Ken Cockburn was born in Kirkcaldy in 1960. He studied French and German at Aberdeen University, and Theatre Studies at University College Cardiff. From 1996 to 2004 he worked at the Scottish Poetry Library, as Fieldworker and Assistant Director, running outreach sessions for schools and other organisations across Scotland, as well as events in the Library’s Edinburgh premises. With Alec Finlay he established and ran pocketbooks, the award-winning series of books of poetry and visual art (1999-2002), and is now a director of platform projects, its successor company.

His first collection of poems, Souvenirs and Homelands, was shortlisted for a Saltire Award in 1998. Poems have appeared subsequently in various anthologies, including Love for Love (2000) and Dream State (2nd edition, 2002). The poem sequence, 'On the fly-leaf of...: a bookshelf' was shortlisted for the Deric Bolton Long Poem Award in 2003. His translations of contemporary German-language poets such as Arne Rautenberg, Tina Stroheker and Rudolf Bussman, have appeared in magazines including Chapman and Modern Poetry in Translation.

As editor, he has compiled various anthologies including, for the SPL, the CD The Jewel Box (2000), and Intimate Expanses: XXV poems from Scotland, 1978-2002 (2004). For pocketbooks he edited The of Things: an anthology of Scottish sound, pattern and concrete poems (2001), and for platform projects he edited Tweed Rivers: new writing and art inspired by the rivers of the Tweed catchment (2005). He lives in Edinburgh.