Jim Carruth was born in Johnstone, Renfrewshire, and grew up on his family's farm near Kilbarchan. His first chapbook collection Bovine Pastoral was published in 2004. Since then he has brought out a further five chapbooks and an illustrated fable. He has won both the James McCash poetry competition and the McLellan Poetry Prize and was awarded a Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship in 2009. He was chosen as one of the poets showcased in Oxford Poets 2010. In 2014 he was appointed Poet Laureate of Glasgow.