|
Showing 1 - 18 of
18 matches in All Departments
Liz Lochhead is one of the leading poets writing in Britain today.
Her debut collection, Memo for Spring (1972), was a landmark
publication. Writing at a time when the landscape of Scottish
poetry was male dominated, hers was a fresh, new voice, tackling
subjects that resonated with readers – as it still does. Her
poetry paved the way, and inspired, countless new voices including
Ali Smith, Kathleen Jamie, Jackie Kay and Carol Ann Duffy. Still
writing and performing today, more than fifty years on from her
first book of poetry, Liz Lochhead has been awarded the Queen's
Gold Medal for Poetry and was Scotland's second modern Makar,
succeeding Edwin Morgan.Â
This is an exclusive limited edition with a preface by Liz Lochhead
and a new introduction by Ali Smith. Liz Lochhead is one of the
leading poets writing in Britain today. This, her debut collection,
published in 1972, was a landmark publication. Writing at a time
when the landscape of Scottish poetry was male dominated, hers was
a new voice, tackling subjects that resonated with readers - as it
still does. Her poetry paved the way, and inspired, countless new
voices including Ali Smith, Kathleen Jamie, Jackie Kay and Carol
Ann Duffy. Still writing and performing today, fifty years on from
her first book of poetry, Liz Lochhead has been awarded the Queen's
Gold Medal for Poetry and was Scotland's second modern Makar,
succeeding Edwin Morgan. Memo for Spring is accessible, vital and
always as honest as it is hopeful. Driving through this collection
are themes of pain, acceptance, loss and triumph.
*Suitable for reading aloud - a lot of similar anthologies have
weddings as their subject but don't offer really public poems
*Chosen by the Scottish Poetry Library's Assistant Librarian, who
has been answering the constant stream of requests for such poems
for the last ten years, and knows what is valued *Introduction by
one of Scotland's most famous poets *New pieces by well-known poets
specially written for this volume
This stunning collection features never before published work along
with poems written during her time as Scots Makar, and marks the
end of her term as Scotland's Poet Laureate (2011-2016). Whether
commissioned works, such as 'Connecting Cultures', written for the
Commonwealth Games in 2014 or more personal works, 'Favourite
Place', about holidays in the west coast with her late husband,
this collection is beautiful, sensitive and brilliant. Throughout
her career Liz Lochhead has been described variously as a poet,
feminist-playwright, translator and broadcaster but has said that
'when somebody asks me what I do I usually say writer. The most
precious thing to me is to be a poet. If I were a playwright, I'd
like to be a poet in the theatre.'
'She's chucked out like an old coat that nae langer fits him…'
Medea and Jason, clinging together as refugees in Corinth, have
struggled to bring up their beloved offspring in this alien and
unsympathetic society. Now Jason has a plan to better integrate
himself. Unfortunately, this involves abandoning his wife, the
mother of his children… Spurned, destitute, desperate, Medea
exacts her terrible retribution. Liz Lochhead's Scots-inflected
version of Euripides' classic revenge tragedy was first performed
by Theatre Babel in 2000 and won the Saltire Society Scottish Book
of the Year Award. It was revived by the National Theatre of
Scotland as part of the 2022 Edinburgh International Festival, with
Adura Onashile as Medea, directed by Michael Boyd.
A modern classic about the bitter rivalry between Mary, Queen of
Scots, and her cousin and fellow ruler, Elizabeth I of England -
retold by Scotland's most popular playwright. 'Once upon a time,
there were twa queens on the wan green island, and the wan green
island was split inty twa kingdoms. But no equal kingdoms...' Mary
and Elizabeth are two women with much in common, but more that sets
them apart. Following the death of her husband, the Dauphin of
France, the beautiful, and staunchly Catholic Mary Stuart has
returned from France to rule Scotland, a country she neither knows
nor understands. Ill-prepared to rule in her own right, Mary has
failed to learn what her protestant cousin, Elizabeth Tudor, knows
only too well - that a queen must rule with her head, not her
heart. All too soon the stage is set for a deadly endgame in which
there can only be one winner and one queen on the one green island.
Liz Lochhead's play Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off is
presented in a distinctive cabaret style, with much of the dialogue
in the 'Braid Scots' vernacular. It was first performed by the
Communicado Theatre Company at the Lyceum Studio Theatre,
Edinburgh, in August 1987. This revised version was published
alongside the revival by the National Theatre of Scotland, which
toured in 2009. Also included is a new introduction by the author.
Throw a stone in Edinburgh or Glasgow today and you'll hit a poet.
