Jackie Kay
Standard Name: Kay, Jackie
Birth Name: Jacqueline Margaret Kay
Nickname: Jackie
JK
's poetry, plays, and fiction explore issues of divided, displaced, or mixed identity. Her writings probe and challenge assumptions about race, gender, and sexuality with a mixture of pain and humour. She often draws her inspiration from jazz and blues musicians, particularly Bessie Smith
and Billy Tipton
. JK
has also written a memoir about her search for her birth parents, and several children's books, as well as works for radio drama and performance poetry), opera, and audiocassette.
Connections
Connections Sort descending | Author name | Excerpt |
---|---|---|
Anthologization | Grace Nichols | GN
's poetry has appeared in a number of further anthologies. These include Six Women Poets (1992), edited by Judith Kinsman
, which has an introduction by GN
. Penguin Modern Poets Volume 8 (1996)... |
Anthologization | Liz Lochhead | As well as reading her poetry at festivals and other venues, LL
has selected and edited for Mslexia magazine in early 2004 a number of stories and poems on the theme of ice. Lochhead, Liz. “Ice”. Mslexia, pp. 26 - 7. 26ff |
Dedications | Carol Ann Duffy | CAD
published The World's Wife, a poetry volume (dedicated to May and Jackie
and Ella with love) which had been in prospect since 1994. Blackwell’s Online Bookshop. OCLC WorldCat. |
Family and Intimate relationships | Carol Ann Duffy | CAD
met the Scottish poet Jackie Kay
, with whom she began a long-term relationship. Rees-Jones, Deryn. Carol Ann Duffy. Northcote House, 1999. 17 |
Friends, Associates | Ali Smith | Kasia Boddy
, an academic collaborator with Smith and Wood, features quite prominently in the introduction to Smith's short-story collection The First Person—fittingly, given her academic specialization in the short story. AS
also numbers... |
Intertextuality and Influence | Carol Ann Duffy | Scottish poet Jackie Kay
acknowledges CAD
's help and encouragement in her poetry collection The Adoption Papers, 1991. Rees-Jones, Deryn. Carol Ann Duffy. Northcote House, 1999. 17 |
Literary responses | Ruth Padel | Her election was marred by unpleasantness. Another of the three short-listed candidates, Caribbean poet Derek Walcott
, withdrew from the competition after a letter-writing campaign brought to the attention of potential voters the fact that... |
Literary responses | Ali Smith | Jackie Kay
included Girl Meets Boy in her list of favourite books from 2007. In comparing Smith's version of Iphis and Ianthe with Fleur Adcock
's contribution to Hofmann
and Lasdun
's After Ovid: New... |
Literary responses | Ali Smith | Reviews of Autumn were overwhelmingly positive and generally quite taken with the timeliness of its subject-matter. Joanna Kavenna
called it a beautiful, poignant symphony of memories, dreams and transient realities, while Laura Miller
observed that... |
Performance of text | Carol Ann Duffy | On the Shore to Shore Nationwide Poetry Tour
in summer 2016 with Gillian Clarke
, Imtiaz Dharker
, and Jackie Kay
, plus other poets who joined in their public readings when the tour stopped... |
Residence | Carol Ann Duffy | CAD
moved to Manchester, to live there with Jackie Kay
. “The Knitting Circle”. London South Bank University: Lesbian and Gay Staff Association. |
Textual Features | Ali Smith | Among the novel's most remarkable scenes is the moment of sexual intercourse between Robin and Anthea. In what Jackie Kay
has called the best sex I've read in years, Smith avoids the basic corporeality of... |
Textual Features | Carol Ann Duffy | She selected slightly more carols by women than by men, and recalled that Christina Rossetti
's In the Bleak Midwinter was the result of a commission from Scribner's Monthly in 1872. Her own contribution concerns... |
Textual Features | Ali Smith | This volume, themed around eruptions of conflict between lovers, features short-story selections from Jhumpa Lahiri
, Jackie Kay
, D. H. Lawrence
, Katherine Mansfield
, Dorothy Parker
, and Grace Paley
(as in the... |
Textual Features | Carol Ann Duffy | The sixty poets were each commissioned for a poem marking a particular year. They included Gillian Clarke
(1955: Running Away to the Sea), Ruth Fainlight
(1963: World Events), Liz Lochhead
(1966: Photograph, Art... |
Timeline
1810
Saartjie Baartman
, later known as the Hottentot Venus, sailed from Cape Town in South Africa for London, where she had been led to believe she could make her fortune by exhibiting herself.
About October 1973
The Women's Theatre Group
(still in being as the Sphinx Theatre Company
) was founded in London as a feminist and socialist theatre group; its twin organization the Women's Theatre Company
proved short-lived.
Early 1975
Gay Sweatshop Theatre Company
was founded as a result of plans by a London co-operative community arts resource centre, Inter-Action
, for a season of gay plays to follow their successful women's season.
26 November 1998
Poems written, read, and discussed by Kathleen Jamie
, Jackie Kay
, and two male poets were issued as number one in the audio-cassette series Poetry Quartets.
Before mid-September 2004
Melanie Abrahams
of literary agency Renaissance One
organised a group photo of people of Afro, Caribbean, or Asian origin who make a significant contribution to contemporary British literature.
June 2006
Picador Books
launched a new series, Picador Shots, of short stories issued as free-standing volumes. One of the first was Jackie Kay
's Sonata, about two strangers talking on a train.
20 June to 7 July 2016
British poets Carol Ann Duffy
, Gillian Clarke
, Imtiaz Dharker
, and Jackie Kay
, and musician John Sampson
, went on a Shore to Shore Nationwide Poetry Tour
.