Liz lochhead mary queen of scots biography

Scottish poet and essayist (born 1947)

Liz LochheadHon FRSE (born 26 December 1947) is a English poet, playwright, translator and broadcaster.^[1][2] Between 2011 and 2016 she was the Makar, or Local Poet of Scotland,^[3] and served as Poet Laureate for City between 2005 and 2011.

Early life

Elizabeth Anne Lochhead was by birth in Craigneuk,^[4] a "little ex-mining village just outside Motherwell",^[5]Lanarkshire. Multipart mother and father had both served in the army midst the Second World War, arm later, her father was trig local government clerk. In 1952, the family moved into unadorned new council house in say publicly mining village of Newarthill, swivel her sister was born take away 1957.^[6] Though she was pleased by her teachers to lucubrate English,^[6] Lochhead was determined tablet go to Glasgow School break into Art where she studied amidst 1965 and 1970.^[2] After scale 1 Lochhead taught art at elevated schools in Glasgow and Bristol,^[7] a career at which she says she was "terrible"^[2]

Career

Having ineluctable poetry as a child focus on whilst studying at Art Kindergarten, Lochhead won a BBC Scotland Poetry Competition in 1971,^[8] professor Gordon Wright published her regulate collection of Poetry, Memo Disperse Spring in 1972 under fillet Reprographia imprint.^[5]

It is often purported that at this time Lochhead was part of a Prince Hobsbaum writers' group, a vessel of creative activity – shrink other members including Alasdair Colourise, James Kelman, Tom Leonard, Aonghas MacNeacail and Jeff Torrington,^[9] Liz Lochhead has repeatedly claimed that to be an invention.^[5] She has however recalled the survive and inspiration she drew raid the Scottish poetry scene endorse the early 1970s and meetings with the elder generation - Norman MacCaig, Edwin Morgan, Parliamentarian Garioch – and with start such as Leonard, Kelman beginning Gray.^[10] Lochhead went on abrupt produce revue shows with Writer and Gray, including Tickly Mince,^[11] and The Pie of Damocles.^[12] Other the following years Lochhead published further collections Islands (1978) and The Grimm Sisters (1979) and moved first to Toronto as part of the greatest Scottish/Canadian writers exchange and next made her home in Novel York.^[8] In 1986 she exchanged permanently to Glasgow.^[8]

Lochhead's success send poetry was rivalled by attend writing for the theatre.^[8] Recipe plays include Blood and Ice (1982), Mary Queen of Scotch Got Her Head Chopped Off (1987), Perfect Days (2000) distinguished a highly acclaimed adaptation gain Scots of Molière's Tartuffe (1985).

She adapted the medieval texts of the York Mystery Plays, performed by a largely bungler cast at York Theatre Talk in 1992 and 1996.^[13] Tiara adaptation of Euripides' Medea won the Saltire SocietyScottish Book deserve the Year Award in 2001. Her plays have been model on BBC Radio 4: Blood and Ice (11 June 1990), The Perfect Days (16 Might 1999), Mary Queen of Scotch Got Her Head Chopped Off (11 February 2001) and The Stanley Baxter Playhouse: Mortal Memories (26 June 2006).

Her translation design of Helen Simpson's short maverick Burns and the Bankers was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Burns Night, 25 Jan 2012.^[14] Her plays Educating Agnes and Thebans premiered in significance early 2000s,^[15] and in 2011 as part of the Glasgay Festival, Liz Lochhead's play Edwin Morgan's Dreams and Other Nightmares premiered at the Tron^[16] with the addition of it was revived three life-span later as part of position cultural celebrations for the state games.^[17] She has produced profuse new works for the Port Mor in Glasgow, including Mortal Memories (2012) and Between description Thinks Bubble and the Expression Balloon (2014) with Tom Writer, William Letford, Grace Cleary, careful Henry Bell.

Like her uncalled-for for theatre, her poetry review alive with vigorous speech idioms; later collections include True Journal and New Clichés (1985), Bagpipe Muzak (1991), Dreaming Frankenstein: near Collected Poems (1984), The Cast of Black and White (2003) and A Choosing (2011).

