Performing alongside our poet-in-residence John Rice and Glasgow's poet laureate Liz Lochhead this Sunday (25 January) will be fellow professional bard Stewart Conn.

The trio will give a free live show called Poets Centre Stage at Alloway Village Hall from 2pm on Burns Day as part of Homecoming Scotland 2009 events.

The village is the birthplace of Rabbie Burns, and the Village Hall is just metres from the very cottage where Burns was born 250 years ago.

Here, Stewart Conn explains why he decided to get involved, and why he's excited to be heading to Burns country this weekend.

"I grew up in Ayrshire, in Kilmarnock, and my father's relatives were farmers on the slopes of Craigie Hill. Therefore a lot of my early poems have a farm setting, just like many of Burns's.

"During Poets Centre Stage I will also touch on my memories of reading Burns's poem To a Mouse as a boy at school Burns suppers.

"This Sunday will see a return by me to Ayrshire in the present, with some poems about Ayrshire in the past, and audience members should get a flavour of my roots there."

Reflecting on his last visit to the historic village of Alloway, Stewart added: "I was at Burns cottage in 1996 and still have a volume of his collected letters which I bought there.

"This weekend will be my first visit since then and I couldn't be more happy or excited to be reading poetry in Alloway on the 250th anniversary of Burns's birth. It will be magical."

Here is one of the poems Stewart will read during Poets Centre Stage:

Ayrshire Farm

The sun drills the shire through and through
till the farm is a furnace, the yard
a quivering wickerwork of flame. Pitchforks
rise and fall, bales are fiery ingots.
Straws sputter like squibs. Stones
explode. From the byre, smack on time,
old Martha comes clattering out
with buttered bannocks and milk in a pail.

Todd, his face ablaze, swims back
in what shadow there is. Hugh and John
stretch out among sheaves. Hens squabble
for crusts; a dog flicks its tail
at a cleg; blueflies bunch like grapes.
Still the sun beats down, a hammer
on tin. And high overhead vapour-trails
drift seaward, out past Ailsa Craig.

Stewart Conn