BUTLIN, Ron 1949-

PERSONAL: Born November 17, 1949, in Edinburgh, Scotland; son of John (a salesman) and Elizabeth (a secretary; maiden name, Young) Butlin; married Regi Claire (a writer). Education: University of Edinburgh, M.A., 1975, diploma in adult education and community development, 1977.

ADDRESSES: Home—7 W. Newington Place, Edinburgh EH9 1QT, Scotland. Agent—Mic Cheetham, 11-12 Dover St., London W1X 3PH, England.

CAREER: Worked as model, footman, computer operator, factory worker, translator, and security guard, 1966-70; writer-in-residence at Scottish schools, 1978-83; writer-in-residence for University of Edinburgh, 1982, 1985, for Midlothian Region, 1989-90, and for Craigmillar Literacy Trust, 1997-98; University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada, Scottish/Canadian Exchange Writing Fellow, 1984-85; Stirling University, Stirling, Scotland, writing fellow, 1993; University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews, Fife, Scotland, novelist-in-residence, 1998-99.

AWARDS, HONORS: Scottish Arts Council, writer's bursary, 1977 and 1987, book awards, 1983, for The Exquisite Instrument, 1984, for The Tilting Room, 1985, for Ragtime in Unfamiliar Bars, 1994, and 1999.

WRITINGS:

Stretto (poetry), Outlet Design Service (Edinburgh, Scotland), 1976.

Creatures Tamed by Cruelty (poems), Edinburgh University Press (Edinburgh, Scotland), 1979.

(Translator, with K. Chevalier) The Exquisite Instrument: Imitations from the Chinese (poems), Salamander Press (Edinburgh, Scotland), 1982.

The Tilting Room (stories), Canongate Publishing (Edinburgh, Scotland), 1984.

Ragtime in Unfamiliar Bars (poems), Secker & Warburg (London, England), 1985.

The Sound of My Voice (novel), Canongate Publishing (Edinburgh, Scotland), 1987, Serpent's Tail (New York, NY), 2003.

Blending In (play), produced in Edinburgh, Scotland, 1989.

Histories of Desire (poems), Bloodaxe Books (Newcastle upon Tyne, England), 1995.

(Editor) Mauritian Voices, Flambard (Newcastle upon Tyne, England), 1997.

Night Visits (novel), Scottish Cultural Press (Edinburgh, Scotland), 1997, Serpent's Tail (London, England), 2003.

(Editor) When We Jump We Jump High!, Craigmillar Literacy Trust (Craigmillar, Scotland), 1998.

Selected Poems (bilingual Spanish-English edition), Hiperion (Spain), 2002.

Vivaldi and the Number 3, Serpent's Tail (New York, NY), 2004.

Author, with Michael Lester Cribb, of opera librettos Markheim, Dark Country, and, with Lyell Cressell, Dark Kingdom. Also author of The Sin of Forgiveness (novel), 1995. Contributor to journals and periodicals in England, Europe, Japan, and North America, including Times Literary Supplement and Sunday Herald (Glasgow, Scotland). Works have been translated into French, Spanish, German, Hungarian, Russian, and Japanese.

SIDELIGHTS: Ron Butlin has established himself as a writer with many talents, having successfully published poetry, plays, novels, and journalism. His early life was marked by difficulties; his mother was unable to care for him for his first two years and placed him in an orphanage, where she visited him regularly. He was later able to live with his mother and father, but the situation was in many ways strained; Butlin has said that his father was emotionally abusive. The family lived for a time in a nursing home where his mother worked; there Butlin saw death touch many of the elderly residents who had become his friends. His world was "utterly unpredictable," as he told Nicholas Royle in an interview for the London Independent. He sought solace in books, because reading allowed him to "withdraw into a world where everything made sense." The notion that life is unpredictable is an important part of many of the stories in one of his early collections, The Tilting Room. "Rooms tilt, walls buckle and floors slip and slide as the physical world submits to the cruelty of various tyrants, from Nazi soldier to incestuous abusers," reported Royle, who further described Butlin's tales as "mind-expanding Kafkaesque stories."

Butlin began writing poetry as a teenager and progressed to writing stories by the mid-1970s. Along the way he also traveled a great deal and worked a variety of jobs, from life-modeling to scraping barnacles off ships. His first novel, The Sound of My Voice, describes the life of an alcoholic in his mid-thirties. Although drinking is central to the plot, the author told Royle that "that's not really what it's about. It's about the emotional groundswells that are involved…. When you're at that age, options are beginning to close down. All around there is a closing and opening, and you just wonder who you are." He drew on memories of his own childhood for his second novel, Night Visits, which revolved around bereavement and abuse in an Edinburgh nursing home.

Butlin's poetry provides a way for the writer to "get to grips with what is going on," as he stated in Contemporary Poets. He further noted that his work is not intended to convey any particular message: "if there is any message, it is all around us all the time, and for me, trying to write poetry is my way of trying to read what is already written here." An autobiographical thread runs through Butlin's poetry, along with a mythic frame of reference that allows him to "situate, distance, and so explore more fully his sense of origination, identity, and relationship," noted an essayist for Contemporary Poets.

In a book of fanciful short pieces, titled Vivaldi and the Number 3, Butlin "spins improbable anecdotes and larky embellishments about the great composers," including Mozart, Vivaldi, and Beethoven, noted Guardian critic David Jays. Mozart grows tired of performing and tries his luck at being a private investigator; Beethoven misguidedly puts his trust in some get-rich-quick propaganda; and Vivaldi almost becomes a hamburger chef instead of a composer. The collection is both a tribute to and a demonstration of Butlin's "zany streak," noted Tom Adair in Scotsman. The stories are "written with clarity, guile and great humour," and show that "genius is rare but rarely rarified." Reviewing the book for Scotsman, Kenneth Walton recommended it as "surreal" and "comical."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

books

Contemporary Poets, seventh edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 2001.

periodicals

Guardian (Manchester, England), July 31, 2004, David Jays, review of Vivaldi and the Number 3, p. 21.

Independent (London, England), August 10, 2002, Nicholas Royle, interview with Ron Butlin, p. 16.

Library Journal, February 1, 2005, Sarah Conrad Weisman, review of Vivaldi and the Number 3, p. 73.

Scotsman (Edinburgh, Scotland), May 31, 2004, Kenneth Walton, review of Vivaldi and the Number 3, p. 17; July 24, 2004, Tom Adair, review of Vivaldi and the Number 3, p. 13.

Times Literary Supplement, June 20, 1986, p. 677; January 30, 1987, p. 109.*