From album cover to award-winning writer and poet
SHE has been on a famous album sleeve, published short stories and poems – and has now been named one of the up-and-coming writers to watch in Scotland.
Glasgow-based poet and writer Ciara MacLaverty is one of 10 recipients of the Scottish Book Trust New Writers Awards, and the winner of a £2,000 prize. She said the win allow her to concentrate solely on writing poetry for the first time.
Ms MacLaverty has writing in her genes – her father is the noted novelist Bernard MacLaverty – but, unlike her father, she has a love of writing verse.
The Glasgow University employee remembers how her first poem, about daffodils, written in primary three at a school in Ireland caught her teacher’s eye.
She now also hopes to use the award work towards publishing a pamphlet or collection, focusing on the intimate, detailed and domestic themes she has explored in the past.
“That poem I wrote in school … it was suddenly a different way of seeing,” she said.
“I didn’t write another one for years and in my twenties, when I had a period of bad health I wrote short stories, but in recent years it has all been poetry.
“Really, this award will put me in the position to work on the poetry, without feeling that I just shouting in the the void. It is a validation.
“I feel my life is pressurised, I work part time as a survey assistant for Glasgow University, and this will allow me to work on the poems for four months or so as a job.
“A big part of this is having the Scottish Book Trust’s support, it is lovely to know they are there to support me.”
Ms MacLaverty has had several short stories published, but credited an evening poetry class run by poet Donny O’Rourke as building her confidence and “getting over the fear of feeling pretentious for writing poetry.”
In 1996, Ms MacLaverty was pictured on the cover of Belle and Sebastian’s If You’re Feeling Sinister, as she is a friend of lead singer and songwriter Stuart Murdoch.
She said her appearance on the red-coloured sleeve is often more remarked upon than her well-known father, writer of books such as Cal and Grace Notes.
She added: “I do have dad’s support, but it is not like I show him every poem, and he is always telling me to write a novel.
“People do still say to me ‘have I seen you before somewhere?’ because of the album more than anything else.”
Ms MacLaverty joins two librarians, a social care worker, a prop maker and a retired English teacher.
They also each won a week-long writer’s retreat.
Other winners include, in the fiction class, Anna Stewart of Dundee, Elisabeth Ingram Wallace of Glasgow, Laura Morgan from north Sutherland, Sally Huband of Shetland and Simon Brown of Edinburgh.
Lydia Harris of Orkney and Molly Vogel of Glasgow are also in the poetry category and Christine Laurenson of Shetland and Helen MacKenzie from Linlithgow are in the children’s and young adult fiction category.
Caitrin Armstrong, head of writer development at the Scottish Book Trust, said: “The New Writers Awards exist to support and nurture the talent and spirit out there in Scotland.
“We’re here to help the writers who might be bowing under the weight of their commitments or who just need some breathing space and encouragement to keep going.”