Birthday Blogging

I share my birthday with the Scottish poet Robert Burns

Consider haggis

It might be inexorably linked with Burns Night and considered the epitome of all things Scottish, but is it right that haggis should be held up as Scotland's national dish?

(Reuters Life!) - Scots around the world celebrate the birthday of their national bard on Tuesday with the discovery of an unpublished letter from the poet Robert Burns, a new museum dedicated to him and a new poet laureate.

Ahead of the festivities marking Burns' birth on January 25, 1795, Scotland honored one of its 21st century literary stars by appointing Liz Lochhead as its new Makar, or poet laureate.

Lochhead, 63, a distinguished poet and playwright, succeeds the nation's first Makar, Edwin Morgan, who died last year.

"I accept it on behalf of poetry itself, which is, and always has been, the core of our culture, and in grateful recognition of the truth that poetry...matters deeply to ordinary Scottish people everywhere," Lochhead said.