Mr Morgan, who is 80 later this week, is Glasgow's poet laureate and a former professor of English at Glasgow University.

Edwin Morgan, left, with Glasgow Lord Provost Alex Mosson

The Gold Medal was set up by George V in 1933 and previous recipients include Ted Hughes, Philip Larkin, John Betjeman, Siegfried Sassoon and WH Auden.

It is awarded on the recommendation of a committee chaired by the Poet Laureate, Andrew Motion.

He said: "The Queen's Medal for Poetry is a golden opportunity to give honour where it is deserved, to praise a valuable body of work and to mark the fact that one individual's passion for poetry has enriched and inspired the lives of others."

Wide focus

Professor Morgan said he was delighted at the prize which recognises his lifetime's work.

He said his work had not always attracted the limelight across the border.

He said: "It may be that the English critics don't always keep their eye on what's happening in Scotland.

"It's possibly that they quite find me quite difficult to pin me down exactly, to put me in a category.

"I write many different kinds of poems. I write in different styles, so it is not so easy to see me in focus if you like, in the way that you might perhaps see someone like Seamus Heaney."