An Altitude Within is Alan MacGillivray's fourth poetry publication. It brings together most of the poems of his previous pamphlets, Kindly Clouds and The Bountiful Loch, together with his more recent unpublished work. The collection reveals a poet whose approach is eclectic and adventurous in subjects and forms, ranging widely, and frequently humorously, through history and the contemporary world, moving out from his home territory of Scotland with its current concerns of individuality and identity to survey the wider world in its cultural variety and environmental fragility. Alan MacGillivray is of Highland parentage but was brought up in Dumfries in the Scottish Borders. He taught English in schools from the South-West of Scotland to Shetland, and lectured for fifteen years at Jordanhill College of Education in Glasgow. Thereafter he lectured in Scottish Literature at the University of Strathclyde. He has written and edited books and articles on Scottish literary subjects. His previous poetry publications are Kindly Clouds (2005), The Bountiful Loch (2007) and the saga of fnc gull (2009), which was included in Best Scottish Poems 2009 by the Scottish Poetry Library. He lives just outside Glasgow.