Burns anthology launched at Book Festival

THE Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) and the Scottish Poetry Library have launched a new Burns anthology at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.

The anthology of 12 new pieces of writing by contemporary poets and writers – including Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy and Nobel prize winner Seamus Heaney – will show how the work of Burns influences their creativity.

The anthology has been edited by Douglas Gifford, Emeritus Professor of Scottish Literature at the University of Glasgow.

Writing in Gaelic, Scots and English, the poets also comment on Burns's poems and how they chose to address the bard.

The SQA will distribute this new anthology free in class sets to secondary schools, colleges and prisons throughout Scotland.

SQA chairman Graham Houston said: "SQA is delighted to have worked in partnership with the Scottish Poetry Library to support Addressing the Bard, as part of our Homecoming Scotland celebrations."

Scottish Poetry Library director, Dr Robyn Marsack, said: "The poets take Burns's poems as their starting point and move outwards to our tumultuous present circumstance and the everlasting concerns of affection, loss, democracy, and language."