Scottish Poetry Library Podcast: Recent Episodes
Scottish Poetry Library
For the first time in 75 years the Commonwealth of Nations appointed a Poet Laureate in Selina Tusitala Marsh, the former Poet Laureate of New Zealand, who lives on the NZ island of Waiheke. Selina, who has Pasifika ancestral roots, was made Poet Laureate in 2025 by the Commonwealth Foundation, for the inaugural two year post. Her work as Laureate aims to use poetry to connect the 2.7 billion Commonwealth citizens throughout 56 nation states.
British Council New Zealand & the Pacific and British Council Scotland partnered to support Selina's visit to Scotland for a curated programme of exhibitions, talks and performances produced by the Scottish Poetry Library and the Games Festival's Watershed initiative. While in Scotland Selina recorded a podcast at the Scottish Poetry Library with Scottish Makar, Peter Mackay. She brought her official hand-carved New Zealand Laureate tokotoko stick with her, which accompanies her at all her public events. Selina and Peter's wide-ranging conversation will be catnip for poetry lovers, an absolute joy to listen to, beginning with Selina reading her poem Tusitala, and where her middle name comes from. And yes the tokotoko stick is discussed!
Our regular podcast host Samuel Tongue, after meeting with the Friends of the SPL group, rolls up his sleeves for one of his favourite poets, Selima Hill, examining two poems from her 1997 collection, Violet (Bloodaxe).
Please Can I Have a Man
Why I Left You
What they said about Selima Hill's poetry:
"Every page reveals her unique ability to invert the world and shake it, until it reveals its truth" - Kathleen Jamie & Maurice Riordan (PBS Bulletin)
"She is truly gifted. She invests mundane things with visionary, delirious brilliance." - Graham Swift (Sunday Times)
"Hill is a unique voice in British poetry, handling central subjects with wit, metaphorical beauty, and deep clarity. Her two most characeristic features, the off-the-wall images, and no-holds-barred straight talk, work flawlessly together." " - Ruth Padel & Sean O'Brien (PBS Bulletin)
Lights! Camera! Action! Poetry! Nothing But The Film Poemis a new podcast from the Scottish Poetry Library which will be released into the wild 3 times per year. In this first episode Sam Tongue from SPL meets poetry filmmaker Steve Smart. They talk film poems - or poetry films - just what are they? - and discuss some interesting examples. Poetry films mentioned:
Do not go gentle
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOZjrkfWIlM
La Plage by Alastair Cook
https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/filmpoem-4-la-plage/
Acknowledgements
https://www.arvideriksson.com/acknowledgements
Additional Resources
Poetry Film Workshop web page (wide variety of many poetry film related resources)
https://artsci.co.uk/poetryfilmworkshop/
Charles Olsen’s 2023 essay on ‘How to film a poem’
https://newsroom.co.nz/2023/06/13/how-to-film-a-poem/
Helen Dewberry’s book ‘How to make a Poetry Film (a handbook for poets)’
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/helendewbery/how-to-make-a-poetry-film/
Regular podcast host Samuel Tongue, after a meetup with the Friends of the SPL group, rolls up his sleeves and gets thinking about two poems by Nick Makoha from his much acclaimed and award-listed 2025 masterpiece, The New Carthaginians (Penguin).
What they said about The New Carthaginians:
"A dizzying experience... like Dante entering hell through a rip in the universe, Makoha enters history, accompanied not by Virgil but by a Black Icarus with a microchip for a mouth, and the shade of the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat" - Philip Terry (Guardian)
"A moving collection of entangled histories. Makoha’s poems break, cut, scratch and sample with heightened language to remake and renew the boundaries of myth. Do not sleep on The New Carthaginians - Raymond Antrobus
"In this book, Nick Makoha has found an otherworldly, visionary voice and diction that arrest you from the first page and never let you go." - Jason Allen-Paisant
"Profound, sheer originality... a tantalising jigsaw puzzle of a book" - Tristram Fane-Saunders (Telegraph)
Winner of all three Forward Prizes for poetry, Robin Robertson has had seven collections of poetry published and holds the distinction of writing the only poem ever nominated for the Booker Prize: his epic 2018 work The Long Take.
"Robertson's emotional terrain is difficulty and guilt; often he writes as if his poems have arisen from a pact with the devil. The poems are clear-lined, sometimes hard-edged, and meticulously worked." - Deryn Rees-Jones
"The genius of this Scots poet is for finding the sensually charged moment ... and depicting it in language that is simultaneously spare and ample, and reminiscent of early Heaney or Hughes." - New Yorker
Regular podcast host Samuel Tongue, with the Friends of the SPL group, rolls up his sleeves and gets under the bonnet of two vintage Robin Robertson poems:
Cat, Failing
Swimming In the Woods
Jane Hirshfield has many admirers worldwide. She is as adored by her legion of fans as she is by her fellow poets. The Polish Nobel Prize winning poet, Wisława Szymborska, called her 'a poet very close to my heart'. Another Polish Nobel Laureate, Czesław Miłosz, commented on her 'profound empathy for the suffering of all beings'. Critics too shower praise on her work. Susan Mansfield writing in The Scotsman spoke of her 'poems of wisdom, steeped in a profound understanding of what it is to be human.'
In this episode of Nothing But The Poem, our regular podcast host Samuel Tongue reads and then discusses two wonderful Jane Hirshfield poems, and reports back from the monthly online meetup of the Friends of the SPL group who had a lively discussion around these poems.
Mathematics from Given Sugar, Given Salt (2001)
For What Binds Us from Of Gravity and Angels (1988)
This edition of Nothing But The Poem features two poems by the American poet Jack Gilbert (1925-2012), both of which are included in Gilbert's penultimate collection 'Refusing Heaven'.
Our regular podcast host, Samuel Tongue, after discussing the poems with the Friends of the SPL group (who meet monthly on Zoom), takes his customary deep dive into the stanzas, lines, words and sounds.
“He takes himself away to a place more inward than is safe to go; from that awful silence and tightening, he returns to us poems of savage compassion.” - James Dickey, on Jack Gilbert
"The unique kernel of Gilbert’s poetry is its fearless exploration of the adult heart. It takes a moment to have a fling or write one good line, but sustaining authentic emotional participation, as Gilbert has in his life as a poet, is terrifying and hard, and is practically a lost art." - Sarah Manguso, The Poetry Foundation
The two poems by Jack Gilbert read and discussed on the podcast are:
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Failing and Flying
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How Much of That is Left in Me
Mohammed Moussa, a Palestinian freelance journalist and poet, was born and raised in the Gaza Strip. Growing up in this conflict-ridden region, he faced numerous challenges that shaped his perspective and fueled his passion for storytelling. Despite the hardships, Moussa found solace in literature and poetry, using them as outlets to express his experiences and emotions.
In this podcast, Mohammed Moussa is in conversation with Kevin Williamson. A discussion Kevin described as one of the most moving of his life.
Mohammed Moussa's newest collection The face before you: To write poetry on genocide (Leamington Books) is out in February 2026 and is available to buy from the SPL bookshop here.
In this special extended SPL podcast the poet Valerie Gillies discusses her life in poetry with the SPL's Samuel Tongue and Sukhema (aka Larry Butler) one of the SPL's founding members back in 1984. Their free ranging discussion touches on Poetry and Wellbeing - a motivating force for all three poets - as well as facilitating and structuring workshops, survivors poetry, writing prompts, muses, and some of the projects they've been involved with over the years. Valerie reads a number of her own poems.
Brian Turner is an American poet. He served for seven years in the U.S. Army, completing tours of duty in Bosnia-Herzegovina (1999-2000) before being sent in November 2003 to Iraq. He is the winner of the 2005 Beatrice Hawley Award for his debut, Here, Bullet, a collection of poems about his experience as a soldier during the Iraq War. In this podcast, Turner talks to Jennifer Williams about the poetry that came out of his experiences in the US military, and how poetry can be a line thrown out by the breath or a question planted inside a reader.
Recorded in association with StAnza, Scotland’s International Poetry Festival at StAnza 2014.
Many thanks to James Iremonger (www.jamesiremonger.co.uk) for the podcast music.
In this podcast from July 2013, former SPL Programme Manager Jennifer Williams talks to poet, teacher and editor Antonio Ochoa about living and working with, translating and editing the Uruguayan poet Eduardo Milan. Antonio reads some of Eduardo’s poems as well as his own, in both Spanish and English.
When Andrea Gibson died from cancer in 2025 it was a huge loss to the poetry community worldwide. Her poetry resonated deeply with a wide audience of readers and inspired many of her fellow poets. In an essay/tribute to Andrea on the Poetry Foundation website, Amber Tamblyn wrote:
"Andrea was that rare breed of writer whose deep compassion for the human condition was limitless, potent, and unequivocal. Their poems were diverse and wide-ranging in theme, and they wrote with unvarnished honesty and integrity about American racism, and the privileges of being white, albeit queer..."
In this edition of Nothing But The Poem two of Andrea's poems are featured. Our regular podcast host, Samuel Tongue, after discussing the poems with the Friends of the SPL group who meet monthly on Zoom, takes his customary deep dive.
The two poems by Andrea Gibson read on the podcast, and discussed in depth, are:
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IN THE CHEMO ROOM, I WEAR MITTENS MADE OF ICE SO I DON'T LOSE MY FINGERNAILS. BUT I TOOK A RISK TODAY TO WRITE THIS DOWN. (Read the poem here).
