Elspeth Murray, born in 1970, is a poet with a strong record of collaborative work in education, business and the performing arts. In 2006 she will be doing workshops mixing poetry with science in primary schools and leading courses on writing for health professionals. She has been poet in residence with PR and design agencies as well as for Glasgow Fort shopping centre and has written a poetic whisky label for the Scotch Malt Whisky Society.

Her poem ‘Flip Flotsam’ inspired a multi award-winning documentary and also features on the SPL’s CD The Jewelbox. Her work is published in several titles in the pocketbooks series – Without Day, Atoms of Delight, and Football Haiku and her circle poems appear in Turning Towards Living, edited by Alec Finlay and Song of Stone, the Spring 2004 island magazine. As joint editor, she has published the collected wisdom of an Edinburgh International Book Festival audience in A Magic Spell for the Far Journey and children’s nonsense poetry in The Eel’s Eyebrows with Puppet State Press. In 2001 Elspeth produced Oh, I Can’t Wait!, a unique collection of poems “in a startlingly original, un-booklike format” followed by a collectable set of poetry postcards.

The haggis poem below will be a feature of several Burns’ Night performances this year, including one that Elspeth and her husband Richard Medrington will be putting on for the SECC annual Burns dinner at the Caledonian Club in London. She is currently writing the text for Good Reason, a play based on a poem by Anthony Minghella, which tours throughout Scotland in April and May 2006.