Robin Fulton MacPhersonFor thirty plus years Fulton served as an instructor at what is now the University of Stavanger, in Norway, teaching many subjects in his native tongue, but oddly not English literature. One might call that an academic career, yet Fulton is entirely elf-effacing about these years of teaching, always exacting in his modesty, putting one in mind of T.S. Eliot quietly adding up his sums in that London bank while The Waste Land rattled around. Similarly, there's a delightful disparity between Fulton's quiet modesty as an expat Scot and his magnificent body of work where his true craftsmanship of language shines through like a blaze. Some may remember him as editor for ten years of the seminal Scottish poetry journal Lines Review. Oddly, one of Fulton's first major publishers back in the 1970s was a U.S. small press, New Rivers Press, that apparently had no fixed address, at one time out of Peter Howard's Serendipity Bookshop in Berkeley (Tree-Lines, 1974), earlier still (the spaces between the stones, 1971) from a P.O. Box in New York City. But the Scottish Arts Council was farsighted enough back then to see the promise of this then-young Scots talent to fund the publications. One might suppose from this that Fulton would have garnered a broader American following. Sadly he is largely unknown. Counting chapbooks, his poetic output stands at under ten volumes, with many other seminal works of translation, as well as worthy works of criticism on Scottish poets. But it is certain that A Northern Habitat will stand the test of time. It is arguably, the most important book yet from a Scottish poet in this new millennium. Read More Read Less