Liz Lochhead

Margins is Glasgow’s newest grassroots book and music festival

Doug Johnstone, Ewan Morrison Tom Leonard and Withered Hand

Imagine just starting a festival. Just saying, right there and then ‘there’s a gap in the market, and I’m going to fill it.’ It’s not such a great step for Mark Buckland; when newly graduated from university, he said to himself ‘I’m going to start a…

Gillian Clarke, Liz Lochhead and Mark Doty among Stanza 2013 highlights

St Andrews poetry festival focusses on poetic forms and shared legacy of ancient Britons

The five days of StAnza has delivered its stimulating mix of poetry, masterclasses, workshops and slam with sorties into art, music, and sculpture along the way. Despite, the sudden closure of the Byre theatre which had become the central hub of the…

Ten collaborative music, theatre and film projects from Scotland

Including Speed of Light, Pass the Spoon and Whatever Gets You Through the Night

Pass the Spoon. It sounded like an unlikely dish, with ingredients including off-beat artist David Shrigley (who wrote the libreto), modernist composer David Fennessy and Magnetic North director Nicholas Bone working with the Red Note Ensemble, but when…

StAnza's Poetry Breakfasts streaming online

Those unable to make it to the St Andrews-based poetry festival can watch online

The StAnza Poetry Festival 2013 is currently in full swing, with wordsmiths Robin Roberston, John Hegley and Gillian Clarke joining Scotland's Poet Laureate Liz Lochhead in St Andrews. This weekend the festival, which runs until Sun 10 Mar, will be…

StAnza 2013 to feature appearances by Liz Lochhead, Luke Wright and John Burnside

The poetry festival will also feature art exhibitions, including screenprints by Ian Hamilton Finlay

This year’s StAnza has already had its ups and downs. The recent shock closure of the Byre Theatre in St Andrews (StAnza’s customary nerve centre) almost spelled disaster for the international poetry festival: with the announcement made just weeks…

Creative Scots sign open letter to Creative Scotland

As artists revolt and the Scottish Government steps in, the attacks on Creative Scotland continue

The stormy relationship between artists and Creative Scotland has picked up pace with 100 of Scotland’s leading artists writing an open letter to the agency’s chairman, Sir Sandy Crombie. The letter, from 9 October, laid out the reasons that artists…

Hot 100 2011 - No. 49 to 1

The definitive list of Scottish creative talent

The Hot 100 is the definitive list of Scottish creative talent. From fashion designers to performance artists, everyone who has made a sizeable splash in 2011 has a place in this countdown. It’s for people who’ve created a buzz, but it’s also about…

Tony Cownie's production of Liz Lochhead's Educating Agnes bubbles with wit and charm

Peter Forbes, Mark Prendergast and Nicola Roy star

There’s lots to enjoy in this revival of Liz Lochhead’s translation of Moliere’s L’ecole des femmes, but perhaps the greatest pleasure comes from the wit and dynamism offered by the text itself. A palpable sense of anticipation grips the audience as we…

Aye Write! 2012 - highlights

Seven of the best events at Glasgow literary festival, including William McIlvanney and William Boyd

William McIlvanney The Saltire and Whitbread-winning author from Kilmarnock reflects on a distinguished literary career which kicked off in 1966 with Remedy is None. Was he the man who began the Tartan Noir phenomenon? 9 Mar, 6pm, £8 (£7). Janice…

Liz Lochhead discusses her new play, Edwin Morgan's Dreams – and Other Nightmares

The new production will premiere at this year's Glasgay! festival

It’s a sprightly Liz Lochhead who comes into Edinburgh’s Urban Angel for a breakfast coffee – latte with an extra shot – in the midst of a typically whirlwind calendar of deadlines, poetry readings and confabs with theatre directors. This summer she had…

Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off

Timely revival of Liz Lochhead's seminal allegorical play

Liz Lochhead’s powerful, playful dissection of a key chapter in Scotland’s history may have debuted at the height of the Thatcherite 80s, but the play’s central themes – the pernicious effects of sectarianism, the Scots’ complex relationship with our…

Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off

Lyceum and Dundee Rep co-production of Liz Lochhead's classic

For director Tony Cownie and the cast of the Lyceum and Dundee Rep Ensemble’s new co-production of Liz Lochhead’s 1987 Scots classic, the Edinburgh Festival is over. Already they’ve had Lochhead in to give advice on pronunciations and, in the middle of…

The legacy of Scottish arts institutions ECA and GSA

An examination as degree shows and 2011 Turner Prize approach

When David Shrigley spoke in 2010 about how the arts institutions in Glasgow were crucial to his creative development, he may have been bemoaning the impending threat of arts cuts, but his intervention nonetheless speaks volumes about where art…

Interview - Liz Lochhead on dealing with fame, the Wishaw nightlife and winching

Scotland’s newly appointed Makar answers The List Q&A

First record you ever bought The Rolling Stones’ eponymous first LP (1963, I think). First film you saw that really moved you Doctor Zhivago. Last lie you told Can’t remember. Honestly don’t lie too much. Can’t be bothered to mostly. I’m…

Liz Lochhead announced as Scots Makar, succeeding Edwin Morgan

Poet, author, playwright appointed to role of Scotland's national poet

Poet and playwright Liz Lochhead has been announced as Scotland's national poet on Wednesday. She succeeds Edwin Morgan, who died in August 2010 aged 90 and who held the title of Makar since it's creation in 2004. Lochhead, First Minister Alex Salmond…

The best upcoming events in Scotland in 2011

Highlights of the 2011 cultural calandar from Film, Music, Comedy, Theatre and Visual Art

Huge gigs, inspiring theatre productions, comedy legends and two cute little waving bears – just a few of the things coming up in ‘11 that we can barely contain our excitement about

Diana Athill, Paddy Doyle and Iain Banks set for Wigtown Book Festival

Tucked away on the Galloway coast, pretty little Wigtown is home to one of Scotland's worst kept literary secrets. After a bumper year in 2008, the annual Wigtown Book Festival looks set for its busiest year on record, with more than 170 events over 10…

Home truths

From fish factory worker to TS Eliot Prize-winning poet, Jen Hadfield talks to Kirstin Innes

It’s been a strange old year for poetry. Although the highs of Carol Ann Duffy’s appointment as the first female Poet Laureate and the unpleasantness of Ruth Padel and Derek Walcott’s fight for the Oxford Professor of Poetry position have almost…

The Home Season: Pitlochry Festival Theatre

As the curtain comes down on another packed season of theatre in the Central Belt, and with the Edinburgh Festival and Fringe waiting in the wings, it’s worth casting an eye over the superb series of Scottish plays currently running at Pitlochry…

Spirit of Jura

While various coffee houses of the Scottish capital have taken credit for providing the caffeine-fuelled watershed for JK Rowling’s career, few places have such literary resonance as Jura. The iconic isle was the isolated spot where George Orwell, fresh…

Aye Write!

Now in its fourth year, Aye Write! 2009 promises to be the biggest and best instalment of the Glasgow-based literary festival yet, and - as the name boldly hints - one which continues to blend an appraisal of the wider written world with a strong spine…

Sex in the 21st century - Alternative Valentine’s

‘Hello, is it me you’re looking for …?’ Some of the most romantic words ever written have come via the medium of song, so why not throw caution to the wind, and go all Sonny and Cher this February. Book you and yours into a recording studio for an hour…

Educating Agnes

NEW TRANSLATION Citizens’ Theatre, Glasgow, run ended; Perth Theatre until Fri 9 May When Molière’s L’école des femmes was translated as Let Wives Tak Tent by Robert Kemp in 1948, it set in motion a half-century tradition of Scottish reworkings of…

Alasdair Gray

Sometimes it’s more fun to ignore the explanatory gallery text and have a good look at the work. This seems an obvious enough way of dealing with art objects, but usually makes for lazy viewing and reviewing on the part of the critic. But it is…

Educating Agnes

CLASSIC Citizens’ Theatre, Glasgow, Wed 23 Apr–Sat 3 May Take a step back and it’s easy enough to see the vanity and self deception of those around you. A second step back might well reveal them in yourself. It’s this semi-conscious awareness that…