G. F. Dutton (Geoffrey Fraser Dutton) Biography

British poet, born on the Welsh borders, of Anglo-Scottish parentage. He has lived most of his life in Scotland and has published works on a variety of subjects, including enzymology and mountaineering. His first full-length collection, Camp One (1978), received a New Writing Award from the Scottish Arts Council. Squaring the Waves (1986), which attracted a wider critical response, was followed by The Concrete Garden (1991). The austere landscape around his home in a mountainous region of Perthshire and his active interest in the coastal and inland waters of Scotland are essential themes of his poetry. His style is extremely economical; a rigorous imagism is fashioned into slender, concentrated poems which often incorporate smooth mechanisms of rhyme and metre to highly unusual effect. He has also published a collection of short stories entitled The Ridiculous Mountains (1984).