The Scottish spoken word scene has exploded, reaching a level of
popularity last seen in the late 1970s, another era,
coincidentally, when the issue of Scottish self-determination was
in the air. A generation of poets has emerged who have grown up in
an age of change, political and technological, with the internet
providing them not only with new ways of sharing writing - through
their websites, podcasts, Twitter - but also in some cases with a
subject too. The Sound of Youngish Scotland is the first attempt to
capture the spirit of a diverse scene where every poet is their own
movement - from McGuire's hilarious, Beat-inflected deconstructions
of sexuality to MacGillivray's mystic tales of Scottish cowboys,
equal parts MacDiarmid and McCarthy; from William Letford's
building-site tales to Russell Jones' sci-fi poetry. It's a scene
where you are just as liable to encounter ancient gods as you are
video game characters. The Sound of Youngish Scotland features
forty poets, mostly under-forty who have made Scotland their home.
It's a survey, a yearbook, a celebration and a promise of things to
come.
Acclaimed poet and playwright Liz Lochhead's Dracula stays
refreshingly close to Bram Stoker's classic novel. Asked to adapt
it by the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, she immersed herself in
the book. 'After a sleepless night,' she writes in the
Introduction, 'my hair was standing on end, what with the mad
Renfield in his lunatic asylum eating flies and playing John the
Baptist to his coming master... and with Lucy's description of her
"dream" of flying with the red-eyed one above the lighthouse at
Whitby, and Jonathan's "dream" of the three Vampire Brides'
advances upon him and of their being repelled at the last minute by
the furious Dracula... 'This was before I'd even got to the
abducted children or "the loving hand" of Lucy's fiance staking her
through the heart... or that shocking rape-like bit where, with
Mina's newly-wed husband Jonathan asleep in a flushed stupor by her
side, Dracula, at her throat, takes his fill of her life's-blood...
'Still, what really attracted me to the story was Rule One for
becoming a vampire-victim: "First of all you have to invite him
in."' Liz Lochhead's stage adaptation of Dracula was first
performed at the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, in 1985. Ideal
for schools and drama groups, this Dracula is all the more chilling
for the respect it shows for Stoker's original nightmare creation.
The beginning of the new decade brings with it a celebration of one
of Scotland's most cherished poets, Scotland's first modern Makar,
Edwin Morgan. A son of Glasgow, the city's first poet Laureate,
Morgan wrote about the city he loved, the people in it and about
Scotland more widely: the country that he was so passionate about.
To mark the centenary, Polygon, an imprint of Birlinn Limited, is
repatriating Edwin Morgan back to Scotland where he is to be
published again, in association with Carcanet. Morgan was at once a
prolific and eclectic writer, whose themes were as diverse as love
and science fiction. And to celebrate the diversity of such a loved
poet we are publishing five individual, thematically arranged,
selected poems. Each book contains twenty poems, works on: love;
Scotland; people and places; animals; and space. These volumes are
introduced by popular names: Jackie Kay, Liz Lochhead, Ali Smith
and Michael Rosen. This box set is sure to be popular with fans of
his works and collectors.
Winner of an Edinburgh Fringe First Award Barbs Marshall is a
celebrity hairdresser in Glasgow. She is successful and well off,
but she is 39 years old and almost deafened by the ticking of her
biological clock. To make matters worse, her mother is a nag, her
best friend is holding out on her, and her ex-husband has a new
22-year-old girlfriend. Then she meets a 26-year-old stranger who
seems more than ready to oblige. But the complications are by no
means over...
Renowned poet and dramatist Liz Lochhead tells the story of
Frankenstein's creation. Summer 1816. A house party on the shores
of Lake Geneva. Eighteen-year-old Mary and her husband Percy Bysshe
Shelley, along with Mary's half-sister Claire and the infamous Lord
Byron, take part in a challenge to see who can write the most
horrifying story. Mary's contribution is to become one of the most
celebrated Gothic novels of all time. Using flashbacks and the rich
poetic language for which she has become admired, Lochhead weaves a
spider's web of connections between Mary's own tragic life and that
of her literary monster. Liz Lochhead's play Blood and Ice was
first performed at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, as part of the
Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August 1982. It was later revived, in
a revised version, by David McVicar at the Edinburgh Fringe
Festival in 1988, and subsequently toured by McVicar's company, Pen
Name. It was again revived, in this published version, at the Royal
Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, in October 2003. As Lochhead writes in
the Introduction to this revised version of the play, the myth
created by Mary Shelley 'remains potent for our nuclear age, our
age of astonishment and unease at the fruits of
perhaps-beyond-the-boundaries genetic experimentation'.
