St Margaret's welcomes national poet Kathleen Jamie

Pioneering Deeside arts venue, St Margaret’s Braemar, will play host to Scotland’s Makar Kathleen Jamie just days after Burns Night.

Scotland’s Makar Kathleen Jamie

The lunchtime event at 12.30pm on Sunday, January 29 will see Kathleen Jamie interviewed on stage about her life and work in literature by singer and broadcaster Fiona Kennedy — delving into Jamie’s influences on the road to becoming Makar, penning new works for national occasions such as the opening of the Scottish Parliament and, most recently, following the death of Her Majesty the Queen.

Following the event, a selection of books will be available to purchase, with the author will be available to sign these.

Kathleen Jamie, poet and essayist, was born in 1962. Her work concerns nature, travel and culture, Her non-fiction includes the Findings trilogy (Findings, Sightlines and Surfacing) all regarded as important contributions to the ‘new nature writing’.

Kathleen’s prize-winning poetry collections have been gathered into a recent Selected Poems (Picador 2019). She was raised in Currie, Midlothian and has what Robert Louis Stevenson called ‘a strong Scots accent of the mind’.

Her poems have appeared on the Underground systems of London, New York and Shanghai and, closer to home, one of her poems was chosen by the public to be carved on a huge wooden beam on the national monument at Bannockburn.

Interviewer Fiona Kennedy OBE DL is one of Scotland’s best known singer-songwriters and broadcasters.

Looking forward to the event, she said: “At St Margaret’s Braemar we are extremely proud to be constantly pushing the boundaries when it comes to our programme of events — and 2023 is set to be no exception.

“We are absolutely delighted to welcome Scotland’s Makar, our national poet, to join us for a relaxed lunchtime event later this month, just a few days after Burns Night.

“She follows the likes of Sebastian Faulks, Jackie Kay, Ian Rankin and Liz Lochhead who have headlined our literary programme at St Margaret’s in recent years, and we are certain this will be a very special and thoroughly entertaining event indeed.”

Full details and tickets are available at www.stmargaretsbraemar.org.uk