Jackie Kay
Personal background
Jackie Kay was born in Edinburgh in 1961. Her birth mother was Scottish and her father Nigerian. As a baby she was adopted by Helen and John Kay from Glasgow.
Kay writes about her experience of adoption in her first poetry collection entitled 鈥楾he Adoption Papers鈥. She has since written many other collections of poetry, prose as well as novels and a memoir. Kay herself reads her work very evocatively, bringing her poems to life.
National 5 set texts
The poems selected for study at National 5 come from different periods in Kay鈥檚 career. Each gives an insight into different stages of life and aspects of humanity portrayed with compassion and poignancy.
The poems cover a large time span from the 1990s to the most recent in 2007.
The material ranges from an old woman who is confined to her bed to a young man setting out to explore the world for the first time. There are different voices, tones and styles to encounter in this body of work. Kay confirms the poems can be read in different ways and readers bring their own experiences to the poems.