Scotland's Makar reveals '˜anxiety' over Trump era

Scotland's national poet Jackie Kay has spoken of her anxiety at the words and policies of controversial US President Donald Trump.

Scots author and poet Jackie Kay. Picture: Jane Barlow

Ms Kay, Scotland’s Makar, was premiering poems about the work of war poets Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.

Ms Kay was asked after the event about how to achieve a level of awareness among younger people about the legendary war poets who penned stark work from the trenches during World War 1.

She said: “I don’t think that we will ever forget, and when we say we need reminders, we also need to know that we won’t forget and we won’t ever forget and that we will keep passing things.

“And I think the anxiety we have about forgetting is probably some of it because we are living through the age of Trump, and that causes great anxiety, because you begin to wonder which of our values are going to be preserved as a human being.”

She added: “We need to keep telling these stories, and passing them to future generations.

“There is an anxiety that we have that things won’t get passed on, that with someone dying that story will die and won’t get passed on, and that is a really strong anxiety.”

President Trump’s reign, already controversial, has became even more mired in scandal since the weekend’s events when neo-nazis and so-called “Alt-Right” white supremacists converged on Charlottesville, Virgina, where clashes resulted in the death of three people.

The former businessman appeared to absolve some of the protestors, calling them ‘very fine people’ during a charged press conference in New York.