Scotland created its first poet laureate yesterday as the Scottish Executive broke with 336 years of tradition and announced the appointment of Edwin Morgan as “The Scots Makar”. At the same time Wales announced plans for a national poet.

Despite claims that Professor Morgan would not undermine Andrew Motion’s role as the official Poet Laureate, the Scottish poet admitted that he would be a “rival” to his English counterpart.

Mr Motion said he welcomed the appointment, “I can’t stop it happening,” he said. “But I feel totally relaxed about it because there’s only one Poet Laureate appointed by the Queen.”

He added that there were now innumerable poet laureates springing up all over the country. “I can now scarcely go to a literary festival without being introduced to someone who is the poet laureate of Ledbury, for example,” he said.

“I see it as a sign that at last people are wanting to demonstrate that they want to have poetry as a part of a cultural map,” he said. He conceded that he had not written about a Scottish or Welsh event since his appointment in 1999.

Professor Morgan, who will hold the unpaid position for three years, spoke yesterday of his admiration for Mr Motion, but said the new title was “a kind of rival post”.

He added: “(Mr Motion’s) post is officially for the UK but essentially it’s an English post. It has never been held by any Welsh, Irish or Scottish poet, so this is a good thing.”

He added that his appointment could provoke a shake-up of the way the Queen and the Prime Minister appointed a national poet. Since Charles II appointed John Dryden as the first Poet Laureate in 1668, poets appointed by the monarch have all been English. They are not paid in cash but are entitled to a “butt”, or 110 gallons of sherry, worth about £5,300.

Jack McConnell, Scotland’s First Minister, announced the new post at a low-key ceremony at Lynedoch nursing home in Glasgow, where Professor Morgan, who is terminally ill with prostate cancer, is being cared for. The three-year honorary position will go by the title “The Scots Makar”, a 15th-century Scottish term for “a maker, especially literary, a poet”. His brief is to “represent poetry in the public consciousness, promote poetic creativity in Scotland and to be an ambassador for Scottish poetry”. A Scottish Executive spokesman said: “There is no suggestion that this is meant to be a slight on anyone else, or that we are doing this because we think Andrew Motion is not doing a job for Scotland.”

He added that it was also intended to recognise the achievements of Professor Morgan, who was previously known as Glasgow’s official poet laureate.

Not to be outdone, Wales announced that it was planning a poet laureate of its own. Peter Finch, chief executive of the Welsh Academi, the Welsh literary promotion agency, said that he was in discussion with Alan Pugh, the Welsh Arts Minister, over a national poet. “Wales is moving towards a Welsh poet laureate,” he said. “We are just sorry Scotland got there first.”

The five poets on an unofficial shortlist for the Welsh post are Grahame Davies, Menna Elfyn, Gillian Clarke, Tony Curtis and Robert Minhinnick. Mr Davies and Ms Elfyn are front-runners because they write in Welsh as well as English.

Mr Finch added that he was very pleased with the work Mr Motion had done to promote poetry in Wales, but that the Principality needed its own poet who could write in both languages. Despite their rivalry, Mr Motion and Professor Morgan are good friends. In Mr Motion’s first year he awarded Professor Morgan the Queen’s Medal for poetry.

He said: “Edwin is an old friend of mine. He has for some years been called the poet laureate of Glasgow, so this is an upgrade for him.”

Mr McConnell praised Professor Morgan and said he had inspired his own interest in poetry at the age of 14. The new post was “partly about the rekindling of Scotland’s national identity and national confidence”, he said.

He added: “Generations of Scots have had their lives enriched through his poetry. His vivid imagination and his incredible use of language have sparked many an image into life.

“Edwin Morgan is an exceptional human being whose talent has touched the lives of thousands of people around the world. He is not just a poet for Scotland, he is a poet for our times.”

Professor Morgan was born into a conventionally Presbyterian middle-class home in Glasgow’s West End in 1920, but his life has been anything but conventional.

He registered as a conscientious objector during the Second World War and joined the Royal Army Medical Corps, serving in the Middle East. At that time he had a girlfriend, but he already knew that he was homosexual, although he did not “come out” publicly until he was 70.

Described as a truly urban poet, Professor Morgan’s intellectual and stylistic virtuosity has been his trademark, moving from sonnets to computer birthday messages and sci-fi verses from Mercury, Saturn and the Moon. His poems have given voices to the voiceless, most famously the Loch Ness monster.

Iain Crichton Smith, another celebrated Scottish poet, said of Professor Morgan’s work: “More than the work of most poets it welcomes the 20th century, with its gadgets, its paradoxes, graffiti, new languages, torn advertisements, unconscious jokes, voyages.” His most recent collection, Love and a Life: 50 poems by Edwin Morgan, written in 2002, when he was undergoing radiotherapy treatment, is a frank testament to a lifetime of passion and the people he has loved.

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