Stewart Conn (born 1936) is a Scottish poet and playwright, born in Hillhead, Glasgow. His father was a minister at Kelvinside Church but the family moved to Kilmarnock, Ayrshire in 1941 when he was five. During the 1960s and 1970s, he worked for the BBC at their offices off Queen Margaret Drive and moved to Edinburgh in 1977, where until 1992 he was based as BBC Scotland's head of radio drama. He was Edinburgh's first makar or poet laureate in 2002–05.
Works
As well as several collections of poetry, his books include a collection of essays and memoir poems, Distances (2001), from Scottish Cultural Press. Most recently he edited 100 Favourite Scottish Poems (SPL/Luath Press, 2006), a TLS Christmas choice, and 100 Favorite Scottish Love Poems (Luath Press, 2008). He has won three Scottish Arts Council book awards, travel awards from the Society of Authors and the English-Speaking Union, and the Institute of Contemporary Scotland's first Iain Crichton Smith award for services to literature. His collection An Ear to the Ground was a Poetry Book Society Choice, and Stolen Light was shortlisted for Saltire Scottish book of the year. A special issue of Chapman magazine was devoted to the work of Stewart Conn, April 1, 2007. The Breakfast Room won the Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust Book Awards Poetry Book of the Year Prize in 2010.