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INSTEAD OF DEPRESSION (Read the poem here).
In 2014 we chatted to the editors of Far Off Places, a young literary magazine, brave in its outlook and willing to seek connections between genres and art forms. Editors Annie Rutherford and Ceris Aston, and contributing poet Niall Foley, talk about submissions, creepy poetry tastes and the lure of merchandise.
Far Off Places was a magazine featuring creative writing and illustration which ran from 2013 to 2018.
In this podcast Jennifer Williams talks to Ilyse Kusnetz (1966—2016) who was visiting Scotland during the StAnza Festival 2014. They talk about when to put the poem in the closet, feminism and politics in poetry and what the Scottish Referendum looks like from across the Atlantic. Before her death in 2016, she taught English and Creative Writing at Valencia College in Orlando, where she lived with her husband, the poet Brian Turner. Ilyse Kusnetz was the winner of the 2014 T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry for her collection Small Hours.
Music by James Iremonger.
This podcast was recorded in association with StAnza, Scotland’s International Poetry Festival.
This podcast was recorded at-and in partnership with-the 2014 StAnza International Poetry Festival. Jennifer Williams talked to Jacob Polley about meaning and lack thereof, about resisting the idea of ‘home’ and about remaining open to possibility when you’re writing and much more.
Jacob Polley is the author of three acclaimed poetry collections, The Brink, Little Gods and, most recently, The Havocs, as well as a Somerset Maugham Award-winning novel, Talk of the Town. Born in Cumbria, he lives in Scotland where he teaches at the University of St Andrews.
Many thanks to James Iremonger for the music in the podcast.
Image: Mai Lin Li.
Performance poet Jem Rolls tells all about the page/stage debate, what it takes to make a living from performing poetry and how rhyme helps you remember.
Thomas A Clark's latest poetry collection - thrums - is an experimental book-length sequence of minimalist verse. The poems reward repeated reading, out loud, or quietly, very slowly, connecting with the words and sounds as they're encountered, experiencing the work as visceral entities in themselves. Clark's short verses are meditations on rurality, landscapes, all living things, and the sensory experience of walking in the natural world.
Our resident podcast host, Sam Tongue, reads and discusses sections of thrums with the Nothing But The Poem group (which is free to anyone who becomes a Friend of the Scottish Poetry Library). In this podcast Sam examines his own thoughts and experiences when connecting with thrums, as well as the opinions and feelings of the group.
thrums by Thomas A Clarke was published by Carcanet (2025).
In this podcast Jennifer Williams talks to Madeleine Campbell, A C Clarke, Christine De Luca and Haris Psarras about poetry translation in Scotland and about the innovative new book Quaich: An Anthology of Translation in Scotland Today.
About the book:
This collection of essays and translations has been compiled to sample and reflect on contemporary Scotland's rich tradition of literary translation. The title is symbolic of how the anthology is to be read: as an offering, an act of kindness, an opportunity to gain insight into other cultures. "Quaich" is a term derived from the Scottish Gaelic word "cuach", and it refers to a traditional two-handled drinking cup, usually made of wood or metal. The quaich has a special place in Scottish history; it was used to offer guests a cup of welcome, and the craft of quaich-making was held in high regard. Translation can sometimes be seen as an unfriendly, invasive, even treacherous, act, but this volume aims to celebrate what is good about literary translation, its power to bring together, rather than to separate. All the texts contained here have a vital connection to Scotland through their authors or translators, languages or themes. They are as diverse as Scotland is today, itself a plurality of languages and peoples.
Image: Quaich by Stephen Downes, under a Creative Commons licence
In this podcast from 2015, Jennifer Williams speaks to Salma, an Indian poet and crusader for women’s rights. They talk about Salma’s strength and bravery in the face of oppression, her commitment to writing and publishing under extremely challenging circumstances and even gasp* the use of the ‘v’ word in contemporary poetry!
Salma was born in a small village in Southern India, and overcame many obstacles to publish her poetry and fiction, now recognised as an important contribution to Tamil writing. Salma came to Scotland as part of the Scottish Poetry Library’s Commonwealth Poets United project.
As part of the cultural programme surrounding the XX Commonwealth Games, Commonwealth Poets United was an international exchange project between six Scottish poets and poets from six Commonwealth nations: Canada, India, Jamaica, New Zealand, Nigeria and South Africa. It established relationships between artists, organisations and communities through a culturally enriching poetry exchange.
The project was supported by Creative Scotland and the British Council, and partnered by BBC Radio Scotland.
Rakkiaiah is an Indian Tamil writer, activist, and politician known by the pen name Salma and the nickname Rajathi, and often referred to as Rajathi Salma*.
Music by James Iremonger.
It has been some time since this podcast was recorded with one of our Commonwealth Poets United visitors, Tolu Ogunlesi, however it feels like just the right time to release it as Tolu speaks so beautifully about how poetry platforms on the internet and new technologies such as email allowed him to become part of a global community of poets. In a time when the world feels fragile and where notions of borders and ownership seem fraught with complexities and power struggle, it is a relief to hear a poet speaking of poetry as a connecting force in his life, as a passport to new landscapes and ideas.
Tolu Ogunlesi is a journalist, poet, fiction-writer and photographer who lives in Lagos, Nigeria. His poetry collection Listen to the Geckos Singing from a Balcony was published in 2004, and his work has been widely published in magazines and anthologies.
Music by James Iremonger.
Odysseys of one sort or another theme this archive edition of the SPL podcast.
Our guide, the poet Alasdair Paterson, takes us on a journey from a wry take on Homer’s Greece through the Liverpool music scene of the 1970s, onwards to post-Soviet Russia, ending in Arcadia. Little wonder Paterson’s collection is called Elsewhere or Thereabouts (Shearsman). Along the way we welcome guests such as the geologist James Hutton and Paterson’s fellow librarian-poet Philip Larkin.
In this podcast guest interviewer and multi-lingual writer and translator Jessica Johannesson Gaitán talks to three bilingual poets about what it means to have more than one mother tongue, feeling guilty or not about writing in big languages, translating one’s own poetry and much more!
Juana Adcock is a poet and translator working in English and Spanish. Ioannis Kalkounos was born in Greece. His first collection of poems, dakryma, was published in 2011 (Athens, Dromon Publications). Agnes Török is a spoken word performer, poetry workshop leader, poetry event organiser and Loud Poet. Jessica Johannesson Gaitán grew up in Sweden and Colombia.
Music by James Iremonger.
Commonwealth Poets United was an international exchange between six Scottish poets and poets from six Commonwealth nations. Toni Stuart is a South African poet named in the Mail and Guardian’s list of 200 Inspiring Young South Africans for her work in co-founding I Am Somebody! – an NGO that uses storytelling and youth development to build integrated communities. Rachel McCrum, originally from Northern Ireland, is a poet and the co-creator of popular spoken word event Rally and Broad (2012-2016).
Both poets visited each other’s countries to draw inspiration from a different culture. When Toni was visiting Scotland, she came into the Scottish Poetry Library with Rachel to talk about their exchange trips, how food united them, and how ‘when you learn a new language, you gain a new soul’.
In August 2014, our then regular podcast host Colin Waters travelled to Faslane, home of the UK’s nuclear deterrent, to talk to poet Gerry Loose. Loose’s collection fault line is a suite of poems inspired by the area, which is his backyard. The great natural beauty contrasts with the ugliness of the military base, inspiring Loose. He guides Colin around the area, sharing its history and his thoughts on the nature poetry’s radical past and present.
This edition of our Nothing But The Poem podcast, hosted as usual by Samuel Tongue, features two poems by Isabelle Baafi, from her 2025 Forward Prize winning debut collection Chaotic Good.
‘In this wise-hearted and deft debut, Baafi gets to the grain of family, inheritance, the grit of growing up and the grappling to become oneself.’ - Rachel Long
‘Isabelle Baafi’s Chaotic Good is a debut of amazing endurance. Its formal pressures create a kind of kaleidoscopic intensity that – with each turn of the chamber – brings newly beautiful and painful shapes into focus. - Will Harris
The two poems discussed in the podcast from Chaotic Good are The Cottage and Burst Me Into Song
Hugo Williams won the 1999 TS Eliot Prize for Billy’s Rain, a collection that captured a certain amount of journalistic interest for its unvarnished depiction of an affair. His collection, I Knew The Bride, was also been nominated for the TS Eliot Prize (as well as the Forward), although it’s subject matter is a little darker, taking in the death of his sister and his own kidney failure, which requires him to spend a significant amount of time every week on dialysis.
We were lucky to spend time with the poet in 2014 when he was up for the Edinburgh International Book Festival. He talks about the influence of popular music on his work, mortality, and what Hardy was doing with Shelley’s heart.
When we think of World War One, our images of the conflict are largely shaped by those of the Western Front or perhaps Gallipoli. It was a truly global conflict, however, and one less remarked upon campaign was that of an ill-fated Anglo-Indian force dispatched to secure oil supplies in what is, today, southern Iraq.
Poet, playwright and songwriter Jenny Lewis’ father fought as part of that force. Her collection Taking Mesopotamia (Carcanet) re-imagines the campaign using her father’s diaries. It also takes in more recent wars in the region as well as the story of Gilgamesh, the ancient Sumerian warrior king, to create a vision of a mankind that repeatedly fails to learn the lessons of war. Lewis took time out from the StAnza poetry festival, where she was appearing in March 2014,to talk to us about war, oil, myth, and the gods.
