David Betteridge

David Betteridge (born 1941) is a former teacher and teacher-trainer, and co-author (with Andrew Wright) of several textbooks on English Language Teaching. He has written poetry for most of his adult life, but only gained publication as late as 2002, when Raymond Ross at Cencrastus accepted a group of his Glasgow Poems.

Since then, most years, he has published new poems in magazines - including Acumen, Agenda, Chapman, Markings and New Scottish Writing - and in anthologies - including Luath Press's Scotia Nova. Jointly with Tom Malone, a graphic designer, he has produced a series of poetry pamphlets under the Rhizome Press aegis. These include Countervailing (about the loss of the Solway Harvester, with all hands, in the Irish Sea), Artist & Artisan (co-authored with his daughter, Hazel, about their family's past), and Carbon (a fantasia on Primo Levi's tale-of-all-tales, from his The Periodic Table). Two books of poems are also in print: Granny Albyn's Complaint (Smokestack Press, 2008), about Glasgow's socialist traditions, and Slave Songs & Symphonies (Manifesto Press, 2016), similarly historical.

Latterly, with the artist Bob Starrett, he has experimented with mixing prose, verse, and image, inspired by John Berger's work, published by Culture Matters, Facts & Fiction, and The Recusant. (Photo credit: Owen McGuigan)