His mother, also of Irish descent, came from Saltcoats and had previously worked at the Nobel dynamite factory in Ardeer.
[1] While there, he encountered poets including Tom McGrath, Alan Spence, Aonghas MacNeacail and Philip Hobsbaum, and also acted as editor of the university magazine.
"[11] His arguably best-known poem,[8] "The Six O'Clock News" from Unrelated Incidents, at one stage was compulsory study for an AQA English Language GCSE qualification in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland.
[12] Access to the Silence (2004) compiles his poetic and poster works from 1984 to 2003, exploring the experimental and the surreal to a greater degree without losing any of his truthfulness or openness.
These are said to be traditions of poetry that have emerged since the First World War that do not see poems as "treasure chests of valuables" that the student may remove one by one and display to the examiner.
Whilst working as Writer in Residence at Renfrew District Libraries in 1990, Leonard compiled Radical Renfrew: Poetry from the French Revolution to the First World War, an anthology of poetry which sought to resurrect the work of long forgotten poets from the West of Scotland[19] and disprove the belief that Scotland at that time was a cultural wasteland,[citation needed], a belief perpetuated by claims such as those of T. S. Eliot, who once claimed that Scotland has no literary culture.
[22] Best known for his epic poem The City of Dreadful Night, Thomson’s life and works are captured by Leonard in a study of poetry, alcoholism and freethinking.
It compiles Leonard's corpus of work from 1982 to 1994,[24] with the collection incorporating political satires, collages, essays, "antidotes, anecdotes and accusations" ranging from explorations of the differences between poetry and prose to scathing attacks on the forces of power that corrupt culture for financial or political gain.
He co-signed a letter to the Glasgow Herald with writers including Liz Lochhead, AL Kennedy and Iain Banks, criticising the inclusion of Israeli dance troupe Batsheva in the 2012 Edinburgh International Festival.