Photo by Ben Prestney
The latest edition of our Nothing But The Poem podcast, hosted as usual by Samuel Tongue, features two poems by Juana Adcock.
Samuel Tongue comments: "Juana Adcock is a poet who works between languages and registers and themes, ever inventive and risk-taking. In this all too brief intro to two of her poems, I hope you get a sense of all of these elements. And please come and borrow her books from the SPL."
Liz Lochhead said of her first collection Split: "Here is sharp specificity, humour, daring. These poems rock. They sing."
The two poems discussed in the podcast are The Task of the Translator and The Guitar's Lament.
J.L. Williams is a poet fascinated by the possibility of metamorphosis, whether it be witnessed in the natural world or experienced in one’s own life. Her first collection Condition of Fire (Shearsman) was inspired by Ovid, and in her second collection Locust and Marlin (Shearsman) she returns to the theme of change from a fresh perspective. In this 2014 podcast, she talks to us about the nature of stone, the poetry of locusts, and just how spiritual she is.
Photo by Chris Scott.
On Monday 19th November 2018 the poet Tony Harrison took part in a special event at Edinburgh Filmhouse. It was a rare public appearance from harrison which consisted of a conversation with his friend and collaborator Peter Symes, intercut with screeings of Harrison's film poems. These film poems hadn't been seen in public since they were originally screened on BBC and Channel 4 in the 80s and 90s.
The event was organised by the Scottish Poetry Library in partnership with Edinburgh Filmhouse, and curated by David McLachan. The discussion, including the extracts from the film poems was recorded and the audio has been digitised as part of the SPL's extensive archive. The recording quality wasn't great but thanks to the tech we have at out disposal we've managed to clean up the audio, get rid of most background noises. So here for the first time, in podcast format, is the full discussion between Tony Harrison and Peter Symes, with the film poem extracts left in. Enjoy.
2014 marked the bicentenary of the birth of the Russian novelist and poet Mikhail Lermontov. A book, After Lermontov, featured a number of the Russian’s poems translated into English. Many of the poets involved are Scottish because Lermontov traced his ancestry back to Scotland and was a great admirer of Ossian and Sir Walter Scott. This podcast from 2014 looks at After Lermontov in the company of its editor and contributors: Peter France, Robert Crawford, Sasha Dugdale and Alexander Hutchison. We also take a look at the short, turbulent life of the poet, a controversial figure in his day who may have been the victim of a fatal conspiracy at the age of 27.
Image: lino_Lermontov by Andrey under a Creative Commons licence
In 2014 Niall Campbell was described as one of the most promising poets of the younger generation of Scottish writers. Hailing from the island of South Uist in the Western Isles, Campbell is a poet whose work is as lyrical as it is intriguing. After the publication of his debut collection Moontide (Bloodaxe), Campbell took time to talk to the SPL about growing up on an island, his interest in spirituality without God, and the similarities between sculpture and poetry.
On a sun-kissed Autumn's afternoon on the banks of the River Nith two National Poets sat down to chat about Rabbie Burns, Bob Marley, Dante's Inferno, the Gaelic and Jamaican tongues, and much more besides.
In this special edition of the SPL podcast, Scotland's current Makar, Peter Mackay, and the former Poet Laureate of Jamaica, Lorna Goodison, exchanged poems, stories, thoughts and much laughter at Ellisland Farm, once home to Robert Burns and his family, where he famously composed such works as Auld Lang Syne and Tam o' Shanter.
The conversation took place during the poets' four day residency at the Ellisland Farm Burns Museum: who the Scottish Poetry Library partnered with to help bring the two national poets together for this unique collaboration.
What unfolds in this fascinating and generous conversation is an exploration of seemingly disparate cultures and languages, that may be closer than we at first think. We can also report that Peter Mackay and Lorna Goodison got on like the proverbial house on fire!
Sheena Blackhall is a poet, novelist, short story writer, illustrator, traditional storyteller and singer who is the author, as the podcast explores, of over 100 poetry pamphlets. In 2009, she was made Aberdeen’s City Makar. She writes in English, Scots and Doric. As a child and native speaker of Doric she faced the same prejudices and challenges that speakers of minority languages around the world have faced. In this 2015 podcast, Sheena talks about her love of Aberdeen, the worst place she’s ever written a poem and why she’s written so many pamphlets.
If you would prefer to read, rather than listen to, our podcast with Sheena Blackhall, click here to see a transcript of the interview.
In 2014 presenter Ryan Van Winkle talked with poet Caroline Bird after her reading at The Sutton Gallery in Edinburgh. She discussed her collection The Hat-Stand Union and read a couple of her poems. She also talked about the importance of reading for a poet and how an Arvon course she attended when she was 13 persuaded her to transform her reading habits. It obviously worked as she published her first collection at just 15 years of age.
Produced by Colin Fraser.
In November 2012, we staged the first in a new series of My Life in Poetry events at the Scottish Poetry Library. My Life in Poetry invites guests to reflect upon their lives through the lens of their favourite poems.
Award-winning novelist Candia McWilliam did the SPL the great honour of accepting its invitation to take part. For 30 minutes, she discusses-with enviable lucidity-her favourite poems, which includes verse by Shakespeare, George Herbert, Robert Browning and Emily Dickinson.
Fiona Sampson is an award-winning poet whose honours include the Cholmondeley Award and Newdigate Prize, as well as being shortlisted twice for both the T.S Eliot Prize and for the Forward Prize. She is the author of 2010’s Rough Music and (in 2012 when this was recorded) the soon-to-be-published Coleshill. She took time out during her appearance at the Edinburgh International Book Festival to talk to Jennifer Williams ahead of the publication of her latest collection and Poem, the new magazine she has begun.
In this podcast, recorded in August 2013 during the Edinburgh International Book Festival, Glyn Maxwell reads poems from his collection Pluto (Picador) and talks with Jennifer Williams about the breath and blood of poetry, how actors are the best first readers, why Auden is so important to his work and much more.
Photo by David Shankbone.
Our resident podcast host, Samuel Tongue, speaks with the Dundee poet Taylor Dyson about her work and her appointment as the new Dundee and Angus Scots Scriever, based at the National Library of Scotland. The residency aims to support the creation of original writing in Scots, as well as the promotion of the language with communities throughout Scotland.
The conversation touches on the local poetry scene in and around Dundee, language and the distinctive Dundee tongue, the intersection of class and poetry, and Taylor's work in theatre as well as a performance poet. Taylor also reads her poem Tae Dundee: which first featured in her one woman show Ain City.
Judy Brown’s first book, Loudness (Seren, 2011) was shortlisted for the 2011 Forward Felix Dennis prize for best first collection. Jennifer Williams met her in 2012 to discuss how she approaches poetry, using her poem ‘Spontaneous Combustion’ as a way into her work and methods of composition.
Thanks to Andrew Forster and the Wordsworth Trust.
Photo by Chloe Barter.
In this longer-than-usual podcast from 2013, Jennifer Williams talks to Kay Ryan, American poet, educator and 16th United States Poet Laureate. Kay was a 2011 MacArthur Fellow, won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and received the National Humanities Medal from President Barack Obama, among many other awards and accolades.
She was in Edinburgh to read at the Edinburgh International Book Festival as part of a tour including Snape Maltings Concert Hall in Aldeburgh and Dromineer Literature Festival. Before Jennifer and Kay headed out to conquer Arthur’s Seat and to sample Kay’s very first can of Irn-Bru, they read and discussed a number of poems from Kay’s Odd Blocks-Selected and New Poems (Carcanet). They also talked about such varied topics as Buddhism, cycling across America, ‘cool’ poetry, the ticklish delights of rhyme and much more.
Jennifer Williams talks with Griffin Award Winning Canadian poet Ken Babstock about ‘the thingyness of things’, Paul Muldoon, the weather, Canadian garrison mentality’s effect on the work of Canadian writers and much more, including his own extraordinary poems. This interview is from StAnza 2013, and takes place in a tiny attic room at the top of the Town Hall, in the midst of all sorts of weather.
Ken Babstock’s 2011 collection, Methodist Hatchet (Anansi) won The Griffin Prize for Excellence in Poetry and was a finalist for The Trillium Book Award. He lives in Toronto.
Image: Ken Babstock, Toronto by Steve McLaughlin, under a Creative Content licence
In this 2014 podcast Jennifer Williams talks to two Hawthornden Fellows: Lynn Davidson and Alyson Hallett about where they come from, loneliness versus aloneness, and their current and upcoming work.
Lynn Davidson’s fiction and poetry has appeared in journals and her short fiction has been broadcast on national radio. Davidson has received several grants and fellowships to develop her work, including the 2003 Louis Johnson New Writers’ Bursary from Creative New Zealand. She has published collections of poetry, and her novel Ghost Net was released in 2003. Davidson also works as an educator and tutors short fiction and poetry both online and in the classroom.
Alyson Hallett‘s work spans different continents and art forms. She has a poem carved into Milsom Street pavement in Bath, words etched into glass in a library in Bristol, and she runs the international poetry and public art project The Migration Habits of Stones. She currently works as a Fellow with the Royal Literary Fund. Prior to this, she was a Leverhulme-funded poet-in-residence in the University of Exeter’s Geography Department. In 2010, she completed a practice-based PhD in Poetry and Geographical Intimacy. She lives in Falmouth, Cornwall. Suddenly Everything is her second full volume of poetry.
