Not Just Moonshine

Tessa Ransford was born in India, educated in Scotland and has lived all her adult life in Scotland apart from eight years working in Pakistan in the 1960s. She has published fifteen books of poetry since the mid-70s and has been translated and published in Germany, Austria, France, Denmark and Japan. Tessa founded the Scottish Poetry Library in 1984 and was director there until its establishment in new premises in 1999. She has an honorary degree for services to Scottish literature from the University of Paisley and in 2000 she was awarded an OBE for her services to the SPL. Tessa was also founder/organiser of the School of Poets poetry workshop (1981-99) and editor of Lines Review poetry magazine for ten years. Founder of Scottish pamphlet poetry and active in Scottish PEN, she is also now the Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow at Queen Margaret University.

What is striking about her development as a poet is not only the unity of her work - the 'unusual purity of vision' early identified by Alan Bold - but its continuing openness to the influences of the world around her. - A. C. CLARKEThe enlightened mind at work, at both art and the problems of the world, rich with native wit, keen to connect and transform. - ALI SMITHUnshamedly intellectual in its approach, Ransford's work acknowledges no limitations of gender and is about as far as one could get from conventional expectations of 'women's poetry'. - CHRISTOPHER WHYTE