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

This talk addresses some of the challenges, controversies, and opportunities involved in writing a biography of the writer often seen as the twentieth century's greatest poet. Is there still a place for biography in twenty-first century academia? Why might we want a new biography of this most remarkable of immigrant poets? Is there really anything else to find out? And was T. S. Eliot ever young?

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.