The Lynne Davidson photo is by Murray Wilson. The Alyson Hallett photo is by Paul Wilkinson.
“I feel poets have saved my life. The poets are our companions. They have found words for states all of us have experienced.” So said Marie Howe on a 2012 visit to Scotland, where she was appearing as a guest of the Edinburgh International Book Festival. Howe’s first collection, The Good Thief (1988), was chosen for the National Poetry Series by Margaret Atwood, who praised Howe’s ‘poems of obsession that transcend their own dark roots’. Jennifer Williams interviews Howe about the craft of writing poetry, focussing on her poems ‘The Star Market’ and ‘The Snow Storm’.
Image: Untitled by T.Carrigan, under a Creative Commons licence
In this podcast Jennifer Williams talks to Robert Wrigley about his collection and first book to be published in the UK, The Church of Omnivorous Light: Selected Poems (Bloodaxe). They also touch on narrative in poetry, the infinite capacity of poetry to talk about love and, wild horses on the southern plains of Idaho. Robert was at the SPL in November 2013 for a reading with John Burnside.
The Church of Omnivorous Light: Selected Poems draws on several collections published in the US, including Beautiful Country (2010); Earthly Meditations: New and Selected Poems (2006); Lives of the Animals (2003), winner of the Poets Prize; Reign of Snakes (1999), winner of the Kingsley Tufts Award; and In the Bank of Beautiful Sins (1995), winner of the San Francisco Poetry Center Book Award and finalist for the Lenore Marshall Award from the Academy of American Poets.
In this Nothing But The Poem podcast, our usual host Samuel Tongue, with the SPL Friends Group, take a look at two poems from Mick Imlah.
In a Guardian obituary, Alan Hollinghurst wrote that, when he died, Mick Imlah was mourned as one of the outstanding British poets of his time. He was also a particularly Scottish poet of distinction and his final collection The Lost Leader, according to Robert Crawford, came "as a revelation, showing just how much he had accomplished. Running the gamut of Scottish literature and history, the poems confidently yet often elegiacally re-imagine material from Columban Iona to modern times." (Scotsman obituary, 21 January 2009).
The two poems read, enjoyed and analysed are Iona and London Scottish. Both can be found on the SPL website.
We met up with Sean Borodale at the Edinburgh International Book Festival in August 2012, where he was reading from his debut collection Bee Journal, which was subsequently shortlisted for the 2012 T S Eliot prize and Costa Book Awards.
Here Sean reads poems from Bee Journal, a remarkable account of the two years he kept a bee hive. He likens the way in which he jotted his poems down to documentary film-making rather than to traditional methods of poetry composition. Borodale also talks with Jennifer Williams about his interest in time, bees, Virgil and much more.
Image (copyright) Mark Vessey.
In this podcast, Jennifer Williams talks to Polish poet, essayist, editor and critic Tadeusz Dąbrowski. They are joined by Kasia Kokowska of Interaktywny Salon Piszących w Szkocji, who came along to help with translating.
Taseusz has been the winner of numerous awards, among others, the Kościelski Prize (2009), the Hubert Burda Prize (2008) and, from Tadeusz Różewicz, the Prize of the Foundation for Polish Culture (2006). In 2013, he was the author of six volumes of poetry, and edited the anthology Poza słowa.
Tadeusz has been widely published and translated into 20 languages, and a collection of his poetry in English, Black Square, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, was published by Zephyr Press in 2011. He lives in Gdańsk and says in this interview, ‘All art is something like self-recognition.’
Photo by Harvard Review.
The prize-winning and former Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, Naomi Shihab Nye is the subject of this month’s Nothing But The Poem podcast. Known for poetry that lends a fresh perspective to ordinary events, people, and objects, Nye has said that, for her, “the primary source of poetry has always been local life, random characters met on the streets, our own ancestry sifting down to us through small essential daily tasks.” (Poetryfoundation.org) Our resident podcast host Sam Tongue selected Supple Cord and Blood. Find out what Sam – and the Friends Of The SPL group – took from these poems in this Nothing But The Poem podcast.
In this podcast, Jennifer Williams discusses constructivist poetry and more with award-winning poet, fiction writer, critic and professor Tony Lopez at a rather noisy 2012 Edinburgh International Book Festival. Tony reads from his book Only More So and talks about upcoming projects.
(from Wikipedia): Tony Lopez (born 1950) is an English poet who first began to be published in the 1970s. His writing was at once recognised for its attention to language, and for his ability to compose a coherent book, rather than a number of poems accidentally printed together. He is best known for his book False Memory (The Figures, 1996), first published in the United States and much anthologised.
On 15 February 2013, Jennifer Williams and poet/author Tracey S. Rosenberg had a chat about that dreaded and unavoidable demon that every publishing writer must do battle with: rejection. We hope this podcast will be of interest to all writers who have to deal with inevitable rejection, and especially to young and emerging writers who are starting down the challenging path towards publication.
Music by James Iremonger. Photo by Chris Scott.
The multidimensional Kenyan poet, filmmaker and writer Ngwatilo Mawiyoo is the subject of this month’s Nothing But The Poem podcast.
Keguro Macharia, in The New Inquiry, writes that Ngwatilo’s poetry "draws out my own memories [which] speaks to its generative power: its particularity is generous, opening ways for readers to encounter and inhabit it." Hers is a voice that insists on the personal and political being unified.
Our resident podcast host Sam Tongue selected: Found: Portrait Of Umau’s Early Days, Found: Eulogy For My Father and Night Swim. Find out what Sam – and the Friends Of The SPL group – took from these poems in this Nothing But The Poem podcast.
Who was Eddie Linden (1935-2023)?
A poet, an editor, and a man with an extraordinary range of contacts and friends who ranged from Tom Leonard to Harold Pinter. Linden was a person who achieved much considering his incredibly tough childhood. Born illegitimate, he was passed from pillar to post as a boy in Glasgow. Later, he suffered much anguish when his Roman Catholicism conflicted with his sexuality. In the 1960s, after moving to London, he began an extraordinary literary magazine Aquarius, which-over 30 years-became a veritable Who’s Who of contemporary poets.
In this 2013 podcast, he discussed his life and verse from his home in Maida Vale.
Image by Mazengarb
Born in Budapest and brought up in England after coming to the UK as a refugee in 1956, George Szirtes has remained one of the country’s most interesting poets since his first prize-winning collection, The Slant Door, was published in 1979. That wasn’t the last trophy he was to take home; he won the T S Eliot Prize for his 2005 collection Reel.
The SPL caught up with Szirtes at the StAnza poetry festival in March, 2013. In town to read from his collection Bad Machine (Bloodaxe), he spoke to Colin Waters about memory, photography, Twitter and 1960s garage pop.
Photo by Caroline Forbes.
Good poetry gets beneath the skin of readers. This episode features a poet who, for a short period, literally got ‘under the skin’.
In the autumn of 2008, poet and essayist Marianne Boruch was awarded a ‘Faculty Fellowship in a Second Discipline’, permitting her to study something new for a semester. Her choice? Anatomy classes. ‘Cadaver, Speak’, a long poem, was her response to her time dissecting bodies, and in this 2013 podcast, she talks about her experiences in an interview conducted in the Edinburgh University Medical School’s historical lecture theatre.
In 1972, Liz Lochhead published her debut collection, Memo For Spring, a landmark in Scottish literature. In an extended interview with Colin Waters, the then Scots Makar discusses what the early 1970s poetry scene she emerged into was like, one in which women poets were few and far between. She recalls early meetings with the elder generation – Norman MacCaig, Edwin Morgan, Robert Garioch – and with contemporaries such as Tom Leonard, James Kelman and Alasdair Gray. She also speaks about life during the era of the three-day week and compares it with an economically troubled present-day that, in some respects, mirrors 1972. And she reads several poems from Memo For Spring.
Photo by Norman McBeath.
In 2013, Edinburgh-born Ross Sutherland was described as one of the most interesting young poets working in Britain. Inspired by cut-ups and technology, his collection Emergency Window (Penned in the Margins) featured a sequence of classic poems fed through Google Translate many times until they become something else entirely. He wrote a sequence of sonnets about the characters in the video game Street Fighter 2, and yet his work is never gimmicky or unemotional.
Ross talked to the SPL about the hairstyles of millionaires, how John Cooper Clarke inspired him, and about taking part in one of the more unusual poetry readings of the time.
Photo by James Lyndsay.
In this episode of Nothing But The Poem podcast, our usual host Samuel Tongue goes in deep on two weel kent poems by Norman MacCaig, one of Scotland's most loved and influential poets.
Norman MacCaig famously, and self-deprecatingly, described writing his poems as "one fag" poems or "two fag" poems. Nothing could be further from the truth for readers, who can spend hours returning again and again to his best work. The two poems featured here are generally considered among Maccaig's finest.
Rich in observation with similes to die for Aunt Julia is often rated as MacCaig's most popular poem, with it's famous opening lines:
Aunt Julia spoke Gaelic
very loud and very fast.
