Liz Lochhead (born December 26, 1947) is a Scottish poet and dramatist, originally from Newarthill in North Lanarkshire. After attending Glasgow School of Art, Lochhead lectured in fine art for eight years before becoming a professional writer. In the early 1970s she joined Philip Hobsbaum's writers' group, a crucible of creative activity - other members were Alasdair Gray, James Kelman and Tom Leonard. Her plays include Blood and Ice, Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off (1987), Perfect Days (2000) and a highly acclaimed adaptation into Scots of Molière's Tartuffe (1985). She adapted the medieval texts of the York Mystery Plays, performed by a largely amateur cast at York Theatre Royal in 1992 and 1996.[1] Her adaptation of Euripides' Medea won the Saltire Society Scottish Book of the Year Award in 2001. She has written for BBC Radio 4: Blood and Ice (11 June 1990), The Perfect Days (16 May 1999), Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off (11 February 2001) and The Stanley Baxter Playhouse: Mortal Memories (26 June 2006). Like her work for theatre, her poetry is alive with vigorous speech idioms; collections include Memo For Spring (1972), True Confessions and New Clichés (1985), Bagpipe Muzak (1991) and Dreaming Frankenstein: and Collected Poems (1984). She has collaborated with Dundee singer-songwriter Michael Marra. In January 2011 she was named as the second Scots Makar, or national poet, succeeding Edwin Morgan who had died the previous year
