“The wit and swagger” of this collection by the celebrated Scottish poet “belie a skill as a technician that she shares with the greats” (Scotsman, UK).
This poetry collection by Liz Lochhead features never before published work along with poems written during her time as Scots Makar—Scotland’s national poet. They from commissioned works, such as ‘Connecting Cultures’, written for the Commonwealth Games in 2014 to more personal works, such as ‘Favourite Place’, about holidays in the west coast with her late husband.
Throughout her career, Lochhead has been described variously as a poet, feminist-playwright, translator and broadcaster but has said that ‘when somebody asks me what I do I usually say writer. The most precious thing to me is to be a poet. If I were a playwright, I’d like to be a poet in the theatre.’
Liz Lochhead is the Scottish Makar (Poet Laureate) and is regarded as one of Scotland's best andmost popular poets and dramatists. Her poetry is characterised by a self-conscious effort to mimic the idioms of speech, adopting a range of spoken styles that include the lyrical use of cliche, rap, colloquialism and even advertising language in an effort to raise the profile of the marginalised voices of both Scots and women. Her most famous poetry collections include "Dreaming Frankenstein and Collected Poems" (1984), "True Confessions and New Cliches" (1985) and"Bagpipe Muzak" (1991). She became Makar in 2011 after the death of Edwin Morgan."