Stars and Planets is the other poem featured in this podcast. A short cosmic stunner of a poem with more of MacCaig's surprising similes and deft observations. Samuel Tongue and the Friends of the SPL group had fun discussing these two poems as they looked beneath the bonnets of both.
Iain Sinclair is one of the UK’s greatest living writers. Famed for his novels, such as Downriver, and documentary prose, of which London Orbital is perhaps the best known, Sinclair began his career self-publishing his own poetry on his Albion Village Press in the 1970s. 2013 saw the publication of three books – two poetry collections and a longer book on his relationship with the Beats, American Smoke.
Colin Waters travelled to Sinclair’s home in Hackney, where he asked Sinclair about his Scottish roots, John Clare and his lost 1970s collection Red Eye, which was being published by Test Centre.
Picture of Iain Sinclair by Luca Del Baldo.
We have all heard the arguments in favour of Scotland’s best poet or favourite poem, but what about its greatest collection?
In this recording from 2012, the SPL invited two guests – James Robertson, poet, publisher and author of the novels And the Land Lay Still and The Testament of Gideon Mack, and Dorothy McMillan, editor of Modern Scottish Women Poets and former Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Glasgow – to join then SPL director Robyn Marsack to discuss what might be Scotland’s best collections of poetry in an extended podcast.
Image: Seaweed by Lucy Burnett
Anita Govan has been involved in performance poetry for many years, long before it became as widespread as it is today, both as a performer and an organiser of events. Sceptical of the competitive aspects of slams, she still takes part in them and organises them for young people as she recognises their part in giving people a forum in which to share their experiences. In this podcast Jennifer Williams talks to Govan about her time as the Stirling Makar, coping with dyslexia, and standing up for young people.
The Written World was the Scottish Poetry Library’s London 2012 project. To mark the Olympics, we launched a scheme to find a poem for each of the 204 countries taking part, which were then broadcast on BBC Radio. In October 2012, with the project over, we took the chance to look back on The Written World with its project manager Sarah Stewart.
We also talked to Richard Price, whose poem ‘Hedge Sparrows’ was chosen to represent Team GB, and William Letford, who the SPL asked to write a poem marking the end of the tournament. A trio of poets is rounded out by Mariama Khan, a poet representing Gambia at Poetry Parnassus, another international event linked to the Olympics.
Aonghas MacNeacail (1942-2022) was a leading voice in Gaelic poetry for decades, as poet, and as a regular literary commentator in print and on Gaelic radio. To celebrate his seventieth birthday in 2012 he published a new selected poems, Laughing at the Clock / Déanamh Gáire Ris A’ Chloc. MacNeacail came into the SPL in 2013 to talk about his life and career, from his childhood in Uig on the Isle of Skye to his membership of Philip Hobsbaum’s legendary writing group. He also talked about his struggles as a Gaelic speaker in an English language-dominated culture, including an oddly strenuous struggle with the telephone directory people.
Bob Dylan has played many roles in his life: voice of a generation, rock ‘n’ roll Judas, Christian convert, even Victoria’s Secret salesman. The one that concerned the SPL podcast in 2013 was ‘poet’.
Across two biographies – Once Upon A Time and Time Out of Mind (both Mainstream) – Ian Bell (1956-2015) considered Dylan in a more literary context than any other biographer of His Bobness. Over the course of this podcast, we discussed whether Dylan can really be considered a poet, the writers who influenced him, his Scottish connection, and his encounters with poets such as Carl Sandburg, Archibald McLeish and Allen Ginsberg.
Image: Bob Dylan, Paris, France 1966 by Paul Townsend, under a Creative Commons licence.
Lorna French and Anna Gray lead small groups of (mostly) women to let loose their wild side, to dive in to their unconscious and find their buried treasure. Wild Writers are creatives, public sector workers, teenagers, or any other type of human who is boldly, and often messily, transforming on their hero’s or heroine’s journey.
Ahead of their workshops at the SPL in April and May 2025, Kevin Williamson chats to Lorna and Anna about what they mean by 'wild writing', and how this can help stimulate a different, more unconscious or free way in to workshop writing.
Tickets for the SPL Wild Writing workshops are available here.
Other Wild Writing courses can be found here.
Best Scottish Poems is the Scottish Poetry Library’s annual online anthology of the 20 Best Scottish Poems, edited each year by a different editor. Bookshops and libraries – with honourable exceptions – often provide a very narrow range of poetry, and Scottish poetry in particular. Best Scottish Poems offers readers in Scotland and abroad a way of sampling the range and achievement of our poets, their languages, forms, concerns.
It is in no sense a competition but a personal choice, and this year’s editors, the novelists Louise Welsh and Zoë Strachan, checked and balanced each other’s predilections. Their introduction demonstrates how widely they read, and how intensely. All the Best Scottish Poems selections are available on the SPL website.
This special podcast features readings by established voices and emerging talent. With readings by Kathleen Jamie, Liz Lochhead, Robin Robertson, John Burnside, and many more.
Photo by Jen Hadfield.
In this podcast the poet and artist MacGillivray reads from and discusses her book, The Last Wolf of Scotland (Pighog).
The collection is an exploration of connections between Scotland and the American Frontier whose form brilliantly reflects the subject matter of the poems. MacGillivray joins Jennifer Williams in a conversation that maps the rich web of influences from which her poetry emerges, taking in Doors front-man Jim Morrison, mock ancient Scottish bard Ossian, and the mysterious ‘Man with Fourteen Lives’. Plus a debate about whether poetry works better on the page or read aloud, or memorised and recited.
In this 2013 podcast, Jennifer Williams talks to poet, playwright and recording artist Kate Tempest about hip hop, poetry, their play Brand New Ancients, mythology, world peace and much more. Kate has written plays for Paines Plough and the Battersea Arts Centre, written poetry for the Royal Shakespeare Company, Channel 4 and the BBC, worked in schools and won the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry 2012, for Brand New Ancients*.
*In 2020 the musician and poet formerly named Kate Tempest changed their name to Kae Tempest, and announced they are non-binary. In the announcement on Instagram, Tempest said they were changing the pronouns they use, from she and her to they and them.
Image © Melanie Flash
Jenny Lindsay was co-creator of the popular ‘poetry cabaret’ Rally and Broad (which ran from 2012-2016), a hit originally in Edinburgh that spread its wings to Glasgow. In this 2014 podcast, we talked to Jenny about her poetry and the lively spoken word scene in Scotland.
Photo by Alex Aitchison.
The famous Welsh poet RS Thomas is the subject of this month's Nothing But The Poem podcast.
Anne Stevenson of the Listener describes Thomas as a religious poet who 'sees tragedy, not pathos, in the human condition' ... 'He is one of the rare poets writing today who never asks for pity.'
'Like the Welsh countryside he writes about, Thomas's poetry is often harsh and austere, written in plain, somber language, with a meditative quality.' - The Poetry Foundation
Our resident podcast host Sam Tongue took an immersive dive into two RS Thomas poems: From The Farm and Reservoirs. Find out what Sam - and the Friends Of The SPL group - took from these poems in this Nothing But The Poem podcast.
Poet Chrys Salt talks about who has the right to write about certain subjects, about writing war poetry when you have a son who is a soldier, and how poetry can benefit from a good performance.
Thanks to James Iremonger for the music in this podcast.
Brian Johnstone (1950 - 2021) was a poet and former director of the StAnza poetry festival. In this archive podcast he discusses the highlights of his StAnza career, what he thinks makes a good poetry festival, his own work and his creative improvisations as part of jazz-poetry combo Trio Verso. Featuring the tracks ‘Storm Chaser’ and ‘The Sound of Breaking Glass’.
Presented by Ryan Van Winkle. Produced by Colin Fraser. Incidental music by Ewen Maclean.
Alexander Hutchison (1942-2015) was a poet and translator in Scots and English. His first book Deep-Tap Tree (University of Massachusetts Press, 1978) is still in print. Other collections include The Moon Calf (Galliard, 1990) and Carbon Atom (Link-Light, 2006). Melodic Cells, an interview with Hutchison conducted by Andrew Duncan appears in Don’t Start Me Talking: Interviews with Contemporary Poets (Salt: Cambridge, 2006). Salt also published Scales Dog: New and Selected Poems in 2007. In this podcast former SPL Programme Manager Jennifer Williams talks to Alexander about his then most recent collection, Bones & Breath (Salt), tardigrades, ancient spears, the poet’s voice and much more!
Niall Campbell is the subject of this month's Nothing But The Poem podcast. The South Uist poet has had three collections of poetry published, has won many major poetry prizes, and is currently poetry editor of Poetry London.
‘Noctuary is a homage to night-time, to "that midnight thrill of being alive", to the small, stray moments that make up a life. It is also a passionately tender examination of what it means to have and care for a small child.’ – Suzannah V. Evans, Times Literary Supplement
'The poems in the book place his Hebridean homeland in an ever-shifting mosaic of tidal gifts, memories, folklore, conversations and people. Always there is an awareness of the sea that surrounds, that change is constant, and that there is no going back.’ – The Scotsman, Poem of the Week, on The Island in the Sound
Our resident podcast host Sam Tongue took an immersive dive into two Niallcampbel poems. The Night Watch from his second collection 'Noctuary' (2019, Bloodaxe) and Apprenticeship from his third collection 'The Island in the Sound' (2024, Bloodaxe). Find out what Sam - and the Friends Of The SPL group - took from these poems in this Nothing But The Poem podcast.
