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.

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• New & Uncollected poems (2023)
  • Coming to Poetry: An Ode
  • The Spaces Between
  • Chimney-sweepers
  • Found Poem for the Pollen Season
  • October Equinox
  • Winter Words
  • Gloomy December
  • The Backstory
  • The Dirty Diva – Though Knocking on a Bit These Days – Nevertheless Attempts to Invent a New Dance Craze
  • Don’t Go Down the Basement
  • The Carer’s Song
  • A Rare Treat
  • A Handselling for Alice’s Real Wedding
  • The Word for Marilyn
  • Ashet
  • From Beyond the Grave
  • A Room o My Ain, 1952
• Memo for spring (1972)
  • Revelation
  • Poem for Other Poor Fools
  • How Have I Been Since You Last Saw Me?
  • On Midsummer Common
  • Fragmentary
  • The Visit
  • After a Warrant Sale
  • Phoenix
  • Daft Annie on Our Village Mainstreet
  • Obituary
  • Morning After
  • Inventory
  • Grandfather’s Room
  • For My Grandmother Knitting
  • Poem for My Sister
  • Something I’m Not
  • Poem on a Day Trip
  • Overheard by a Young Waitress
  • Notes on the Inadequacy of a Sketch
  • Letter from New England
  • Getting Back
  • Box Room
  • Song for Coming Home
  • George Square
  • Man on a Bench
  • Carnival
  • Cloakroom
  • The Choosing
  • Homilies from Hospital
  • Object
  • Wedding March
  • Riddle-Me-Re
  • Memo to Myself for Spring
• Islands (1978)
  • Outer
  • Inner
  • Laundrette
  • The Bargain
  • In the Francis Bacon Room at the Tate
• The Grimm sisters (1981)
  • I. The Storyteller poems
    • Storyteller
      • 2. The Father
      • 3. The Mother
    • The Grim Sisters
    • The Furies
      • 1. Harridan
      • 2. Spinster
      • 3. Bawd
    • My Rival’s House
    • Three Twists
      • 1. Rapunzstiltskin
      • 2. Beauty & the
      • 3. After Leaving the Castle
    • Tam Lin’s Lady
    • Six Disenchantments
  • II. The beltane bride
    • The Beltane Bride
    • Song of Solomon
    • Stooge Song
    • Midsummer Night
    • Blueshirt
    • The Hickie
    • The Other Woman
    • Last Supper
  • III. Hags and Maidens
    • Everybody’s Mother
    • The Ariadne Version
    • My Mother’s Suitors
    • Girl’s Song
    • The Cailleach
    • Poppies
    • The Last Hag
• Dreaming frankenstein (1984)
  • What the Pool Said, on Midsummer’s Day
  • An Abortion
  • Dreaming Frankenstein
    • 2. What the Creature Said
    • 3. Smirnoff for Karloff
  • Smuggler
  • Page from a Biography
  • The People’s Poet
  • Construction for a Site: Library on an Old Croquet Lawn, St Andrews
  • Fourth of July Fireworks
  • The Carnival Horses
  • Ontario October Going West
  • Near Qu’Appelle
  • In Alberta
  • Sailing Past Liberty
    • 2. Two Birds
    • 3. My House
    • 4. Inter-City
    • 5. In the Cutting Room
  • Ships
  • Hafiz on Danforth Avenue
  • A Gift
  • Reading the Signs
  • Flitting
  • A Giveaway
  • Heartbreak Hotel
  • China Song
  • Why I Gave You the Chinese Plate
  • Old Notebooks
  • Fin
  • That Summer
  • West Kensington
  • The Empty Song
  • Noises in the Dark
  • A Letter
  • Sundaysong
  • The Legend of the Sword & the Stone
  • Rainbow
  • The Dollhouse Convention
  • In the Dreamschool
    • 2. The Teachers
    • 3. The Prize
  • The Offering
  • Legendary
  • Fetch on the First of January
  • Mirror’s Song
• Poems from True confessions (1985 & 2003)
  • Vymura: The Shade Card Poem
  • The Suzanne Valadon Story
  • The Life of Mrs Riley
  • Favourite Shade
  • Look at Us
  • I Wouldn’t Thank You for a Valentine
  • Men Talk
  • Condensation
  • Bagpipe Muzak, Glasgow 1990
• The Colour of Black & White (2003)
  • I.
