St Mungo's Mirrorball Showcase 6

The meeting of two former National Laureates Bill Manhire from New Zealand and Scotland's Liz Lochhead, supported by Sheila Templeton.

Bill Manhire was born in Invercargill in 1946. He was his country's inaugural Poet Laureate and has won the New Zealand Book Award for Poetry four times. He holds a personal chair at the Victoria University of Wellington, where he directs the celebrated creative writing programme and the International Institute of Modern Letters.

Liz Lochhead was born in Motherwell in 1947. Her first book of poetry, Memo for Spring, was published in 1972 and sold 5,000 copies. She has written numerous original plays and many adaptations from Molière, Chekhov, Euripides and Sophocles. Her poetry collections include: Dreaming Frankenstein (Polygon, 1984), True Confessions and New Clichés (Polygon, 1985), Bagpipe Muzak (Penguin, 1991), The Colour of Black & White (Polygon, 2003) and A Choosing (Polygon, 2011). In 2005 Liz became Poet Laureate of Glasgow, and in 2011 she was appointed Scotland’s Makar, succeeding Edwin Morgan. Liz Lochhead was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry (2015). Liz is proud to be Honorary President of the Scottish Poetry Library.

Her stunning new collection Fugitive Colours marked the end of Liz Lochhead’s term as Makar (Poet Laureate, 2011–2016) and features never before published work alongside poems written during her time as Makar.

Sheila Templeton was born in Aberdeen and mostly raised in Aberdeenshire, with a few years in East Africa. She currently lives in Glasgow. She writes in both Scots and English and has twice won the McCash Scots Language poetry competition, in 2007 and 2014, as well as other prizes in that competition. She also won the Robert McLellan poetry competition in 2007. Her work has been published in many anthologies, magazines and newspapers. From 2009 to 2010 she was the Makar for the Federation of Writers, Scotland.

She has three poetry collections published and two further collections are scheduled for publication in 2016, Owersettin, a translation collaboration in English, Gaelic and Scots with two other poets, by Tapsalteerie Press; and Gaitherin, a full collection by Red Squirrel Press.

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