Mick Imlah

Michael Ogilvie Imlah (26 September 1956 – 12 January 2009), better known as Mick Imlah, was a Scottish poet and editor.^[1]

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 revived the historic Oxford Poetry before editing Poetry Review from 1983-6, and then working at the Times Literary Supplement from 1992. 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.

The Zoologist’s Bath (Oxford: Sycamore Press, 1982), 15 pages, ISBN 978-0906003046
Birthmarks, the first full book of his poetry (Chatto Windus, 1988), 56 pages, ISBN 978-0701133580
Penguin New Poets 3: Glyn Maxwell, Mick Imlah, Peter Reading (1994), ISBN 978-0140587425
Diehard, booklet (Clutag Press, 2006) ISBN 978-0954727598
The Lost Leader, the second full book of his poetry before his death (Faber and Faber, 2008), ISBN 9780571243075

Dr. Wortle's School by Anthony Trollope (Imlah wrote the introduction and notes; Penguin Classics, 1999), ISBN 978-0140434040
The New Penguin Book of Scottish Verse (with Robert Crawford), 2000), ISBN 978-0140587111
A Century of Poems (with Alan Jenkins), Times Supplements Ltd, 2002), 136 pp, ISBN 978-1841220642
The TLS On Shakespeare (The Times, 2003), 178 pp, ISBN 978-1405838436
Alfred, Lord Tennyson: Poems Selected by Mick Imlah (Faber and Faber, 2004), ISBN 978-0571207008
Edwin Muir Selected Poems (Faber and Faber, 2008), ISBN 978-0571235476