The McCash Poetry Prize James McCash, the founder of the McCash Poetry Prize competition, was a graduate of the University of Glasgow. A trained engineer, in the 1970s he won a Glasgow Herald poetry competition which had as its theme the Walter Scott quotation, ‘This is my own, my native land!’ The competition was not specifically for poetry in Scots, but his winning entry used a modern interpretation of classical sixteenth-century Scots to admirable effect. Subsequently Mr McCash gave a generous endowment to Glasgow University for the establishment of an annual competition for poetry in the Scots language. The competition received a new impetus and much enlarged entry when the university and The Herald newspaper agreed to run it jointly in 2003, since the Glasgow-based paper, through its terrestrial and online presence, has been able to publicise it globally.