'The title Ghosts at Cockcrow captures the precarious beauty of Conn's work, its departures and beginnings, its lingerings and resurrections - his almost trademark filigree assonances and half rhymes, wry asides and sudden details. Anger, art, angst, guilt and guile, the humane and the human are all here' - Stuart Kelly, Scotland on Sunday. 'Ghosts at Cockcrow is a graceful slippingA as he puts it, into seniority, at once a coming of old age, and an acquiring of senior status among Scotland's poets. It is full of high culture, old Europe and wry self-deprecation, visiting Barcelona, Burgundy and the capital to which he played laureate for three years, Edinburgh' - W.N. Herbert, Poetry London 'He stands among the indispensable poets of modern and contemporary Scotland' - Douglas Dunn, The Dark Horse

Stewart Conn was born in Glasgow in 1936, grew up in Ayrshire, and has lived in Edinburgh for many years. He has published several poetry collections, and his plays have been widely performed. His books include Stolen Light: Selected Poems (1999), Ghosts at Cockcrow (2005) and The Breakfast Room (2010) from Bloodaxe, and his memoir Distances (2001) from Scottish Cultural Press. He has won awards from the Scottish Arts Council and the Society of Authors, among others, while An Ear to the Ground was a Poetry Book Society Choice. He formerly worked as a BBC drama producer, and was Edinburgh's first Makar or Poet Laureate in 2002-05.