Ivor Cutler Biography

British humourist and poet; Cutler grew up in Glasgow, where he was educated at Shawlands Academy. He has been a freelance writer and performer of his work since the late 1950s. Gruts (1962) contained short stories and songs which had provoked controversy when they were previously broadcast on BBC radio; the stories, which established Cutler as an eccentric literary talent, are characteristically brief and constitute mutedly surreal and obliquely disturbing commentaries on human behaviour. Cock-a-Doodle Don't (1966) and Life in a Scottish Sitting Room, Vol. 2 (1984) are further collections of his stories. Among his numerous collections of poetry are Many Flies Have Feathers (1973) and the prose poems of A Nice Wee Present from Scotland (1988). His poems, laconic but gently insistent, display his bizarre conceptions with a disquieting air of ordinariness. He is also well-known as an author of books for children. Recent humorous prose works include Glasgow Dreamer (1990), Befriend and Bacterium (1992), and A Stuggy Pren (1994).