This is the website of Edinburgh-based poet and translator Ken Cockburn.

Latest News (January 2026)

I’ve a poem included in the anthology My Ear is Full of Milk: an anthology of writing for Laurel & Hardy, which comes out from Broken Sleep on 31 January 2026. Details on the Broken Sleep website. According to the blurb, “these pieces trace how two men in bowler hats lodged themselves in our language, our families, and our ideas of failure, friendship, and grace.”

I’ll be at the Artists’ Bookmarket 2026 at the Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, on February 14th and 15th, at The Caseroom Press table. Come and say hello if you’re there!

The first poetry walk of 2026 won’t be in Edinburgh, but across the Firth of Forth in St Andrews. Waves as Blue as Air: A Coastal Poetry Walk is part of the StAnza poetry festival, and takes place on Saturday 14th March, 09.30-11.00. Full details on the StAnza website.

I’m starting to plan this year’s Edinburgh Poetry Tours. After enjoying the experience of doing them them as part of the 2025 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, I hope to do so again this August. (Here’s hoping the weather will be as kind as it was last year.)

“… repeatedly in Cockburn’s poetry you get the impression of a poet who has sown nothing but good will in his craft and is slowly reaping this in his work.”
Richie McCaffrey, on Floating the Woods

“Every so often I come across a book of poems that is irresistible for the absolute ‘rightness’ of its project; a book that has that unerring quality of integrity, craft and communication with the reader; a book that’s doing something slightly out of the ordinary, but wearing that difference in an unostentatious manner. This was that book for me. A delight.” Andy Brown, on The Road North

“From the outset, I find the poems, their ingredients and flavour, and your meticulous joy with words, a delight.”
Stewart Conn, on On the flyleaf

“It is refreshing to read contemporary poetry of such rare grace and compassion… a welcome contribution to the literature of our nomadic century.” Tom Hubbard, on Souvenirs and Homelands