Robert Crawford, professor of modern Scottish literature & Bishop Wardlaw Professor of Poetry, University of St Andrews

In this reading Scottish poet Robert Crawford presents some of his reworkings of Greek and Latin texts in the wider context of his work. Part of the reading will feature his versions of ancient verse epitaphs. Body Bags / Simonides, Crawford's collaboration with the photographer Norman McBeath, was exhibited at the Edinburgh Art Festival in 2011, then, as Simonides, toured in the UK and came to the United States where it was shown at the Poetry Foundation in Chicago in 2013.

Robert Crawford was born in Lanarkshire, near Glasgow, in Scotland in 1959. He has published seven collections of poetry and many non-fiction volumes, including Scotland's Books (OUP, 2009), The Bard (Princeton UP, 2009), and On Glasgow and Edinburgh (Harvard UP, 2013). He lives on the east coast of Scotland where he is Professor of Modern Scottish Literature and Bishop Wardlaw Professor of Poetry at the University of St Andrews. His most recent book is the poetry collection, Testament (Jonathan Cape, 2014).

While at the University of Michigan from October 27-29, Crawford will give public presentations about T. S. Eliot and the Scottish Independence Referendum, and will deliver a poetry reading.