Mick Imlah

Michael Ogilvie Imlah (26 September 1956 – 12 January 2009), better known as Mick Imlah, was a Scottish poet and editor.

Background Imlah was brought up in Milngavie near Glasgow, before moving to Beckenham, Kent, in 1966. He was educated at Dulwich College and Magdalen College, Oxford, where he subsequently taught as a Junior Fellow. He captained the Magdalen team in the 1984 series of the quiz show University Challenge, reaching the semi-finals. He helped revive the historic Oxford Poetry before editing Poetry Review from 1983–6, and then worked at the Times Literary Supplement from 1992. His collection The Lost Leader (2008) won the Forward Prize for Best Collection, and was shortlisted for the 2009 International Griffin Poetry Prize.

Imlah died in January 2009, aged 52, as a result of motor neurone disease. He was diagnosed with this disease in December 2007. An issue of Oxford Poetry was dedicated to his memory. Alan Hollinghurst dedicated his 2011 novel The Stranger's Child to Imlah's memory; the final section of the novel has the epigraph 'No one remembers you at all' from Imlah's poem 'In Memoriam Alfred Lord Tennyson'. A selection of Imlah's poetry, edited by Mark Ford and with an introduction by Alan Hollinghurst, was published by Faber and Faber in 2010. A selection of his prose appeared in 2015.