178 pp, ISBN 978-1-4058-3843-6
• Alfred, Lord Tennyson: Poems Selected by Mick Imlah (Faber and Faber, 2004), ISBN 978-0-571-20700-8
• Edwin Muir Selected Poems (Faber and Faber, 2008), ISBN 978-0-571-23547-6

Posthumous[]

• Mick Imlah: Selected Poems Edited by Mark Ford and introduced by Alan Hollinghurst (Faber and Faber, 2010), ISBN 978-0-571-26881-8
• Mick Imlah: Selected Prose Edited by André Naffis-Sahely and Robert Selby (Peter Lang, 2015), ISBN 978-1-906165-53-6

References[]

External links[]

• Imlah profile at the Poetry Archive
• "Mick Imlah: the lost talent" 27 November 2010. Guardian
• Griffin Poetry Prize biography, including video clip of reading of Imlah poem
• "Mick Imlah 1956–2009": a collection of poems by Imlah, reviews of his books and his own essays from TLS, January 12, 2009
• Mick Imlah Poem in Qualm
• Late poet's Griffin nomination delights loved ones