Lorna J Waite

Lorna J. Waite, PhD (27 August 1964 - 12 August 2023), was a Scottish academic, community activist and poet who, like Robert Burns, also from Ayrshire, wrote in both English and Scots. She had an awareness of social justice from her childhood and wrote poetry about the impact of the closure of heavy industry on communities in the West of Scotland. Waite researched post-industrial folk memory in a Wingate scholarship and as her PhD thesis, and in a children's novel. and participated in a wide range of art events in collaboration with artists and writers and local communities.

Life and works Born Lorna Janet Waite in Kilwinning, and brought up in Kilbirnie in the industrial area of Ayrshire, in the West of Scotland. She attended Garnock Academy, and studied French, German and Latin, as well as the local bard, Robert Burns, whose Scots narrative poem Tam O'Shanter, she recited well at school.

Social justice activism Waite was the first of her family to attend university, studying psychology at Edinburgh University and undertook a MSc with distinction in community education. Her doctoral thesis, at Duncan Jordanstone College of Art was titled 100 Favourite Scottish Football Poems' , edited by Alasdair Findlay, who also included Waite's poem 'The Ravens O’ Thingvellir' in a book of poetry he edited with Tessa Ransford, around the Scottish Independence Referendum (2015). She reviewed the Radical Independence Conference as presenting the alternatives as 'fear and fear of fear'.

Art, poetry and Scottish culture As an art critic, Waite wrote for Variant and collaborated with Richard Demarco, including writing about their cultural visit with 30 artists, writers and teachers to Poland, including a visit to Auschwitz Waite had a strong interest in preserving the natural world, and linked with Alastair McIntosh and Vérène Nicholas at the Centre for Human Ecology. and she often visited the Highlands on holidays and in her last days.

In 2023, she wrote a poem in Scots on the Gaelic dictionary maker, Edward Dwelly, which was translated into Gaelic by Marcas Mac an Tuairnair (editor) and included in Cruinneachadh: A Gathering', a

Gerda Stevenson said of Waite: "Lorna was luminous, powerful, brave yet humble, with a touching vulnerability. A remarkable woman, whose being somehow embodied the cultural strata of this richly diverse small nation we inhabit, and whose work we should all know about." Lorna J. Waite died of cancer at home in Edinburgh on 12 August 2023, and is survived by her husband, Professor Emeritus Murdo Macdonald.

Selected works Cultural retrieval, land use and post-industrial folk memory: a practice-led response to the destruction of Glengarnock Steelworks (doctoral thesis) contribution to ' Football Haiku ' (2002), compiled by Alec Finlay (ed). lecture, To remain worthy of the land: the Earl of Buchan, the Kirkhill Pillar Project and the re-animation of Scottish cultural history', (2004) The Society of Antiquaries Frances and The Blasties: Seven Steel Myths for Children (children's novel) poem in ' 100 Favourite Scottish Football Poems (2007), Alasdair Finlay (ed). Steel Garden Poems (2011). poem,The Ravens O’ Thingvellir' in Nova Scotia:Poems for the Early Days of a Better Nation (2015), Tessa Ransford, Alasdair Findlay (eds). . poem in Cruinneachadh: A Gathering'' (2023), Marcas Mac an Tuairnair (translator, ed.). .