Born in Motherwell in 1947 and trained at the Glasgow School of Art, Lochhead published her first collection, Memo for Spring, in 1971, with immediate success. In the predominantly male domain of Scottish poetry, here was a fresh voice, of women speaking to women, speaking for women.

Her poems, prose and drama escape the boundaries of each genre, using the speech she hears around her, poignant and humorous. Questioning assumptions about female and Scottish identity, Lochhead has forged powerful and personal theatrical pieces.

Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off and her translation of Tartuffe are written in Scots, her poems in Scots and English: 'To tell the stories was her work.' These stories, grounded in recognisable lives, are told with tenderness and irony.

Lochhead draws on ballad and fairy-tale to give them a deeper life, often a darker one. She has been a liberating, inspiring literary presence.

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Related links

› www.contemporarywriters.com

› www.kalwriters.com/archive/lochhead.html

An annotated bibliography of Liz Lochhead's writings by Alison Walker and Craig W. McLuckie