Scott Hastie

Who is Scott Hastie?

Born in Edinburgh, Scott Hastie was brought up and educated in Berkhamsted, prior to college studies in Brighton.

Several small press editions of Scott Hastie’s poetry first appeared in the early 1970s, at a time when he was also editor of the college magazine for Sussex University and Brighton Polytechnic These early anthologies prefaced the first substantial hardback collection of his work Selected Poetry which soon found a core audience with its broadly romantic themes, celebrating love and the beauty of the natural world. “To write and sell poetry at a profit these days is a minor victory and a major achievement. Scott’s words gently unlock and force you to face and look at the world with a little more optimism. There are moments of deep joy and others, which take your breath away with simple incredible honesty”

An increasingly spiritual emphasis was apparent in his next collection New Poetry, which followed in 1995. “Scott Hastie’s verse is sympathetic, humanistic and positively affirmative. Accessibility is the touchstone of all Hastie’s output… The spiritual element in his writing is clear.”

Scott Hastie has also written and been published quite extensively in the field of local history. His detailed studies of life in one historically significant part of South West Hertfordshire have provided a detailed panorama of English life through the ages. “Scott Hastie’s passion for local history has to date spawned no fewer than five carefully researched and lavishly illustrated hardback volumes. A Hertfordshire Valley, first published in 1996, continues to be a best selling seminal work today”