JACKIE Kay, Scotland's national poet, said she fears that "human values" could be lost in the era of Donald Trump.
Ms Kay revealed her "anxiety" at an event at the Edinburgh International Book Festival where she premiered a series of five poems dedicated to the memory of war poets Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, who met in the capital 100 years ago this week.
She said the opinions and actions of the President of the United States is causing "great anxiety".
The poet was asked how the modern generations could be encouraged to remember the war poets and the values they stood for.
Ms Kay said: "I don't think that we will ever forget, and when we say we need reminders, we also need to know that we won't forget and we won't ever forget and that we will keep passing things.
"And I think the anxiety we have about forgetting is probably some of it because we are living through the age of Trump, and that causes great anxiety, because you begin to wonder which of our values are going to be preserved as a human being."
Ms Kay was also asked what can be done to keep young people interested in Wilfred Owen and his ethos.
She said: "I think it is very important that we keep returning to these poems, because the poems tell us the story.
"Not necessarily the poems from Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon...but from so many different poets that we can turn to.
"But more than that when we have experienced the war or the Second World War through our family lives, we need to keep telling these stories, and passing them to future generations.
"There is an anxiety that we have that things won't get passed on, that with someone dying that story will die and won't get passed on, and that is a really strong anxiety.
"I think now more than ever we must record our stories, and engage children imaginatively with the war, and have them write about the war or write poems about peace, and engage them in different ways."
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