An evening with Jackie Kay

Share an inspiring, uplifting and entertaining evening with Jackie Kay, one of the nation’s best-loved poets and former Scottish Makar (National Poet), to celebrate her long-awaited new poetry collection May Day.

A poetry performance will be followed by an in-conversation and an audience Q&A.

The poems in May Day cover several decades of political activism, from her childhood accompanying her parents’ Socialist campaigns, through the feminist, LGBT+ and anti-racist movements of the 80s and 90s, up to the present day, when a global pandemic intersects with the urgency of Black Lives Matter.

Kay brings to life a cast of influential figures, delving beneath the surfaces of received narratives: the Jamaican model Fanny Eaton, muse of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in England; Paul Robeson, Angela Davis and the poet Audre Lorde; and a ‘what-if’ poem concerning Rabbie Burns and a road-not-taken towards the West Indian slave trade. Woven through the collection is a suite of lyric poems concerning the recent losses of Kay’s parents: poems of grief and profound change that are infused with the light of love and celebration.

Jackie Kay was born in Edinburgh. A poet, novelist and writer of short stories, she has enjoyed great acclaim for her work for both adults and children. Her novel, Trumpet, won the Guardian Fiction Prize. She has published three collections of stories with Picador, Why Don’t You Stop Talking, Wish I Was Here and Reality, Reality; three poetry collections, Fiere, Bantam and May Day; and her memoir, Red Dust Road. From 2016-21 she was the third modern Makar, National Poet for Scotland. She lives in Manchester and is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Salford.

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