Roderick Chalmers "Roddy" Lumsden (28 May 1966 – 10 January 2020) was a Scottish poet, writing mentor and quizzer. He was born in St Andrews and educated at Madras College and the University of Edinburgh. He published seven collections of poetry, a number of pamphlets, and a collection of trivia. He also edited a generational anthology of British and Irish poets of the 1990s and 2000s, Identity Parade (Bloodaxe Books, 2010), and The Salt Book of Younger Poets (Salt Publishing, 2011). His collections The Book of Love (Bloodaxe Books, 2000) and So Glad I'm Me (Bloodaxe Books, 2017) were shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize.
St Andrews - Early Life and Schooling (1966-1984) Lumsden was born in St Andrews on 28 May 1966, the youngest child of three, after brothers Jimmy and Eric. His father James (known as Hamish) was an electrician and played the drums in a touring dance band; his mother Elizabeth (known as Betty, née Lumsden, but not related, as he was fond of pointing out) worked in the accommodation service of the university.Roddy Lumsden, The Poetry Kit, September 2000
The Lumsdens lived on Lamond Drive, one of the arterial roads that cross the length of St Andrews. The area is what passes for working class in St Andrews, but would count as lower middle class in most other Scottish small towns.
He shared a childhood bedroom with his elder brother Eric, who would from an early age read novels to him and would let him play his records: artists such as Roxy Music, Supertramp, David Bowie, Steve Harley, early Genesis, and Monty Python.
At age 6, Lumsden won third prize in the People and Paper writing competition organised by the Guardbridge Paper Company.
Lumsden attended Langlands Primary School where, due to recurring outbreaks of warts on his fingers, his friends nicknamed him Werty.A.B. Jackson, The Scotsman, 15 January 2020 He went on to attend Madras College, a comprehensive school in St Andrews that is often mistaken for a private school, due to its architecture and the remains of a fifteenth-century chapel in its grounds. As Lumsden himself said in an interview when talking about his childhood influences, "Another significant factor was my high school, Madras College, a comprehensive which has the sort of teaching standards expected of top private schools."
Having secured the necessary Highers to get into the University of Edinburgh, Lumsden decided to leave school halfway through his final year.
Edinburgh - University and Finding His Voice (1984-1997)
In September 1984 he began a three-year MA General Arts degree at the University of Edinburgh. Modules included those delivered by the School of Scottish Studies in George Square, while Hamish Henderson was still teaching there. For those three years he lived in Pollock Halls of Residence, on the ground floor of Lee House (room G07). At the start of his second year in 1985 he made the acquaintance of A. B. Jackson, then in his third year of an English Literature degree. Together they decided to start an undergraduate poetry magazine, titled Fox, which also featured new work from Liz Lochhead, Norman MacCaig, Ron Butlin, Brian McCabe, and Edwin Morgan. They went on to edit three issues between 1986 and 1987 before handing over the editorship to others. As for Lumsden’s own work, he received feedback and encouragement from Liz Lochhead, writer-in-residence at the university from 1985 to 1987, and Anne Stevenson, writer-in-residence from 1987 to 1989.
Of his early influences, Lumsden has said: "definitely Prufrock. The whole of George MacBeth's Longman British Poetry 1900-65, which was the staple schoolbook and introduced me to Larkin (especially), Gunn, Eliot and Plath. Ondaatje and Bukowski and Alden Nowlan and Paul Durcan while a student. Scottish writers, of course – particularly W.S. Graham, whose ‘Malcolm Mooney's Land’ I had found in the Penguin post-war poetry book [British Poetry Since 1945, edited by Edward Lucie-Smith] – and then the ones I saw reading – MacCaig, Morgan, Dunn, Lochhead. Also, Cooper Clarke and Cutler on John Peel and song lyrics. This was the post-punk era, when lyrics were quite literate – The Monochrome Set, The Passage, Microdisney, The Smiths [...]."
In his first year, Lumsden was the singer in a student band called "A Walk Through H", named after the Peter Greenaway film, playing post-punk original songs. His interest was more in the words than the music, however, and he soon abandoned his singing duties.
Lumsden was president of the University of Edinburgh Poetry Society from 1986 to 1987. Along with A.B. Jackson (vice president) he was responsible for booking various poets to read at the university, and these included Norman MacCaig, Edwin Morgan, Andrew Greig, Kathleen Jamie, Craig Raine, and Hugo Williams.
Lumsden graduated on the 17th of July 1987 and moved into 28 Melville Terrace (top floor left) to join A.B. Jackson who had begun renting there the year before. (Coincidentally, Hamish Henderson lived at 20 Melville Terrace.)Timothy Neat, Hamish Henderson: A Biography. Vol. 2, Poetry Becomes People (1952-2002), Polygon, 2009 For the next two years they shared their work with each other and supported their mutual desire to commit to the 'poetry life'. Paul Hullah describes Lumsden in the late 1980s: "He was Black Bo’s [pub, Blackfriars Street, now the Salt Horse], khaki-safari-suited, barrel-chested, dart player polo, touring trivia-machine cracker, erudite in everything."Paul Hullah, The Leither, issue 135, November 2020
Neil Cooper’s first impressions of Lumsden in 1986 pick up on the same fashion elements: "He was probably wearing one of those short-sleeved military style shirts he always wore that we used to tease him made him look like a darts player […] [a] slightly strange guy with a baby-faced stare and facial tics I’d later find out were a side effect from the lithium he was still taking then."Neil Cooper, Bella Caledonia, 20 January 2020 Cooper also identifies the regular pub haunts: the Pear Tree on West Nicholson Street, the Royal Oak on Infirmary Street, the St James Oyster Bar on Calton Road [now called Bunker], the Antiquary on St Stephen Street.