    • The Unknown Citizen
    • The Man in the Comic Strip
    • In the Black and White Era
    • Ira and George
    • The Beekeeper
    • The New-married Miner
    • The Baker
  • II.
    • Kidspoem/Bairnsang
    • Little Women
    • The Metal Raw
    • Lanarkshire Girls
    • Your Aunties
    • Clothes
    • Social History
    • After the War
    • Sorting Through
    • 1953
  • III.
    • View of Scotland/Love Poem
    • Neckties
    • A Night In
  • IV.
    • Epithalamium
    • The Bride
    • The Redneck
    • The Bridegroom
  • V.
    • Two poems on characters suggested by Bram Stoker’s Dracula
      • 1. Lucy’s Diary
      • 2. Renfield’s Nurse
  • VI.
    • Five Berlin poems
    • 5th April 1990
    • Aquarium 1
    • Aquarium 2
    • Three Visits
    • Almost-Christmas, the Writers’ House
  • VII.
    • Good Wood
    • Papermaker
    • A Wee Multitude of Questions for George Wylie
    • Warpaint and Womanflesh
    • The Journeyman Paul Cézanne on Mont Sainte Victoire
  • VIII.
    • Year 2K Email Epistle to Carol Ann Duffy
    • Black and White Allsorts
    • Hell for Poets
    • Almost Miss Scotland
    • In the Beginning
    • The Ballad of Mary Shelley’s Creature
    • Lady of Shalott
    • Advice to Old Lovers
    • Sexual Etiquette
    • My Way
• Fugitive colours (2016)
  • I. Love & Grief, Elegies & Promises
    • Favourite Place
    • Persimmons
    • A Handselling, 2006
      • 1. Twenty-One-Year-Old
      • 2. Some Things I Covet in Jura Lodge
      • 3. Cornucopia
      • 4. No Excuse, But Honestly
      • 5. Legacy
    • Lavender’s Blue
    • The Optimistic Sound
    • Wedding Vow: The Simplest, Hardest and the Truest Thing
    • Anniversaries
    • A Cambric Shirt
  • II. The Light comes back
    • In the Mid-Midwinter
    • Autumn with Magpie, Pomegranate
    • Beyond It
    • How to Be the Perfect Romantic Poet
  • III. Ekphrasis, Etcetera
    • Photograph, Art Student, Female, Working Class, 1966
    • Some Old Photographs
    • ‘The Scullery Maid’ & ‘The Cellar Boy’
      • 1. The Scullery Maid Speaks
      • 2. The Cellar Boy Speaks
    • The Art of Willie Rodger
    • A Man Nearly Falling in Love
    • In Alan Davie’s Paintings
    • Three Stanzas for Charles Rennie Mackintosh
    • Labyrinth
    • Email to Alastair Cook
    • The Ballad of Elsie Inglis
    • Gallimaufry
    • Way Back in the Paleolithic
  • IV. Kidspoems and Bairnsangs
    • How I’ll Decorate My Tree
    • Glasgow Nonsense Rhyme, Nursery Rhyme, for Molly
    • Nina’s Song
    • In Gaia’s Poetry
    • The Fruit of the Word
  • V. Makar songs, Occassional and Performance pieces mainly
    • Poets Need Not
    • Connecting Cultures
    • Random
    • Open
    • Spring 2010, and at His Desk by the Window Is Eddie in a Red Shirt
    • When the Poem Went to Prison
    • Listen
    • The Silk Road
    • In Praise of Monsieur Sax
    • Grace
    • Lines for the Centenary of the Scotch Whisky Association
    • From a Mouse
    • The Theatre Maker’s Credo
    • In Number One Dressing Room, A Portrait of the Leading Actress
    • Nick Dowp, Feeling Miscast in a Very English Production, Rehearses Bottom’s Dream
    • Epistle to David
    • Portait of a Gentleman at Sixty
    • Address to a Septuagenarian Gentleman at Home
    • For Myra McFadden on her Sixtieth Birthday
    • Song for a Dirty Diva
    • Another, Later, Song for that Same Dirty Diva
    • In Praise of Old Vinyl
• Index of Titles