WHEN I tell people I’m from Paisley, I get very different reactions depending on the audience.
For a lot of people, especially abroad, they go straight for the Paisley pattern.
Some think of Paisley’s famous sons and daughters: Paolo Nutini, Mhairi Black, Gerry Butler or Rafferty. And there was that one guy in a bar in Reykjavik who got really excited because I’m from the same town as the avant-garde musician Momus.
PRO-DEMOCRACY PERFORMERS have called on the process of selecting the national Makar to be changed, amid fears that the current selection process is elitist and takes place "behind closed doors".
THE WORK of Glasgow radical Tom Leonard should be celebrated by appointing him the new Makar, according to figures from across the arts world.
Leonard, a celebrated poet and writer, would fill the position of Makar (National Poet of Scotland) recently left by Liz Lochhead.
Leonard, known for his Glaswegian dialect poetry and scepticism of authority, has been an influential literary figure for almost forty years.
TRIBUTES have been pouring in for renowned poet and founder of the Scottish Poetry Library Tessa Ransford, who has died aged 77 after being diagnosed with cancer earlier this year.
Friends of the poet have paid tribute to her life and work, and Scotland's Makar, Liz Lochhead, said people of Scotland were "grateful" for the "lasting legacy" of the Scottish Poetry Library.
EARLIER this year Liz Lochhead's time as Makar - the national poet for Scotland - came to an end. Having succeeded the great Edwin Morgan, Lochhead spent five years as, in the words of Kevin Williamson, "a formidable and enthusiastic champion of poetry".