Mixed Race Studies

Jackie Kay unveiled as the new National Poet, or Makar, of Scotland

The Herald
Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom
2016-03-15

Phil Miller

Poet and author Jackie Kay

The acclaimed writer Jackie Kay is the new National Poet for Scotland.

Ms Kay, who lives in Manchester, who was awarded an MBE for her services to literature in 2006, will succeed Liz Lochhead as the National Poet.

Ms Kay said she spend around half her time in Glasgow, the city where her parents live.

The final selection of Ms Kay was made by First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and former first ministers Alex Salmond, Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale and Henry McLeish.

The First Minister made the announcement at the Scottish Poetry Library in Edinburgh where Ms Kay read one of her own poems, ‘Between the Dee and the Don’.

Ms Kay was born in Edinburgh and raised in Glasgow.

She said she would like to write a poem for the re-opening of the Scottish Parliament later this year, after the Holyrood elections, as well as highlight the plight of refugees.

The announcement was made by Nicola Sturgeon, the First Minister, who said: “Poetry is part of Scotland’s culture and history, it celebrates our language and can evoke strong emotions and memories in all of us…

Read the entire article here.

Maud Sulter

The Herald
Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom
2008-03-21

Artist and writer; Born September 19, 1960; Died February 27, 2008. MAUD Sulter, who has died after a long illness aged 47, was an extraordinarily gifted visual artist, writer, playwright and cultural historian.

She was born in Glasgow, of Scots and Ghanaian descent: in her poem Circa 1930, she pointed out that these two cultures “are not as disparate as they might/at first seem. Clan-based societies/With long memories and global diasporas”. The exploration of the continuing presence of Africa in Europe was one of her principal themes, explored through her art in a variety of media: text, photography, sound and performance.

She was active in feminist communities in London in the early 1980s, and while working with a women’s education group programmed Check It, a groundbreaking two-week show at the Drill Hall showcasing black women’s creativity…

…As well as her academic writing, she published several collections of poetry: As a Blackwoman (1985), which won the Vera Bell Prize for poetry that year; Zabat (1989); and Sekhmet (Dumfries & Galloway Council, 2005); and a play about Jerry Rawlings, Service to Empire (2002). “I often address issues of lost and disputed territories, both psychological and physical,” she wrote in 1994. “The central body of my poetic work is unequivocally the love poetry which is addressed to both genders.” Sekhmet begins with a roll-call of love and gratitude to friends, lovers, family across the world, to medics, and to the ancestors, “who walked beside me when I needed them most and carried me forward when the terrain was too rough but never absolve me of the responsibility for my own life and identity”…

Read the entire obituary here.