Stewart Conn wins Fletcher of Saltoun Award
Photo: Professor Ian Brown presents Stewart Conn with the Fletcher of Saltoun Award 2025 for Arts and Humanities
Poet and playwright Stewart Conn is among leading Scottish figures who were honoured in the Fletcher of Saltoun Awards 2025. The Saltire Society presented its prestigious annual Fletcher of Saltoun Awards on the evening of Thursday 4 December 2025 at a ceremony in the New Town of Edinburgh.
The Awards for Arts and Humanities went to internationally renowned violinist Nicola Benedetti CBE, the first woman and the first Scot to lead the Edinburgh International Festival, and to the poet and playwright Stewart Conn, the first Edinburgh Makar (Poet Laureate). Stewart Conn was presented with his award by Professor Ian Brown, Vice-Convenor of the Saltire Society (pictured above left).
Susan Garnsworthy, Convenor of The Saltire Society, said:
'For almost 90 years, the Saltire Society has championed Scottish culture and with the Fletcher of Saltoun Awards, we recognise innovators and authorities in their fields. It is an immense honour to add the names of each of our distinguished awardees to the awards’ roll of honour. Individually, they embody exceptional dedication and accomplishment and we do hope that their awards remind us all of Scotland’s potential at home and on the world stage.'
Arts and Humanities awardee Stewart Conn was born in Glasgow and grew up in Ayrshire. His early career was in broadcasting, where he served as BBC Scotland’s head of radio drama. He was Literary Advisor to the Royal Lyceum Theatre and his own plays include Play Donkey and The Burning, an unflinchingly visceral drama about the witch trials in late sixteenth-century Scotland. He has published 18 highly regarded poetry books, including Bloodaxe Books's Stolen Light: Selected Poems, The Breakfast Room and The Touch of Time: New & Selected Poems, a comprehensive retrospective drawing on ten previous books published over five decades. He is the recipient of many awards including the Institute of Contemporary Scotland’s first Iain Crichton Smith award for services to literature and the Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust Book Awards Poetry Book of the Year, and served as Edinburgh’s inaugural Makar.
Stewart Conn said:
'I never dreamt of receiving an honour so projecting the spirit, passion and intense love of Scotland of Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, or one so garlanded by its previous recipients. Torn between pride and humility I extend deep gratitude to the Saltire Society, and to all through whom my path has, over the years, been personally and professionally enriched.'
First established in 1989, The Fletcher of Saltoun Awards recognise outstanding contributions to Scottish cultural life. Initially the award was presented to one individual per annum. In 2014, the programme was extended to three awards per year – for Arts and Humanities, Public Life and Science.
The Awards are named for Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun (1655-1716), a Scottish writer and politician and Commissioner of the old Parliament of Scotland. Nominations for the Awards are made by members of the Saltire Society and winners are decided by the Society’s Council.
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For digital or print review copies of Stewart Conn's The Touch of Time: New & Selected Poems, please contact Christine Macgregor: publicity@bloodaxebooks.com.
For further information about the Fletcher of Saltoun Awards, please contact Ian Brown: vice-convenor@saltiresociety.org.uk (Tel: 079 0417 0417).
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Stewart Conn was born in Glasgow in 1936 and grew up in Ayrshire, the setting for much of his early poetry. Since 1977 he has lived in Edinburgh, where until 1992 he was based as BBC Scotland's head of radio drama. He was Edinburgh’s first Makar or Poet Laureate in 2002-05.
His poetry books include Stolen Light: Selected Poems (1999), Ghosts at Cockcrow (2005), The Breakfast Room (2010) and The Touch of Time: New & Selected Poems (2014) from Bloodaxe. His other publications include a memoir, Distances (Scottish Cultural Press, 2001), and two anthologies, 100 Favourite Scottish Poems (SPL/Luath Press, 2006), and 100 Favourite Scottish Love Poems (Luath Press, 2008). He has published four pamphlets with the Mariscat Press: Estuary (2012), Against the Light (2016), Underwood (2022) and Out of the Blue (2025).
He has won three Scottish Arts Council book awards, travel awards from the Society of Authors and the English-Speaking Union, and the Institute of Contemporary Scotland’s first Iain Crichton Smith award for services to literature. An Ear to the Ground was a Poetry Book Society Choice, Stolen Light was shortlisted for Saltire Scottish Book of the Year, and The Breakfast Room won the Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust Book Awards Poetry Book of the Year Prize. In 2025 he was honoured with the Fletcher of Saltoun Arts and Humanities Award.
'He stands among the indispensable poets of modern and contemporary Scotland.' – Douglas Dunn, The Dark Horse, on Stewart Conn
'Stewart Conn is one of Scotland's most skilled and wide-ranging poets. A sympathetic, if quite unsentimental, treatment of the natural world, or the rural one at least, does run throughout his poetry, but so do the themes of love, family relationships, the nature and power of art, and that time-honoured subject of poetry – the fragility and transitoriness of life itself.' – David McCordick, Scottish Literature in the Twentieth Century
Stewart Conn: The Touch of Time
Stewart Conn introduces and reads a selection of poems from various times in his life, all from in his retrospective, The Touch of Time: New & Selected Poems. The poems he reads here are ‘Todd’, ‘Ferret’, ‘Driving Through Sutherland’, ’Tremors’, ‘Under the Ice’, ‘Visiting Hour’, ‘Carpe Diem’ and 'The Breakfast Room', his response to Pierre Bonnard's painting, and in particular to the figure of the artist's wife Marthe at the very edge of the painting. His Bonnard poem is in three parts: the first in the voice of the poet, the second by Marthe and the third by Bonnard himself.
Pamela Robertson-Pearce filmed Stewart Conn reading his poems at his home in Edinburgh in June 2010. This film is from the DVD-anthology In Person: World Poets, filmed and edited by Pamela Robertson-Pearce and by Neil Astley (Bloodaxe Books, 2017).
[05 December 2025]
