Scottish poet and playwright Liz Lochhead honoured with lifetime achievement award for services to literature

Writer recognised more than half a century after publishing first poetry collection

Liz Lochhead, the poet and playwright who has championed the Scots language in her work for decades, has been recognised with a lifetime achievement honour at Scotland’s flagship literary awards.

Scotland’s former national poet, who was also known as the Scots Makar, was honoured more than half a century after publishing her first poetry collection.

Lochhead would become one of the best-known writers of her generation, combining her poetry with writing for theatre and television in Scotland, as well as collaborating with Scottish musicians and songwriters. She has been widely credited with paving the way for other female poets and authors like Ali Smith, Kathleen Jamie, Jackie Kay and Carol Ann Duffy.

Poet and playwright Liz Lochhead has been honoured with a lifetime achievement award from the Saltire Society for her contribution to Scottish literature. Picture: Graham Clark

The Saltire Society, the charity that has been organising the literary awards since 1937, instigated the new lifetime achievement honour in 2019, when it was awarded to Alasdair Gray.

Aimed at Scottish writers who have made a lasting impact and are imbedded in Scotland’s literary culture, the award has since gone to the poet Douglas Dunn and the author Alexander McCall Smith.

The Saltire Society invites public nominations for the lifetime achievement award, with the winner chosen by an expert judging panel.

Born in Motherwell, Lanarkshire, in 1947, Ms Lochhead studied at Glasgow School of Art between 1965 and 1970. She won a BBC poetry competition in 1971 and her first poetry collection, Memo for Spring, which was published a year later, won a Scottish Arts Council prize.

Poet and playwright Liz Lochhead. Picture: Alastair Cook

She made her first foray into drama with the revenue Sugar and Spite in 1978, the year she decided to abandon a career teaching art to focus on writing full time.

She was a rare female presence in Glasgow’s thriving literary scene in the 1970s and 1980s, where Gray, James Kelman, Tom McGrath, Alan Spence and Tom Leonard were among Lochhead’s contemporaries.

Her best-known theatre work included Blood and Ice, Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off, Educating Agnes, Miseryguts, Perfect Days and Good Things, as well as adaptations of Medea and Tartuffe. She was appointed Poet Laureate of Glasgow in 2005 then Scots Makar in 2011, when she became the second writer to hold the post after Edwin Morgan. Four years later, Ms Lochhead was announced by Buckingham Palace as the recipient of the Queen's Medal for Poetry in 2015.

Ms Lochhead said: “I am even more surprised than I am honoured at the news I am to receive this award. I will accept it with gratitude of course, although I genuinely don't feel that I deserve it.

Poet and playwright Liz Lochhead, appearing at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.

“But then I’ve been very, very lucky all my writing life, particularly with the timing of when I was first published. Very few women poets were being published then – and there was a hunger for a female voice. I was a novelty.

"I’m very glad there are at least as many women as men writing and being published today.”

The judging panel for the lifetime achievement award said: “Liz Lochhead is the very epitome of an exceptional and versatile writer who has made an outstanding contribution to the Scottish literary ecology.

“She has been a literary trailblazer, inspiring generations of young people who study her work, and writers wishing to emulate her authenticity. Liz has inspired and impacted the careers and creativity of countless contemporary poets around Scotland, and beyond. We owe her a debt of gratitude.”

Other major winners at Scotland’s National Book Awards included Leah Hazard’s Womb: The Inside Story of Where We All Began, won both the best non-fiction book and overall book of the year awards.

Martin MacInnes was honoured for best fiction book for In Ascension, while Victoria MacKenzie was recognised for best debut, with For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy on my Little Pain. Taylor Strickland’s Dastram/Delirium was named best poetry book.