Introduced by Liz Lochhead, in this selection we journey round
Scotland in 'Canedolia', study its history in 'Picts', home in on
Morgan's own city of Glasgow in 'Glasgow Sonnet v', imagine the
country's future in 'The Coin'.
|
Three Scottish Poets (Paperback, Main)
Edwin Morgan, Norman MacCaig, Liz Lochhead; Introduction by Roderick Watson
|
R359
R285
Discovery Miles 2 850
Save R74 (21%)
|
Ships in 12 - 17 working days
|
MACCAIG * MORGAN * LOCHHEAD This book contains a selection of the
finest work from three of Scotland's best-known and best-loved
poets: Norman MacCaig, Edwin Morgan and Liz Lochhead. They have
fascinated and charmed thousands of readers and listeners across
Europe and America with the energy, humour and compassion of their
vision. MacCaig's memorable celebrations of the physical world and
the tragic-comic note of many of his short lyrics contrast
strikingly with Morgan's poems on the modern world and city life.
Liz Lochhead writes with an alert and sensitive eye on personal
relationships and women's experience of them. The book provides an
invaluable introduction to modern Scottish poetry and to the poets
who are arguably its greatest practitioners.
A dark and wickedly funny farce about one man's twisted attempts to
find a woman he can control completely. Adapted from Moliere's
classic comedy The School for Wives by Liz Lochhead, 'Scotland's
greatest living dramatist' (Scotland on Sunday). He's old, rich and
determined to find the perfect wife. She's young, innocent and in
debt to him. He'll have her by any means possible... 'Wives like
your one, those with all the smarts, The ballbreakers, they're the
ones to break our hearts... So pick a simple girl - it's not rocket
science!' Liz Lochhead's play Educating Agnes was first staged by
Theatre Babel at the Citizens Theatre, Glasgow, in 2008.
A bittersweet romantic comedy about finding love later in life,
from 'Scotland's greatest living dramatist' Scotland on Sunday.
Suddenly single and with the dreaded 'Big Five-0' staring her in
the face, Susan also has to cope with a father in his second
childhood, a daughter in the throes of aggravated adolescence and
an ex who, unfortunately, still has the power to wound... Set in
the charity shop where Susan is a volunteer, Good Things is a
poignant, hilarious play with a lot to say about finding love the
second (or third or fourth) time. It was conceived by Lochhead as a
loosely thematic sequel to her earlier play Perfect Days (Traverse
Theatre, 1998). Liz Lochhead's Good Things was first performed by
Borderline Theatre Company, in association with the Byre Theatre,
St Andrews and Perth Theatre, at the Tron Theatre, Glasgow in
September 2004, prior to an extensive national tour.
|
After Her, Part 1 (Hardcover)
Roger Ballen, Todd Hido, Esther Teichmann, Mayumi Hosokura, Edgar Martins; Text written by …
|
R1,345
Discovery Miles 13 450
|
Ships in 12 - 17 working days
|
Two plays from Moliere, by 'Scotland's greatest living dramatist'
(Scotland on Sunday). Miseryguts is a Scots version of Moliere's Le
Misanthrope, a bitter comedy about a worldly sophisticate who
cannot help telling uncomfortable truths about his fellow men - and
women, with one of whom, despite himself, he is deeply and
painfully in love. In this Scots version of Moliere's play, Liz
Lochhead transposes the action of the play into the world of media
and politics in 21st-century, devolved Scotland, allowing for a
rich seam of contemporary satire. Miseryguts was first performed in
March 2002 at the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh. Tartuffe is a
rollicking Scots version of Moliere's comic masterpiece. Lochhead
brings out Moliere's mix of political satire and black comedy as
the religious hypocrite, Tartuffe, worms his way into Orgon's
household. Liz Lochhead's version is written in a robust Scots
dialect, while retaining the rhyming couplet form of the French
original. It was first performed in January 1986 at the Royal
Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh.
'Why do folk not, ever, catch on to themselves?... Ach, gies you
another interesting nutter to play.' Welcome to Paris at the time
of Louis XIV. Come backstage and meet the King's theatre company -
a troupe of grandes dames, old hams, ingenues and, of course, their
leading man, author of their dramas and cause of all their
troubles... thon man Moliere. Under constant threat of debtors'
prison, in big bother with church and state and - worst of all -
disastrously in love, Moliere writes brilliant, scurrilous comedies
inspired by a desperate life. But telling the truth is a dangerous
business and his latest drama could be the death of him... Liz
Lochhead's play Thon Man Moliere was first performed at the Royal
Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh in 2016, in a production starring Jimmy
Chisholm and Siobhan Redmond. 'I was so moved by this play, which
surprised me, as I had expected a knockabout comedy. Don't get me
wrong, it was funny. But I hadn't expected the tenderness and
emotional complexity. The bond - eternal, exasperated, essential -
between Moliere and Madeleine is the core of the piece, but all of
these characters seem every bit as human and deep and strange and
needy as theatre people always are.' David Greig, Artistic Director
of the Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh
|
|