Walking With Poets was an SPL project that looked at an old subject, nature, using new media. We put four poets – Sue Butler, Mandy Haggith, Jean Atkin and Gerry Loose – into Scotland’s botanic gardens. For this special podcast, we interviewed each of the poets in their garden.
Possessing a friendship that spanned the Atlantic, Scotland’s John Burnside (1955-2024) and America’s Allison Funk were captured in conversation, speaking about what they enjoy about each other’s countries, from poetry and music to the mutability of the landscape and people.
Allison Funk is the author of four volumes of verse, including The Tumbling Box (2009). John Burnside’s Black Cat Bone (2011), is one of only two titles to have won both the Forward Prize and the TS Eliot Prize for Poetry.
In a conversation that runs from delta blues to Virginia Woolf, Funk and Burnside explain the way in which they’ve influenced each other’s work while still being ‘opposite sides of the same coin’.
Victoria Chang is the subject of this month's Nothing But The Poem podcast. The Taiwanese-American poet has had seven collections of poetry published, her most recent - With My Back To The World (2024) - winning the Forward Prize for Best Poetry Collection.
'Chang has liberated the Ekphrastic form to new lyric heights and depths. Inventive, meditative, audacious, strange and soulful ... that engages the eye and mind as much as the ear and heart' - Raymond Antrobus
'Chang invites readers to query depression, grief, and the purpose of art. There are no answers here, only an ongoing conversation.' - Emily Pèrez
Our resident podcast host Sam Tongue took an immersive dive into two Victoria Chang poems Mr Darcy andEdward Hopper's Office at Night. Find out what Sam - and the Friends Of The SPL group - took from these poems in our Nothing But The Poem podcast.
In this extended version of Nothing But The Poem Kevin Williamson interviews Donny O'Rourke, editor of Dream State - The New Scottish Poets which was published in 1994 and remains the gold standard of poetry anthologies, and, arguably, the most visionary poetry anthology ever published in Scotland.
Dream State's contributors were all aged under 40 at the time and were assembled by fellow poet and broadcaster Donny O'Rourke. Only 6 of these poets - John Burnside, Carol Ann Duffy, Kathleen Jamie, Jackie Kay, W N Herbert and Robert Crawford had appeared in The New Poetry - Bloodaxe's high profile generational anthology - the year before.
Donny O'Rourke had his finely tuned ear to the ground, and, as well as the 6 poets listed above, he brought together another 19 Scottish poets under the age of 40, all overlooked by the Bloodaxe anthology. These included Don Paterson, David Kinloch, Meg Bateman, Richard Price, Graham Fulton, Robert Alan Jamieson, Maud Sulter, Alan Riach, and a 28 yer old - and as yet bookless poet - Roddy Lumsden.
Donny O'Rourke was no ordinary editor. He was a visionary with an agenda who not only hoped to achieve a "gathering of forces' but wanted an anthology with zero fillers and, crucially, for the anthology to be a vital energetic snapshot of all aspects of Scottish life at a time the country had entered a tumultuous phase in its history. Dream State's ambition was huge: poetry as "news that stays news" as Ezra Pound once wrote. Popular culture, street smart wit, political tensions, scientific discoveries and radical re-imaginings infuse every page.
O'Rourke was no narrow nationalist, as is stated in the introduction, but drew upon Edwin Morgan as the anthology's outward looking internationalist and hyper curious guiding spirit. Dream State was egalitarian in its sense of purpose from the outset. From Alasdair Gray came the inclusive definition of Scots as anyone who lived in Scotland, or who was from Scotland and left. Dream State was relatively balanced gender-wise too (for the 1990s). 15 male poets and 10 female poets. The New Poetry, despite its vitality and excellence, on the other hand had just 17 women poets out of its 55 contributors. We also hear the words of many working class poets in Dream State, perhaps abandoned by much of the politics of the time, making their voices heard.
In this podcast Donny O'Rourke sits down in the Scottish Poetry Library with Kevin Williamson (who was publishing and editing Rebel Inc magazine at the same time) to revisit the creative riot that was the early 1990s. They discuss Dream State and the time and place which gave birth to it.
Dream State The New Scottish Books was published by Polygon.
The poetry community was shocked and saddened when the much-loved young poet Gboyega Odubanjo died last year. Since then a full length collection of his poetry titled Adam has been published posthumously by Faber; and the Gboyega Odubanjo Foundation for low-income Black writers has been established to honour his legacy.
His poetry hit many raw nerves among readers. Fellow poet Luke Kennard praised his work as 'Deep, funny, thought provoking - a powerful evocation of culture and family with the most assured phrasing and imagery and confident formal innovation.'
Our usual podcast host Samuel Tongue - via an online meet up of the Friends of the SPL group - discussed in depth two of Gboyega's poems: Brother and The Garden
Into Poetry is an exciting new outlet for poetry in both print and online based in Scotland. In the run up to its launch its editor, David Cameron, dropped into the Scottish Poetry Library to chat with Samuel Tongue about the ideas behind the project, its origins and remit, its international reach, including how to submit work and what to expect.
Into Poetry is part of the artistic hub Into Creative which was established in 2013 by Stephen Cameron and can be found at https://intocreative.co.uk The website also features articles on Music, Art, Movies and Books.
The imprint, Into Books, was established in 2019 with a view to publishing one or two titles per year; with the remit of being "imaginative, challenging and accomplished titles".
“To make art out of something painful, uncertain or damaging is an act of real empowerment” wrote Kathryn Bevis, who died in May 2024. Her first full-length poetry collection, The Butterfly House, was published two months earlier and tells the story of a life before and after a late-stage cancer diagnosis. The poems examine both life and death, encompassing experiences, terrible and sublime.
Her publishers Seren wrote in her obituary that she was "Perhaps one of the finest poets of her generation... (who) captured hearts and minds with her innovative use of form, language and metaphor to describe everyday life, experiences of women and terminal illness. She had a skill for finding light in the dark, celebration in sadness, and joy in the smallest moments."
Don Paterson described her as: " A poet of real wisdom, compassion, and fearlessness."
Sam Tongue took an immersive dive into two Kathryn Bevis poems My Cancer as a Ring-Tailed Lemur andMatryoshka. Find out what Sam - and the Friends Of The SPL group - took from these poems in our Nothing But The Poem podcast.
Our usual host, Sam Tongue, puts two poems by the wonderful Yorkshire poet Caroline Bird, under the groupchat microscope. Caroline Bird has published eight collections of poetry to date; usually to great acclaim, awards and rave reviews. Her latest collection, Ambush at Still Lake (Carcanet) has her trademark surreal wit, and is a kaleidoscope of startling imagery, lyrical unexpectedness, and is typically hard to classify, but so easy to fall in love with.
UK Poet Laureate, Simon Armitage said of her: "Bird is irrepressible; she simply explodes with poetry. The work erupts, spring-loaded, funny, sad, deadly - you don't know if a bullet will come out of the barrel or a flag with the word BANG on it."
Sam Tongue took his customary immersive dive into two poems from Ambush at Still Lake: RSVP and Cuckoo. Find out what Sam - and the Friends Of The SPL group - got from these poems in our Nothing But The Poem podcast.
Ann an Hai-Àidh #7, tha Petra Johana Poncarová agus Donnchadh Sneddon a’ coimhead air dìleab Ruaraidh MhicThòmais mar bhàrd, neach-deasachaidh, agus iomairtiche, agus a’ bruidhinn mun leabhar-rannsachaidh a nochd am bliadhna bho Chlò Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann, Derick Thomson and the Gaelic Revival.
In Hai-Àidh #7, Petra Johana Poncarová and Duncan Sneddon look at Derick Thomson’s legacy as a poet, editor, and activist, and discuss the academic monograph Derick Thomson and the Gaelic Revival which came out earlier this year from Edinburgh University Press.
Ann an Hai-Àidh #6, thagh Niall O’Gallagher ‘Bisearta’ le Deòrsa Mac Iain Dheòrsa agus Alasdair C. MacIlleBhàin ‘Gur fad ’am thàmh mi gu tostach sàmhach’ le Dòmhnall Eachainn à Muile. Tha Niall agus Alasdair a’ leughadh nan dàin agus a’ bruidhinn orra, a’ lorg cheanglaichean eadar bàrdachd-cogaidh anns an fhicheadamh linn agus bàrdachd nam Fuadaichean anns an naoidheamh linn deug, agus a’ beachdachadh air an dàimh eadar snas an fhoirm agus cuspairean aognaidh.
For Hai-Àidh #6, Niall O’Gallagher chose George Campbell Hay’s ‘Bisearta’ and Alasdair C. Whyte went for ‘Gur fad ’am thàmh mi gu tostach sàmhach’ by Donald MacGillivray. They read the poem and discuss them, finding connections between twentieth-century war poetry and nineteenth-century poetry of the Clearances, and consider the tensions between formal beauty and disturbing subject matters.
The much-loved and much-missed Scottish poet and translator, Alexander 'Sandy' Hutchison, is the latest subject of the Nothing But The Poem podcast, presented by our regular host, Samuel Tongue.
David Kinloch said of his work: "Alexander Hutchison's poetry is elegant, flighty and absurdist by turns."
WN Herbert wrote: "Sandy Hutchison's poetry exhibits a gleeful acquisitive fascination with the language."
