Raymond Burke

Raymond Burke, joint winner of the Herald Mccash Scots Poetry Competition 2023, has been a professional writer for over 30 years producing plays, screenplays, short stories and poetry. His most recent publication, The Arches Theatre, is an autobiographical account of how, in the 1990s, Raymond helped establish the legendary Glasgow venue in the dilapidated railway arches beneath Central Station. Another recent publication, The Metaphoric Manual explains popular figures of speech and is an excellent resource for writers, teachers and students. Raymond also designed The Metaphoric Table, a wall-chart for students that presents literary devices in logical order. Thousands of these posters now adorn classroom walls around the world. 

After being made redundant from engineering, Raymond became a musician and eventually a professional actor, which started his ongoing career in writing. Since 1990 he has had over fifty plays professionally produced, five books published and has performed and taught all over Europe. 

Raymond has a First Class Honours degree in Literature from Stirling University and a PGDE in English Teaching from Strathclyde University. He lives in East Kilbride and delivers a wide variety of workshops all over Scotland, teaching writing, drama and film-making to teenagers and adults.