Roddy Lumsden - Poet
Born May 28, 1966; died January 10, 2020
Born May 28, 1966; died January 10, 2020
Roddy Lumsden, who has died aged 53,
was one of the finest poets of his generation writing in the English language.
Over ten collections that began in 1997 with Yeah Yeah Yeah, right up the most
recent, So Glad I’m Me (2017), Lumsden produced a dense and unflinchingly
candid form of poetry that was by turns melancholy, obsessive and possessed
with a vulnerability and self-deprecatory gallows humour.
This brought his work back down to earth
in a world populated with bar-room eccentrics and lovers past, present, future
and imagined. His rich, elaborate and forensically precise demotic dug deep
into pop culture in a milieu described by one contemporary as being full of
both heartbreak and hilarity.
It was these sensibilities that
endeared Lumsden to numerous off-kilter gigs. While his books were short-listed
for major prizes, his various posts included stints as poet in residence with
the music industry, performing with The Divine Comedy, and residencies at a
five-star hotel and golf course in his home town of St Andrews. He was also
commissioned to effectively shadow supermodel Kate Moss during a fashion shoot
and write poems in response. This culminated in a recording of Moss reading
Lumsden’s poem, Bloom.
As a teacher, editor, mentor and
champion of younger writers, Lumsden’s influence on a new generation of British
poets is immeasurable. He nurtured hundreds of writers, both for the
generation-defining anthology, Identity Parade: New British & Irish Poets
(2010) and beyond. He also channelled his astonishing facility for obscure
words and facts into Vitamin Q: a temple of trivia lists and curious words
(2004).
Roderick Chalmers Lumsden was born and
raised in St. Andrews, the youngest of three sons to an electrician father who
played drums in a dance-band and his mother Betty, who worked as a university
accommodation administrator. Lumsden’s love of poetry dated back to early
childhood when his mother read him poems, with The Owl and the Pussycat a
particular favourite.
Sharing a room with a brother Eric, who
read to him from the age of seven, also left its mark. As recounted in his
introduction to The Message (1999), the anthology he co-edited with Stephen
Trousse that highlighted the relationship between poetry and pop music, that
was the age he composed his first poem. This came about largely because he was
too lazy to write the story requested by his teacher about what he did the
night before.
Lumsden spent his pocket money on work
by A.A. Milne and Hilaire Belloc, and as a teenager made up song lyrics in his
head while delivering newspapers. Between 1978 and 1984 he attended Madras
College, but was forced to leave through illness aged seventeen, and began
writing poetry in earnest.
Lumsden’s writing continued at
Edinburgh University in 1984, where he showed his work to writer-in-residence
Liz Lochhead, who encouraged and supported him. With fellow poet Andrew
Jackson, he co-founded Fox magazine, before graduating in 1987 with an MA
General Arts.
For the next few years Lumsden lived
off playing pub quiz machines, and later compiled quizzes. In 1991, he won an
Eric Gregory Award, but it wasn’t until 1997 that his debut collection, Yeah
Yeah Yeah, was published by Bloodaxe. The book highlighted a talent steeped in
pop culture, but with a fondness for form and unearthing arcane words that saw
it shortlisted for the Forward Prize in the Best First Collection
section.
After leaving Edinburgh for London, The
Book of Love (2000) was a Poetry Book Society choice and was shortlisted for
The John Llewelyn Rhys Prize as well as the T.S. Eliot. Roddy Lumsden is Dead
followed in 2001, with Mischief Night: New and Selected Poems (2004) a
watershed collection and PBS recommendation that marked the rise of new
influences.
Lumsden immersed himself in London’s
poetry scene, for a time becoming vice chair of the Poetry Society of Great
Britain, later working as commissioning editor for poetry at Salt Publishing.
His own work was collected in Third Wish Wasted (2009), Terrific Melancholy
(2011), The Bells of Hope (2012) and Not All Honey (2014), which was
shortlisted for the Saltire Society’s Scottish Poetry Book of the Year Award.
Melt and Solve followed in 2015. Lumsden partnered fellow writer Val McDermid
on BBC Radio 4’s Round Britain Quiz, with the pair winning the 2014 series.
For the last two years of his life
Lumsden lived in a care home in New Cross, London. What turned out to be his
final collection, So Glad I’m Me, appeared in 2017, and was shortlisted for
both the T.S. Eliot Award and the Saltire. At this year’s T.S. Eliot Awards,
which took place two days after his passing, Lumsden’s huge influence was
acknowledged by Ian McMillan. “Many people here,” McMillan said, “will owe the
way they write to Roddy Lumsden.”
Lumsden is survived by his mother
Betty, his two brothers Jimmy and Eric, and various nephews and nieces.
The Herald, January 5th 2020
ends
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