During this time he supplemented his dole money by playing trivia machines in the pubs throughout Edinburgh: his skill was such that he was able to empty the machines and make a profit. His ubiquitous presence in pubs made him a recognisable figure: "The poet Roddy Lumsden was such a regular at the St James Oyster Bar that mail was occasionally sent to him there. Roddy – who wrote a fine poem called 'St James Infirmly' – told me: 'If anyone didn’t have my address in the early 1990s, they could be assured that a letter would reach me there, as it was like my second home'."John Neil Munro, Lust for Life!: Irvine Welsh and the Trainspotting Phenomenon (Polygon, 2013) Lumsden was a devotee of The Lost Soul Band, who played regularly at the St James Oyster Bar throughout the early 90s.
From 1990 to 1992 he lived at 34 Home Street in the first floor flat above the Cameo cinema, sharing with A.B. Jackson (again) and the actor Mark McDonnell, then studying drama at Queen Margaret University. Lumsden’s poem 'On Home Street' (Yeah Yeah Yeah) describes the moving-in process. In 1991 he received an Eric Gregory Award, and in 1993 he had eight poems included in Poetry Introduction 8, edited by Christopher Reid and published by Faber and Faber.
Around this time, Lumsden became involved with events involving the Edinburgh counter-culture scene, including the 'Rebel Inc Night Cafe' events in 1994, and Rodney Relax’s Yellow Cafe nights. Here Lumsden met writers who would be a major influence on him during this period including Kevin Williamson, Alan Warner, Irvine Welsh, Gordon Legge, Duncan McLean and the poet Paul Reekie. Williamson later published a poem dedicated to Lumsden's memory after Lumsden's death. Between 1995 and 1996 he was Writing Fellow for the City of Aberdeen, and 1995 also saw the publication of a privately printed, 38-page pamphlet, Elsewhere Perhaps Later, containing many of the poems which would appear in his first full collection, and some (e.g. 'An Engagement', 'from Cavoli Riscaldati') which did not.
August 1997 saw the publication of his first collection, Yeah Yeah Yeah (Bloodaxe Books). The reviews were mixed. Stephen Troussé wrote in Poetry Review: "From the gloomy corners of dank saloons in [the] Cowgate, Lumsden observes the last rites and fist-fights of provincial adolescence with a slangy, slumming formalism which owes as much to Elvis Costello as it does to Simon Armitage […] heavy-handed […] wildly uneven […] the poems pick up when the poet gives his persona the slip."Stephen Troussé, Poetry Review, vol. 87, no. 3, Autumn 1997 Lumsden’s own response to the perceived Armitage influence was as follows: "I suppose there is a similarity; I certainly like his work more than most of my peers seem to do, though they may be informed by sour grapes (jealousy is rife in this little world). He's a small town working class boy, with a similar record collection to mine, I think. There's bound to be some crossover – I think that as more working class voices come into poetry, we'll see less of them being lazily lumped together by critics." Neil Powell in the TLS was similarly lukewarm but identified some positive aspects: despite occasional "gear-crashing wrenches of register and patches of dense demotic which read like versified Martin Amis […]"Neil Powell, Times Literary Supplement, 1 August 1997 there are also poems of "great delicacy". He ends the review: "If there is a fault, or a danger, it lies in the feckless charm of a persona which is slightly too pleased with its hard luck and hangovers: one begins, ungratefully, to long for the contrasting tone of some honest, unironic misery, confident that when it arrives Roddy Lumsden will have the technical resources to handle it." This observation was later quoted by Lumsden as the epigram for his poem 'My Pain' published in Roddy Lumsden is Dead. Despite the reviews, the book was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, losing out to Robin Robertson's A Painted Field.
That same year, Lumsden took part in the New Blood Tour, organised by Bloodaxe Books and featuring five of its new authors: Lumsden, Tracey Herd, Julia Copus, Jane Holland, and Eleanor Brown. The group gave twelve readings across the UK between 27 September and 8 October 1997.Thumbscrew, 'New Blood, Lumsden, McGough Revisited', no. 12, Winter 1998-1999
London - Writing and Teaching (1997-2016) Lumsden moved to London at the end of 1997, staying in Stoke Newington. He quickly became known for staging events at The Poetry Society in Covent Garden (he would later serve as the charity’s vice chair) and was part of the second iteration of a writing group that met at The Lamb pub in Bloomsbury – other members of this group included Michael Donaghy, Hugo Williams, Maurice Riordan, Paul Farley, Greta Stoddart and John Stammers.
A friendship with the barman of the St James Oyster Bar in Edinburgh, Bryan Mills, who became the bassist in the band the Divine Comedy, led to Lumsden performing his poetry supporting the band onstage at the Aldeburgh Festival in 1999.
Another early member of the Divine Comedy, the composer Joby Talbot, used one of Lumsden's poems from Roddy Lumsden Is Dead as the libretto to a choral piece, 'Lost Forever'.
Whilst in Stoke Newington, Lumsden became involved with the London spoken word poetry scene due to his friendship with Tim Wells and Tim Turnbull. He was seen by many as an instrumental figure in the breaking down of barriers between 'page' and 'stage' in the years to come.