Prize-winning Scottish poet and author Michael Pedersen has been endorsed as the new Edinburgh Makar.
A report to the City of Edinburgh Council’s Culture and Communities Committee today recommended Michael as the next writer to be inaugurated as the seventh Edinburgh Makar.
Michael will take over the honorary role from Hannah Lavery later this year at a special reception hosted by the Lord Provost at the City Chambers.
Born and raised in the Capital, Michael is a prize-winning Scottish poet and author, and the Writer in Residence at Edinburgh University. His poetic prose debut, Boy Friends, was published by Faber & Faber in 2022. It was a Sunday Times Critics Choice and shortlisted for Best Non-Fiction at Scotland's National Book Awards.
Michael has also been shortlisted for the Forward Prizes for Poetry and won a Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship. Having co-founded the literary production house Neu! Reekie!, his work has been praised by many writers and performers including Stephen Fry, Sara Pascoe, Nicola Sturgeon, Irvine Welsh, Jackie Kay, Alan Cumming and Kae Tempest.
Culture and Communities Convener, Cllr Val Walker said:
I would like to begin by thanking Hannah Lavery as our outgoing Edinburgh Makar for her generous contribution to the cultural life of Edinburgh residents. Hannah has been an enthusiastic and hardworking advocate for poetry and the written word, engaging with a diverse range of people in many different settings including community writing groups, cultural organisations, theatres and festivals, contemporary poets and dramatists and the Council’s Museums and Galleries team. I wish her all the very best for her future endeavours.
At the same time, I’m very much looking forward to welcoming Michael Pedersen into the role. Michael was a pupil at Portobello High School and is currently Writer in Residence at The University of Edinburgh. His work is honest, fearless and witty with a strong focus on mental health and friendship. I am looking forward to seeing Michael engage with our younger community members and to hearing his perspective on Edinburgh 900, as we celebrate 900 years of the city’s history over the next twelve months.
The Seventh Edinburgh Makar, Michael Pedersen:
Finding myself as Edinburgh’s new Makar is a thrill supreme! I’m brio filled and beaming from it. From Parson’s Green Primary to Portobello High School, from years of running literary events with Neu! Reekie! to finding myself as the current Writer in Residence at Edinburgh Uni, I’ve been married to poetry throughout. I’ve published three collections over a ten-year period and feel like I’m only getting started. Edinburgh is one of the world’s foremost poetry cities, and I’m elated and electrified to be setting off fireworks (hopefully conceptually and literally) for both these bastions of beauty. I told my Granny first, then my Ma, the rest will follow. Long live love and poetry and Edina.
The Edinburgh Makar is a civic post instituted in 2002 by the City of Edinburgh Council. The writer is selected and nominated by representatives of the Scottish Poetry Library, Scottish PEN, The Saltire Society, Edinburgh City of Literature Trust and the Council.