Introduction

Jackie Kay is a poet, foremost, but also a novelist, playwright, children’s author, short story writer, biographer and autobiographer. Her writing is notable for its range of genres and modes, but also for its keen interest in voices, in life stories, in identities shaped by nations and border crossings, and in uncovering the deeply, embeddedly political nature of intimate, everyday lives. Today she is a figure of national and international literary importance, serving as Scots Makar (Scotland’s national poet) from 2016 to 2021, in which capacity her poem ‘Fare Well’ was emblazoned by drones across the sky as part of Edinburgh’s Hogmanay celebrations, ‘Welcome Wee One’ was delivered to the homes of all new parents in Scotland’s pioneering baby boxes, and ‘The Long View’ was read – partly in Gaelic, partly in sign language, and partly sung – at the celebrations for the twentieth anniversary of the Scottish Parliament. In the latter poem, Scotland’s Holyrood Parliament is fondly recalled in its infancy – ‘Your wee form emerged between the land and the stone’ on a ‘braw, bricht day’ – and celebrated in its maturity as a modernising force championing a multicultural, confidently egalitarian and internationalist nation, in which ‘Old Scotland is no more./ Gay men kiss at the Parliament’s door.’ It recalls a country that once felt unwelcoming to a young Black lesbian poet, but also defiantly affirms Kay’s rootedness in the land, declaring: ‘Scotland itself is my country’, ‘My country has started to speak my language/ And I am no longer alone’ ( Kay, 2019 ).