Liz Lochhead – författare

MACCAIG * MORGAN * LOCHHEADThis book contains a selection of the finest work from three of Scotland's best-known and best-loved poets: Norman MacCaig, Edwin Morgan and Liz Lochhead. They have fascinated and charmed thousands of readers and listeners across Europe and America with the energy, humour and compassion of their vision.MacCaig's memorable celebrations of the physical world and the tragic-comic note of many of his short lyrics contrast strikingly with Morgan's poems on the modern world and city life. Liz Lochhead writes with an alert and sensitive eye on personal relationships and women's experience of them. The book provides an invaluable introduction to modern Scottish poetry and to the poets who are arguably its greatest practitioners.

Five full-cast dramas by the celebrated Scottish writer Liz Lochhead, plus a short storyLiz Lochhead is a widely recognised poet, playwright and performer. She was the Makar, Scotland's national poet, between 2011 and 2016, and was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 2015. The six pieces in this anthology are characterised by their evocative language and focus on different facets of female identity: from schoolgirls, wives and mothers to convention-defying creators and 'cunning women'.Blood and Ice - Summer, 1816. Following their scandalous elopement, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin and her lover Percy Shelley decamp to Lake Geneva. There, they are joined by Lord Byron and his mistress Claire Clairmont, and one night, in a villa by the shore, they challenge each other to write a ghost story. Mary's tale will become the most famous Gothic novel of all time - and the creature at its centre will haunt her for the rest of her life. Starring Gerda Stevenson, Stephen Boxer, Jack Klaff and Stella Gonet.Quelques Fleurs - Liz Lochhead plays lonely, 'born to shop' housewife Verena, with Stuart Hepburn as her oil-rig worker husband in these tragicomic intercut monologues, which paint a portrait of a childless couple trapped in an unhappy marriage.Maleficium - Taking its title from a Latin word meaning 'malevolent sorcery', this chilling play draws on real accounts of witch trials to create voices for three women: Alice, Margery and Jinnet - a farm labourer, a farmer's wife and an elderly wisewoman. When two of them are accused of witchcraft by the other, they are brought to the point of tragedy... Starring Clare Corbett, Siobhan Redmond and Freda Dowie.Fancy You Minding That - Separated by three generations and by the 400 miles from London to Glasgow, a grandmother, mother and daughter recall their very different, very painful memories of the men in their lives. With Phyllis Logan as Valerie, Jennifer Piercey as Ina and Catherine Clarke as Kate.Cuba - Scotland, 1962. With the Cuban Missile Crisis at its height, best friends Barbara and Bernadette believe the world is about to end. They decide to spend their last days making a stand for women and peace - only to find themselves facing a very personal betrayal. Julie Wilson Nimmo, Pauline Lockhart and Liz Lochhead star.'The Cure' - Hoping to impress her handsome house captain, a schoolgirl takes to the athletics track - but the course of true love does not run smoothly. Read by Grace Glover.Text copyright (c) Liz Lochhead 1982 (Blood and Ice), 1986 (Fancy You Minding That), 1991 (Quelque Fleurs), 1994 ('The Cure'), 1998 (Cuba), 2001 (Maleficium)(c) 2025 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd. (P) 2025 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd

Liz Lochhead is one of the leading poets writing in Britain today. Her debut collection, Memo for Spring (1972), was a landmark publication. Writing at a time when the landscape of Scottish poetry was male dominated, hers was a fresh, new voice, tackling subjects that resonated with readers – as it still does. Her poetry paved the way, and inspired, countless new voices including Ali Smith, Kathleen Jamie, Jackie Kay and Carol Ann Duffy.Still writing and performing today, more than fifty years on from her first book of poetry, Liz Lochhead has been awarded the Queen''s Gold Medal for Poetry and was Scotland''s second modern Makar, succeeding Edwin Morgan.

This stunning collection features never before published work along with poems written during her time as Scots Makar, and marks the end of her term as Scotland's Poet Laureate (2011-2016). Whether commissioned works, such as 'Connecting Cultures', written for the Commonwealth Games in 2014 or more personal works, 'Favourite Place', about holidays in the west coast with her late husband, this collection is beautiful, sensitive and brilliant.Throughout her career Liz 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.'

This is an exclusive limited edition with a preface by Liz Lochhead and a new introduction by Ali Smith.Liz Lochhead is one of the leading poets writing in Britain today. This, her debut collection, published in 1972, was a landmark publication. Writing at a time when the landscape of Scottish poetry was male dominated, hers was a new voice, tackling subjects that resonated with readers – as it still does. Her poetry paved the way, and inspired, countless new voices including Ali Smith, Kathleen Jamie, Jackie Kay and Carol Ann Duffy. Still writing and performing today, fifty years on from her first book of poetry, Liz Lochhead has been awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry and was Scotland’s second modern Makar, succeeding Edwin Morgan.Memo for Spring is accessible, vital and always as honest as it is hopeful. Driving through this collection are themes of pain, acceptance, loss and triumph.

Liz Lochhead is one of the country’s leading poets. Her work has paved the way and inspired some of the most inspirational voices writing in Scotland today, including Ali Smith, Kathleen Jamie, Jackie Kay and Carol Ann Duffy.In A Handsel, the first new poems from Scotland’s second modern Makar since 2016’s Fugitive Colours, the poet celebrates people and those small momentous moments that encapsulate so much of her work. It is human relationships that sit at the heart of these poems; each one is a beautifully realised snapshot that explores the poet’s past, her friendships and revisits favourite characters from earlier collections. This landmark publication collects for the first time the poetry of Liz Lochhead.Bringing work back into print, this collected poems publishes all of the poet’s collections, presented in their entirety: Memo for Spring, Islands, The Grimm Sisters, Dreaming Frankenstein, The Colour of Black and White and Fugitive Colours, as well as poems from Bagpipe Muzak and True Confessions.

