THE Scottish Parliament walls will soon feature new quotes by three of the nation’s most renowned poets.
Work by Edinburgh-born Jackie Kay and Currie local Kathleen Jamie will feature alongside a quote from former Glasgow Poet Laureate Liz Lockhead.
The public will have the chance to decide which quote by each former Makar will be included on the wall, which features writers such as Robert Louis Stevenson, Alasdair Gray, Sir Walter Scott, and Hugh MacDiarmid.
To mark the tenth anniversary of the Scottish Parliament in 2009, the public were invited to suggest new quotations, choosing one by Norman MacCaig and one by Mary Brooksbank who was the first woman to have her work represented.
University of Stirling graduate Jackie Kay, who was born in Edinburgh and grew up in Glasgow’s Bishopbriggs, was the Makar or poet laureate of Scotland from 2016 to 2021.
She said: “It’s a huge honour and so extraordinary to be carved into stone.
“It’s so strange to think of your words surviving you – but in a sense, that’s every writer’s dream.”
To commemorate the 20th year of the parliament building at Holyrood, the three former Makars will offer two quotes each, which the public can choose between.
Kay was succeeded by Kathleen Jamie, who was raised in Currie and attended the University of Edinburgh before publishing widely successful poetry collections in the 90s and early 2000s.
Occasionally writing in Scots, she is inspired by the nation’s landscape and culture and held the position of Makar from 2021 until last year.
She added: “The fact that words of mine will be joining those that are already there and adding to this wreathing of poetry around the parliament building, that wall of truth, that wall of integrity that surrounds us here.
“That words of mine, whichever are chosen, will be inscribed there also. That’s okay, I can go out with that.”
The third poet to have her work placed on the historic wall will be Liz Lochhead, previous writer in residence at both Glasgow and Edinburgh universities, whose statue stands in Edinburgh Park alongside Jackie Kay and author Naomi Mitchison.
She says: “I can’t believe it, my words are going to be, not graffiti on a wall, but in stone on the wall of the parliament.
“It is something that has meant a great deal to me in my lifetime, that we have a parliament in Scotland.
“Speaking poetry out loud is very important to me and if someone stands outside the wall of the parliament and mouths these words out loud to themselves, that’s a great thing to feel that I’ve been the innocent originator of these things.”