"A mentor, a bristling master, and a total original." - August Kleinzahler
The two poems by Alexander Hutchison discussed by the Friends of the SPL group in this podcast are Gavia Stellata and Everything.
A short audio recording to accompany the Moon Tell Me Truth exhibition at the Scottish Poetry Library.
Ann an Hai-Àidh #5, thagh Peigi Nic a’ Phiocair ‘Oidhche Na' Mo Chadal Dhomh’ le Nellie Ruadh, dàn a chaidh lorg o chionn ghoirid ann an tasglann, agus Joy Dunlop ‘An Roghainn’, aon de Dàin do Eimhir le Somhairle MacGill-Eain, mar òran le fonn ùr a rinn Dòmhnall Seathach. Tha Peigi agus Joy a’ leughadh, a’ seinn, agus a’ còmhradh air briathran blasta agus faireachdainnean làidir.
For Hai-Àidh #5, Peigi MacVicar picks Nellie Ruadh’s song ‘Oidhche Na' Mo Chadal Dhomh’, a recent archival discovery, and Joy Dunlop brings in ‘An Roghainn’, one of Sorley MacLean’s Dàin do Eimhir, set to music by Donald Shaw. Peigi and Joy read, sing, and chat about tasty words and strong feelings.
Our usual host, Sam Tongue, is back from paternity leave, and between feeds and nappy changes has recorded the latest episode of our regular Nothing But The Poem poetry podcast. Special thank you to Aoife Lyall for stepping in and producing 3 wonderful NBTP podcasts on Jane Clarke, Eavan Boland and Billy Collins. Much appreciated.
Sam's subject this month is Nuala Watt, an emerging poet, whose work is increasingly recognised for its unique voice, formal daring, and fierce authenticity. Nuala Watt is partially sighted and her poems lead us through "the bureaucratic labyrinth of government assessment, the anxious joy of expecting a child and, with verve and originality, the realities of being a disabled parent".
Fellow poet Alyson Hallett commented: "Sit down before you read these poems. Open the window. Open the door. There's a bolt of pure electric coming for you."
My thoughts have arrived in the post.
I don't know which ones.
I think they may be cyclists in the dark.Sam took a deep dive into two poems from Nuala's debut poetry collection, The Department of Work and Pensions Assesses a Jade Fish, which has just been published by Blue Diode Press. Find out what Sam - and the Friends Of The SPL group - got from these poems in our Nothing But The Poem podcast.
Ann an Hai-Àidh #4, thagh Meg Bateman ‘Cànan na Deighe’ le Beth Frieden agus Joy Dunlop ‘Nam Aonar le Mo Smaointean’ le Iain MacLeòid. Tha Meg agus Joy a’ leughadh nan dàin agus a’ bruidhinn orra, a’ lorg ceanglaichean eadar dàn a tha cho ùr ’sa ghabhas agus òran tradaiseanta. Cuspairean a’ mhìos: dàimh ri àite, fuaimean fuachd, agus bàrdachd mar tùs-ùrachaidh agus mar chomas-iongantais.
In Hai-Àidh #4, Meg Bateman chose ‘Cànan na Deighe’ by Beth Frieden, and Joy Dunlop brought in ‘Nam Aonar le Mo Smaointean’ by John MacLeod. Meg and Joy read the poems and have a chat about them, bringing together a very recent Gaelic poem with a traditional song. This month’s themes include relationship to place, the sound of ice, and the power of poetry to make us look anew.
Billy Collins, the former Poet Laureate of the United States, is the latest subject of the Nothing But The Poem podcast. With our regular podcast host Sam Tongue on paternity leave this edition has Bloodaxe poet Aoife Lyall taking a deep dive into two of Billy Collins's poems, which were discussed at the online monthly meet-up of the Nothing But The Poem group.
Billy Collins is one of the world's most loved poets, famed for his directness, accessibility and playful wit. Carol Ann Duffy could not have given higher praise when she said: "Billy Collins is one of my favourite poets in the world."
The Minneapolis Star-Tribune concurred: "Collins is absolutely charming. He deserves every rose he's flung these days... His poems are irresistible."
John Updike commented: "Billy Collins writes lovely poems... Limpid, gently and consistently startling, more serious that they seem, they describe all the worlds that are and were and some others beside."
The two poems discussed in this podcast are Introduction to Poetry from The Apple That Astonished Paris (1988) and Tensionfrom Ballistics (2008).
Eavan Boland is the latest subject of the Nothing But The Poem podcast. With our regular podcast host Sam Tongue on paternity leave this edition has Bloodaxe poet Aoife Lyall taking an immersive look into two of Eavan Boland's poems, which were discussed at the online monthly meet-up of the Nothing But The Poem group.
Eavan Boland is one of the central figures of modern Irish poetry, a poet who, according to her publishers Carcanet, "came to be known for her exquisite ability to weave myth, history, and the life of an ordinary woman into mesmerising poetry."
Elaine Feinstein, writing in the Poetry Review, said: "Boland is one of the finest and boldest poets of the last half-century."
Iain Crichton Smith wrote: "She has the equipment of the true poet, that is to say an image-making faculty, a true devoted eye and an ear for rhythm."
The two poems discussed in this podcast are The Poets from New Territory (Allen Figgis, 1967) and Moths from In A Time Of Violence (Carcanet, 1994).
Jane Clarke is the latest subject of the Nothing But The Poem podcast. Jane Clarke is an Irish poet; the author of three poetry collections and an illustrated poetry booklet. Our regular podcast host Sam Tongue is currently on paternity leave and this edition has Bloodaxe poet Aoife Llyall taking an immersive look into three of Jane Clarke's poems, which were discussed at the online monthly meet-up of the Nothing But The Poem group.
Poet Carol Rumens wrote that Jane Clarke's poems were "rooted in the landscape of the west of Ireland and the farming context in which the lives of individual humans are played out asserts its own rhythm and narrative. In honouring this larger context Clarke enlarges her poetic field with an unobtrusive but important ecopoetic dimension."
The Irish novelist Anne Enright has praised her poems for their "clean, hard-earned simplicity and a lovely sense of line."
The three poems discussed in this podcast are When Winter Comes and Hers both from When The Tree Falls (Bloodaxe Books, 2019) and Daily Bread from The River (Bloodaxe Books, 2015).
On Wednesday 27th September 2023 the acclaimed Haitian poet Bertony Louis visited the Scottish Poetry Library to speak at an event where he discussed how his poetry intersects with the situation in Haiti.
Before the event Bertony recorded a podcast with the SPL; speaking about his life and work. Bertony spoke in French, which was translated simultaneously.
Kei Miller is the latest subject of the Nothing But The Poem podcast. Kei Miller is a Forward Prize-winning Jamaican poet; a prolific author who has published 5 collections of poetry as well as many books of fiction and essays. Our regular podcast host Sam Tongue takes a deep dive into two of his poems, which were discussed at the online monthly meet-up of the Nothing But The Poem group.
Jamaica Gleaner wrote: "Kei Miller is a poet who tells his stories in the haunting voices of Jamaica's underprivileged. His tales are stories that haven't been told; they call out from the pages to be heard by Caribbean readers and by the wider world."
In the PN Review, John Robert Lee wrote: "His prose – fiction and non-fiction – and his poetry... do not avoid the murky ‘corners’ of life in Jamaica, racism in the UK and wider world, personal encounters with religion and gender issues. In navigating ‘away from’ and through our contemporary world, he is redrawing our literary maps."
The two poems discussed in this podcast are Book of Genesis and Speaking in tongues. Both poems are from the 2007 collection, There Is an Anger that Moves, and both poems can also be found on the Poetry Archive website read by Kei Miller himself.
Douglas Dunn is one of Scotland's most decorated poets - he has an OBE and a Queen's Medal - as well as one of Scotland's most loved poets. He is undoubtedly a major Scottish poet, editor and critic, whose Elegies (1985), is a moving account of his first wife’s death. The book became a critical and popular success.
His books – including 10 collections of poetry and 2 of short stories, and a translation of Racine’s Andromache – are consistently well reviewed in the national press, while his work has been the object of much academic attention and has been extensively translated (there are editions in French, German, Spanish, Italian, Norwegian, Slovak, Armenian and Japanese, at least).
In this Nothing But The Poem podcast, regular host Sam Tongue and the NBTP group appraise 3 of Dunn's poems. The poems span almost 5 decades: from Terry Street in 1969 to his most recent collection in 2017.
Dunn himself "once observed that much of poetry ‘depends on the exposure of the heart’, and that ‘there should be no holding back’. This is true of his work, for all its formal restraint. Whether writing of civic society, mourning, or domestic contentment, Douglas Dunn gives us heart-felt witness that ‘life is the best thing that can happen to us’." - Dr Jules Smith
The poems discussed in the podcast are TAY BRIDGE (1'10) and SECOND OPINION (7'35). Sam also reads a third poem THURSDAY (14'15). The texts for all 3 poems can be found here on the Scottish Poetry Library website.
In a fair and equal world Toronto-based poet Dionne Brand would be widely recognised as one of the world’s foremost practitioners of poetry. Yet, in the UK for instance, her work hasn’t always been easy to find. Until, that is, Penguin Modern Classics published Nomenclature: New and Collected Poems in 2023.
Nomenclature is a huge tome – 623 pages long – which collects together 8 of Brand’s previous poetry collections as well as a new long form poem which gives the book its title. This is the essential Dionne Brand all gathered together in one place.
