Professor Duncan Munro Glen was a Scottish poet, literary editor and Emeritus Professor of Visual Communication at Nottingham Trent University. He became known to literature through his first full-length book, Hugh MacDiarmid and the Scottish Renaissance. He published many verse collections, from Kythings and other poems, In Appearances and Realities Poems to Selected Poems 1965–1990, Selected New Poems 1987–1996 and Collected Poems 1965–2005. His Autobiography of a Poet appeared with Ramsay Head Press in 1986. He edited Akros magazine through 51 numbers from August 1965 and worked to promote Scottish poets and artists. He was a friend and early champion of Hugh MacDiarmid and Ian Hamilton Finlay, among others. Some work from his several volumes of poetry was translated into Italian.
Early life and career
Glen was born in Westburn, Cambuslang, South Lanarkshire, Scotland, the son of a white-collar worker in The Steel Company of Scotland, Hallside, near Newton Station. He was educated at West Coats Primary School in Cambuslang, then at Rutherglen Academy, though he left when he was 15. He then became an office boy and an apprentice printer in Glasgow and Kirkcaldy, before studying at Edinburgh College of Art. After national service in the RAF as a photographic interpreter, he became a typographic designer with the HMSO and did freelance typographic design for publishers in London. Glen then moved into graphic-design education, first at Watford College of Technology. After a brief spell as an editor in Glasgow with Robert Gibson & Sons Ltd, educational publishers, at what was to become Preston Polytechnic, he was appointed Professor of Visual Communication at what would be Nottingham Trent University. Glen served on the Council of National Academic Awards. Glen founded Akros Publications in 1965, aiming to publish Scottish poetry and literary criticism; from 1965 to 2006 over 250 works appeared under the Akros imprint. They included poetry, critical and historical studies, Akros magazine and Zed 2 0, and also fiction by Robert McLellan, John Herdman and others. Alongside his own poetry, he produced several studies of Scottish literature, anthologies, and a range of publications in other areas, including a history of typography, the definitive history of Cambuslang, a place for which he retained an obvious affection, and an illustrated history of Kirkcaldy, where he latterly lived. Glen was elected Fellow of the Chartered Society of Designers in 1977. In 1974 and 1998 he received awards from the Scottish Arts Council "for services to Scottish literature" and "in recognition of his many years as a publisher and editor and entrepreneurial activities for Scottish literature". In 1991 he received The Howard Sergeant Memorial Award "in recognition of long and devoted services to poetry". In 2000 he was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters by Paisley University.