A modern classic about the bitter rivalry between Mary, Queen of Scots, and her cousin and fellow ruler, Elizabeth I of England - retold by Scotland's most popular playwright.'Once upon a time, there were twa queens on the wan green island, and the wan green island was split inty twa kingdoms. But no equal kingdoms...'Mary and Elizabeth are two women with much in common, but more that sets them apart.Following the death of her husband, the Dauphin of France, the beautiful, and staunchly Catholic Mary Stuart has returned from France to rule Scotland, a country she neither knows nor understands. Ill-prepared to rule in her own right, Mary has failed to learn what her protestant cousin, Elizabeth Tudor, knows only too well - that a queen must rule with her head, not her heart.All too soon the stage is set for a deadly endgame in which there can only be one winner and one queen on the one green island.Liz Lochhead's play Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off is presented in a distinctive cabaret style, with much of the dialogue in the 'Braid Scots' vernacular. It was first performed by the Communicado Theatre Company at the Lyceum Studio Theatre, Edinburgh, in August 1987.This revised version was published alongside the revival by the National Theatre of Scotland, which toured in 2009. Also included is a new introduction by the author.

Renowned poet and dramatist Liz Lochhead tells the story of Frankenstein's creation.Summer 1816. A house party on the shores of Lake Geneva. Eighteen-year-old Mary and her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley, along with Mary's half-sister Claire and the infamous Lord Byron, take part in a challenge to see who can write the most horrifying story. Mary's contribution is to become one of the most celebrated Gothic novels of all time.Using flashbacks and the rich poetic language for which she has become admired, Lochhead weaves a spider's web of connections between Mary's own tragic life and that of her literary monster.Liz Lochhead's play Blood and Ice was first performed at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, as part of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August 1982. It was later revived, in a revised version, by David McVicar at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 1988, and subsequently toured by McVicar's company, Pen Name. It was again revived, in this published version, at the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, in October 2003.As Lochhead writes in the Introduction to this revised version of the play, the myth created by Mary Shelley 'remains potent for our nuclear age, our age of astonishment and unease at the fruits of perhaps-beyond-the-boundaries genetic experimentation'.

A funny, sad and truthful romantic comedy about beating the biological clock.Barbs Marshall is a celebrity hairdresser in Glasgow. She is successful and well off, but she is 39 years old and almost deafened by the ticking of her biological clock. To make matters worse, her mother is a nag, her best friend is holding out on her, and her ex-husband has a new 22-year-old girlfriend. Then she meets a 26-year-old stranger who seems more than ready to oblige. But the complications are by no means over...Liz Lochhead's play Perfect Days was first performed in August 1998 at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, as part of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, winning a Fringe First Award.The production was revived at Hampstead Theatre, London, in January 1999 and then transferred to the Vaudeville Theatre in the West End in June 1999.

A dark and wickedly funny farce about one man's twisted attempts to find a woman he can control completely. Adapted from Molière's classic comedy The School for Wives by Liz Lochhead, 'Scotland's greatest living dramatist' (Scotland on Sunday).He's old, rich and determined to find the perfect wife. She's young, innocent and in debt to him. He'll have her by any means possible...'Wives like your one, those with all the smarts,The ballbreakers, they're the ones to break our hearts...So pick a simple girl - it's not rocket science!'Liz Lochhead's play Educating Agnes was first staged by Theatre Babel at the Citizens Theatre, Glasgow, in 2008.

Two plays from Molière, by 'Scotland's greatest living dramatist' (Scotland on Sunday).Miseryguts is a Scots version of Molière's Le Misanthrope, a bitter comedy about a worldly sophisticate who cannot help telling uncomfortable truths about his fellow men – and women, with one of whom, despite himself, he is deeply and painfully in love. In this Scots version of Molière's play, Liz Lochhead transposes the action of the play into the world of media and politics in 21st-century, devolved Scotland, allowing for a rich seam of contemporary satire.Miseryguts was first performed in March 2002 at the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh.Tartuffe is a rollicking Scots version of Molière's comic masterpiece. Lochhead brings out Molière's mix of political satire and black comedy as the religious hypocrite, Tartuffe, worms his way into Orgon's household.Liz Lochhead's version is written in a robust Scots dialect, while retaining the rhyming couplet form of the French original. It was first performed in January 1986 at the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh.

A bittersweet romantic comedy about finding love later in life, from 'Scotland's greatest living dramatist' Scotland on Sunday.Suddenly single and with the dreaded 'Big Five-0' staring her in the face, Susan also has to cope with a father in his second childhood, a daughter in the throes of aggravated adolescence and an ex who, unfortunately, still has the power to wound...Set in the charity shop where Susan is a volunteer, Good Things is a poignant, hilarious play with a lot to say about finding love the second (or third or fourth) time. It was conceived by Lochhead as a loosely thematic sequel to her earlier play Perfect Days (Traverse Theatre, 1998).Liz Lochhead's Good Things was first performed by Borderline Theatre Company, in association with the Byre Theatre, St Andrews and Perth Theatre, at the Tron Theatre, Glasgow in September 2004, prior to an extensive national tour.

During her career Liz 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 has a large and devoted audience and delights audiences where she goes.