Poet and playwright Liz Lochhead has been announced as Scotland's national poet on Wednesday. She succeeds Edwin Morgan, who died in August 2010 aged 90 and who held the title of Makar since it's creation in 2004. Lochhead, First Minister Alex Salmond and former first ministers Henry McLeish and Lord McConnell attended a ceremony held in Edinburgh.

Standing down from her previously held role as Glasgow Makar, she will now represent Scottish poetry on a much larger scale.

The 63-year-old was born in Newarthill, near Motherwell, Glasgow and works as a poet, author, playwright, stage performer, translator and broadcaster. Her best-known plays include Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off (1987), Blood and Ice, Britannia Rules acclaimed adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Lochhead also holds ten honorary doctorates from ten Scottish universities and has who has been active in poetry since the early 1970's with the publication of her first poetry collection Memo for Spring in 1972.

Her duties begin immediately, when today she will open the new Robert Burns Museum in Alloway, birthplace of the poet. Her award-winning status has been welcomed throughout the Scottish poetry and literary community.