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

Imlah was brought up inMilngavie nearGlasgow, before moving toBeckenham,Kent, in 1966. He was educated atMagdalen College, Oxford, where he subsequently taught as a Junior Fellow. He helped revive the historicOxford Poetry before editingPoetry Review from 1983–6, and then worked at theTimes Literary Supplement from 1992.^[1] His collectionThe Lost Leader (2008) won theForward Prize for Best Collection,^[2] and was shortlisted for the 2009 InternationalGriffin Poetry Prize.

Imlah died in January 2009, aged 52, as a result ofmotor neurone disease. He was diagnosed with this disease in December 2007.^[3] An issue ofOxford Poetry was dedicated to his memory.Alan Hollinghurst dedicated his 2011 novelThe 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 byMark Ford and with an introduction by Alan Hollinghurst, was published by Faber and Faber in 2010. A selection of his prose appeared in 2015.

• The Zoologist’s Bath (Oxford: Sycamore Press, 1982), 15 pages,ISBN 978-0-906003-04-6
• Birthmarks, the first full book of his poetry (Chatto & Windus, 1988), 56 pages,ISBN 978-0-7011-3358-0
• Penguin New Poets 3:Glyn Maxwell, Mick Imlah,Peter Reading (1994),ISBN 978-0-14-058742-5
• Diehard, booklet (Clutag Press, 2006)ISBN 978-0-9547275-9-8
• The Lost Leader, the second full book of his poetry before his death (Faber and Faber, 2008),ISBN 978-0-571-24307-5

• Dr. Wortle's School byAnthony Trollope (Imlah wrote the introduction and notes; Penguin Classics, 1999),ISBN 978-0-14-043404-0
• The New Penguin Book of Scottish Verse (with Robert Crawford), 2000),ISBN 978-0-14-058711-1
• A Century of Poems (with Alan Jenkins), Times Supplements Ltd, 2002), 136 pp,ISBN 978-1-84122-064-2
• The TLS On Shakespeare (The Times, 2003), 178 pp,ISBN 978-1-4058-3843-6
• Alfred, Lord Tennyson: Poems Selected by Mick Imlah (Faber and Faber, 2004),ISBN 978-0-571-20700-8
• Edwin Muir Selected Poems (Faber and Faber, 2008),ISBN 978-0-571-23547-6

• Mick Imlah: Selected Poems Edited by Mark Ford and introduced by Alan Hollinghurst (Faber and Faber, 2010),ISBN 978-0-571-26881-8
• Mick Imlah: Selected Prose Edited by André Naffis-Sahely and Robert Selby (Peter Lang, 2015),ISBN 978-1-906165-53-6

• Imlah profile at the Poetry Archive
• "Mick Imlah: the lost talent" 27 November 2010.Guardian
• Griffin Poetry Prize biography, including video clip of reading of Imlah poem
• "Mick Imlah 1956–2009": a collection of poems by Imlah, reviews of his books and his own essays fromTLS, January 12, 2009
• Mick Imlah Poem inQualm
• Late poet's Griffin nomination delights loved ones

• Alumni of Magdalen College, Oxford
• Fellows of Magdalen College, Oxford
• Scottish magazine editors
• Deaths from motor neuron disease in the United Kingdom
• 1956 births
• 2009 deaths
• People from Milngavie
• 20th-century Scottish poets
• Scottish male poets
• 20th-century Scottish male writers

• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Use dmy dates from April 2022