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.
Photo of Jackie Kay taken during the annual Edinburgh International Book Festival. She is wearing brown tinted glasses and a dress with small polka-squares that matches her earrings. she has short black hair.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Travel Carol Ann Duffy
In summer 2016 CAD took part in the Shore to Shore Nationwide Poetry Tour with Gillian Clarke , Imtiaz Dharker , and Jackie Kay . Starting at Falmouth in Cornwall, they took in Carlisle...
Textual Production Grace Nichols
GN , along with poets Barbara Burford , Gabriela Pearse , and Jackie Kay , published a poetry collection entitled A Dangerous Knowing: Four Black Women Poets.
Sander, Reinhard, and Bernth Lindfors, editors. Dictionary of Literary Biography 157. Gale Research.
235
Textual Production Ruth Padel
This poem was reprinted in Angel. Other poets to appear in this series, each on a different coloured sheet of paper, were Carol Ann Duffy , Judi Benson , Anne Born , Carole Coates
Textual Production Gillian Clarke
GC has contributed poems to more than half a dozen journals, Welsh, English, and American, and most frequently to Poetry Wales, the New Welsh Review, and Poetry Nation Review (PNR). She has reviewed...
Textual Production Winsome Pinnock
The National Theatre (Cottesloe) put on an arresting play for young people by WP entitled Can You Keep a Secret?, part of the New Connections season of plays for the young.
Launched a couple...
Textual Production Gillian Clarke
GC was one of ten poets gathered by Carol Ann Duffy in spring 2013 to spend two weeks, one in each of ten museums in Cambridge, and to craft a poem relating to the museum...
Textual Production Ali Smith
In August at the Edinburgh International Book Festival , three months before publication, AS stated her concern for the future of the public library system itself. As a narrative thread, she collected personal oral library...
Textual Production Jeanette Winterson
Her contributors included Ali Smith on Beethoven 's Fidelio, Anne Enright on Dvorak 's Rusalka, Jackie Kay on Janacek 's The Makropulos Case, Joanna Trollope on Donizetti 's L'Elisir d'Amore, Kate Atkinson
Textual Production Carol Ann Duffy
Contributors included Gillian Clarke (with In a Cardiff Arcade, 1952), Jackie Kay (with Silver Moon, for London's feminist bookshop, 1982-2001), and Liz Lochhead (for the more general Essentials).
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...
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.
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...

Timeline

1810: Saartjie Baartman, later known as the Hottentot...

Building item

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...

Women writers item

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...

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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...

Women writers item

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...

Writing climate item

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...

Writing climate item

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,...

Building item

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 .

Texts

Burford, Barbara et al. A Dangerous Knowing: Four Black Women Poets. Sheba Feminist Publishers, 1984.
Kay, Jackie. “A return to grass roots”. The Guardian, pp. Review 4 - 5.
Kay, Jackie. “Afterword to Chiaroscuro”. Lesbian Plays, edited by Jill Davis, Methuen, 1987, pp. 82-3.
Kay, Jackie. Bessie Smith. Absolute, 1997.
Kay, Jackie. “Boke”. Mslexia, No. 79, pp. 46-7.
Kay, Jackie. “Chiaroscuro”. Lesbian Plays, edited by Jill Davis, Methuen, 1987, pp. 57-81.
Kay, Jackie et al. Christian Sanderson: A Poem. Editor Rae, Simon, Clarion, 1996.
Kay, Jackie. Fiere. Pan Macmillan Picador, 2011.
Kay, Jackie. Life Mask. Bloodaxe Books, 2005.
Kay, Jackie. “My other dad is an African prince”. The Observer, pp. New Review 10 - 13.
Kay, Jackie. “New Writing. Women’s Short Story Competition 2011”. Mslexia, No. 49, pp. 27-8.
Kay, Jackie. Off Colour. Bloodaxe Books, 1998.
Kay, Jackie. Other Lovers. Bloodaxe Books, 1993.
Kay, Jackie. “Poems on war: Jackie Kay is inspired by Siegfried Sassoon”. theguardian.com.
Kay, Jackie. “Poets on tour: reeling after the referendum”. theguardian.com.
Kay, Jackie. Red Dust Road. Pan Macmillan, 2010.
Kay, Jackie. “Sailing on Two Boats: Second Generation Perspectives, 1993”. Ethnic Communities Oral History Project: Hammersmith and Fulham Studies Centre, London: Community History Series 11: 2-6, Ethnic Communities Oral History Project, pp. 2-6.
Kay, Jackie. “Short story endings”. Mslexia, Vol.
20
, pp. 44-5.
Kay, Jackie. That Distance Apart. Turret Books, 1991.
Kay, Jackie. The Adoption Papers. Bloodaxe Books, 1991.
Kay, Jackie, and Sue Williams. The Frog Who Dreamed She Was an Opera Singer. Bloomsbury Children’s Books, 1998.
Kay, Jackie. The Lamplighter. Bloodaxe, 2008.
Kay, Jackie. “Threshold”. Scottish Poetry Library.
Kay, Jackie. Trumpet. Picador, 1998.
Kay, Jackie. “Twice Over”. Gay Sweatshop: Four Plays and a Company, edited by Philip Osment, Methuen Drama, 1989, pp. 121-46.