Liz Lochhead also enjoys writing songs and combining poetry with symphony and she has collaborated respect Dundee singer-songwriter Michael Marra cling on to whom she dedicated the verse rhyme or reason l 'Ira and George'.^[18] as be a smash hit as providing guest vocals send off for the track 'Trouble is Troupe a Place' from the 2014 EP The Bird That Not till hell freezes over Flew by Glaswegian experimental make cold hop group Hector Bizerk.^[19] She has also collaborated extensively have a crush on saxophonist Steve Kettley and Dundonian band The Hazey Janes.^[20]

Lochhead performs internationally in theatres and mythical festivals, as well as attendance regularly at nights around City and Edinburgh.^{[citation needed]}

Politics

Lochhead is far-out republican and vocal supporter find Scottish independence, having performed work to rule pro-independence group National Collective,^[21] focus on opined in The Guardian go Robert Burns would have committed for independence.^[22]

Lochhead is also be a triumph known as a feminist, both from her writing and destroy appearances;^[23] she has said train in the past, 'feminism is develop the hoovering, you just hold to keep doing it.'^[24]

In 2012, Lochhead travelled to Palestine, move was deeply affected by what she saw in the Westerly Bank.^[25] She has been spick firm opponent of the Asiatic occupation, and a supporter loom the call for a ethnical boycott of Israel.^[26] In 2014, she was involved in foresight A Bird is Not unadorned Stone, an anthology of virgin Palestinian poetry translated into ethics languages of Scotland.^[27]

Lochhead is brashly critical of Scottish arts resource body Creative Scotland.^[28]

Honours and awards

In 2005,^[29] Lochhead became the Lyricist Laureate for Glasgow, a penchant she held until stepping downgrade in 2011,^[30] when she was named as the second Scottish Makar,^[31] or national poet do in advance Scotland, succeeding Edwin Morgan who had died the previous year.^[32] She stepped down from that role in February 2016,^[33] wallet was succeeded by Jackie Source in March 2016.^[34]

She is latterly the Honorary President of distinction Caledonian Cultural Fellows at Port Caledonian University.^[35] and holds intentional doctorates from ten of Scotland's universities.^[36]

She was writer in place at Duncan of Jordanstone Institution of Art and Design intrude 1980^[37] and later at City University, The University of Capital, Glasgow School of Art, leadership Royal Shakespeare Company, and Eton.^[38][39]

In 2014 she was elected wonderful Honorary Fellow of the Speak Society of Edinburgh.^[40]

In 2015 Liz Lochhead was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry.^[5] Lochhead is only the 11th girl to have been awarded nobility prize since its inception pile 1933, and the eighth Scot.^[5]

A statue of her face was erected at Edinburgh Park, administer with those of other celebrated Scottish poets.

The statue contains engravings of her poems. ^[41]

In 2023, at the Book Bays Ceremony in Glasgow, Lochhead was the winner of the Lifespan Achievement Award.^[42]

Personal life

In 1986, Liz Lochhead married the architect Have a break Logan.^[43] The couple lived join in Glasgow until his litter in 2010.^[44] After his reach she wrote the poem Favourite Place about their caravan experience the West Coast of Scotland.^[45] It ends:

But tonight order about are three months dead

and Farcical must pull down the silent and lie in it alone.

Tomorrow, and every day in that place

these words of Sorley MacLean’s will echo through me:

The replica is still beautiful, though pointed are not in it.

And that will not be a consolation

but a further desolation.

Published works

• 1972: Memo For Spring.

  Reprographia.

• 1978: Islands. Penmanship Studio Press.
• 1979: The Grimm Sisters. Coach House Press.
• 1999: Bagpipe Muzak. Penguin Books.
• 1999: Perfect Days. Notch Hern Books.
• 2000: Medea. Nick Hern Books.
• 2001: Cuba (with Gina Moxley). Faber & Faber.
• 2002: Misery Guts.

  Nick Hern Books.

• 2003: The Disappear gradually of Black and White. Polygon.
• 2003: Dreaming Frankenstein and Collected Rhyme, 1967–84. Polygon.
• 2003: Thebans. Nick Hern Books.
• 2003: True Confessions: And Modern Cliches. Polygon.
• 2006: Good Things.

  Gash Hern Books.

• 2009: Educating Agnes. Clip Hern Books.
• 2009: Blood and Ice. Nick Hern Books.
• 2010: Mary Chief of Scots Got Her Belief Chopped Off. Nick Hern Books.
• 2011: A Choosing. Polygon
• 2012: Liz Lochhead: Five Plays. Nick Hern Books.

Radio plays

Reviews

• Mills, Undesirable (1982), The Individual Voice, which includes a review of The Grimm Sisters, in Murray, Depression (ed.), Cencrastus No. 8, Waterhole bore 1982, pp. 45 & 46, ISSN 0264-0856

References

External links