Brand’s work has a clear-eyed politically-conscious intensity, underpinning her textual experiments and linguistic adventures. She is immersed in the unflinching world of testimony, while looking forward, dreaming of a less hostile tomorrow. She chooses not to wrap human struggles or the human condition in a transcendent glow nor to swaddle in cotton wool memories. In Inventory she writes:
I have nothing soothing to tell you
that’s not my job
my job is to revise and revise this bristling list
hourly.
In Lux magazine Brand was described by Sarah Matthews as “resolutely Black, decolonial, internationalist, lesbian, and staunchly, unswervingly leftist. Both her poetry and her activism take that fateful youthful epiphany of realizing the tear in the world, then make it a portal of observance and imagining.”
Dionne Brand was the subject of the SPL’s Nothing But The Poem podcast. Our usual host, Sam Tongue, took a deep dive into two of her poems. Both can be found online at the Griffin Poetry Prize website.
THIRSTY
FROM VERSO 4
Find out what Sam - and the Friends Of The SPL group - got from the two poems in our Nothing But The Poem podcast.
(KW)
Welsh poet Jonathan Edwards is the latest subject of the Nothing But The Poem podcast. As always our host Sam Tongue takes a deep dive into two of his poems which were discussed at the online monthly meet-up of the Nothing But The Poem group.
Jonathan Edwards is a multi-award winning poet - including the Costa Book Prize for Poetry (2014) and the Troubadour Poetry Prize in 2022 - and has had two full collections of poetry published: My Family And Other Superheroes (2014) and Gen (2018).
Edwards' poems draw lovingly from pop culture and sport, as well as from his family, community and a sense of Welshness. His first collection was described by critic Alice Vincent as having poems "in which celebrities and fictional characters such as Sophia Loren and Evel Knievel collide with reflections on the social architecture of working class Welsh valleys."
The two poems discussed in this podcast are Evel Knievel Jumps Over My Family and Gregory Peck and Sophia Loren in Crumlin for the Filming of Arabesque, June 1965
American poet Ross Gay is the subject of the new Nothing But The Poem podcast. The SPL’s regular podcast host, Sam Tongue, takes a deep dive into two of his poems which were discussed at the online monthly meet-up of the Nothing But The Poem group.
Ross Gay was born in Ohio and now teaches at Indiana University. He's the author of 4 poetry collections and 3 books of essays. His specialist subject is joy! On his website intro it states:
Ross Gay is interested in joy.
Ross Gay wants to understand joy.
Ross Gay is curious about joy.
Ross Gay studies joy.
Something like that.
Robert Eric Shoemaker wrote on the Poetry Foundation website:
Poet Ross Gay takes his office hours in his garden and is often unreachable by technology. Imagine the delight (little delights, perhaps, in his Book of Delights) of being unreachable among the dirt and the plants, or of smiling in discussion with a friend, student, or colleague among the smell of apples trees. Go try it!
The two poems discussed in this podcast are Poem To My Child If Ever You Should Be and Sorrow Is Not My Name
As part of our Poetry Unravelled project, we invited three poets – Victoria McNulty, Beth McDonough and Craig Houston - to join project-lead Julie McNeil for conversation and readings around their experiences of dyslexia and neurodiversity. We discussed how they first engaged with poetry and the challenges raised by educational settings, especially around identifying a lack of dyslexia-friendly poetry resources available for individuals and schools. We also recorded poems reflecting on these themes, showcasing the transformative power of poetry, whether listening, reading, or creating. The resources from the project will be made available on our website soon. For more information, please contact project and learning coordinator Samuel Tongue.
Anthony Vahni Capildeo is the subject of the new Nothing But The Poem podcast. The SPL’s regular podcast host, Sam Tongue, takes a deep dive into two of their poems which were discussed at the online monthly meet-up of the Nothing But The Poem group.
A Trinidadian-Scottish writer of poetry and non-fiction, Anthony Vahni Capildeo has published eight books and eight pamphlets, including Measures of Expatriation which won the 2016 Forward Prize. Their most recent poetry collection is Like a Tree, Walking (Carcanet, 2021).
Beth Cochrane in The Skinny said of the collection: ‘ 'Vahni Capildeo has always been a remarkable and singular poet, and Like a Tree, Walking is yet another triumph of their warm wit, direct vision, and almost spiritual connection to the page....The collection is welcoming, disarming, and - as its blurb commands - 'defined by how it writes about love.' The poetry within is to be celebrated, read, and reread by poets and not-poets alike.'’
Jen Campbell wrote: 'I would follow Vahni Capildeo's poetry to the ends of the Earth, I just think that they're amazing...I love this book very much.'
High praise indeed!
The two poems discussed in this podcast are To London and Migraine Improv.
Helen Mort is the subject of the new Nothing But The Poem podcast. The SPL’s regular podcast host, Sam Tongue, takes a deep dive into two of Helen Mort’s poems which were discussed at the online monthly meet-up of the Nothing But The Poem group.
Helen Mort is an award winning poet from Sheffield who's had 3 collections of poetry published. Her most recent collection, The Illustrated Woman (2022), was shortlisted for the Forward Poetry Prize.
The book's blurb at HelenMort.com reads: 'The Illustrated Woman is a tender and incisive collection about what it means to live in a female body - from the joys and struggles of new motherhood to the trauma of deepfakes.
Andrew McMillan said of the collection: 'These are poems that will leave their indelible mark'
Kate Kellaway, reviewing the book in the Guardian, wrote: The Illustrated Woman explores tattoos through history and, lucid though these poems are, you need to reread them often to acquire the deepest sense of what is being said. Mort presents tattoos variously: as painful and cherished keepsakes, exposure and concealment combined, flirtations with indelibility.
The two poems discussed in this podcast – Ablation and The Tattooed Lady – can be found in No Map Could Show Them (Chatto) and The Illustrated Woman (Penguin).
Am mìos-sa tha Meg Bateman agus Pàdraig MacAoidh a’ còmhradh air ‘Aig an Fhaing’ le Anna Frater agus ‘Duan an Dannsair’ le Flòraidh NicPhàil. Tha an còmhradh a’ dannsa eadar cuspairean a’ leithid dùthchas, treubhan, mic-talla, bròn agus cruthachadh. Stiall oirbh agus èistibh.
Mo chasan dubh, mo chasan dubh..
This month Meg Bateman and Peter Mackay chat about 'At the Fank' by Anne Frater and 'Duan an Dannsair' by Flora MacPhail. The conversation dances between topics like dùthchas, tribes, echoes, sadness and creativity. Have a go and listen.
Jorie Graham is the subject of the new Nothing But The Poem podcast. The SPL’s regular podcast host, Sam Tongue, takes a deep dive into two of Jorie Graham’s poems which were discussed at the online monthly meet-up of the Nothing But The Poem group.
Jorie Graham and her poetry are difficult to classify. To get some idea of her thinking and poetic process this illuminating interview should help: Jorie Graham Takes The Long View
Among many things she’s an eco-poet of tremendous power. She’s the author of 15 poetry collections, four of which were collected together as [To] The Last [Be] Human. The poems in these 4 books address the ongoing tragedy of humanity’s destruction of the natural world and, potentially, our own species.
The two poems discussed in this podcast – Full Fathom and Prayer – can both be found in [To] The Last [Be] Humananthology or can be read here on the Poetry Foundation website.
Air Hai-àidh! #2 tha Rona Dhòmhnallach agus Màrtainn Mac an t-Saoir a’ còmhradh air seanachas agus nòsan ùra de bhàrdachd. Tha Rona a toirt thugainn ‘A’ chionn ’s gu robh mi measail ort’ le Meg Bateman agus Martàin Mac an t-Saoir a taghadh an seann òran ‘’S ann a’ bhruadair mi raoir’. Cuspairean: ealachan, gaol, booty calls.
On Hai-àidh! #2 Rona MacDonald and Martin MacIntyre chat about the traditional and the modern in Gaelic poetry. Rona brings us ‘A’ chionn ’s gu robh mi measail ort’ by Meg Bateman and Martin chooses the old song ‘’S ann a Bhruadair Mi Raoir’. Topics included: swans, love, booty calls.
The SPL's regular podcast host Sam Tongue chats with translator Norman Angus, a long time resident of Japan, about the unique challenges of translating Japanese poetry into English and Scots.
Hagiwara Sakutaro is a poet Norman is passionate about bringing to the attention of the English-speaking world. Sakutaro wrote free verse, which, at the time, was revolutionary and liberatory, in a Japan where poetry followed strict rules. In an introduction to his Early Poems, Norman summed up Sakutaro's influence:
'Hagiwara Sakutaro (1886-1942) more than any other individual determined the direction which modern Japanese poetry was to take... Such was the depth of his influence that today it would be hard to name a Japanese poet whose own work has not felt that influence'.
Sakutaro, who led a Bohemian life, and whose work was initially banned, is often called the Japanese Baudelaire, and is widely considered 'the father of modern colloquial poetry in Japan'.
In this extended Nothing But The Poem podcast Norman Angus introduces, reads, and discusses with Sam Tongue a selection of work by Sakutaro.
In this LGBTQ+ History Month special edition of Nothing But the Poem, the Scottish Poetry Library's Toni Velikova is joined by Kirsten MacQuarrie, author and Membership Officer from CILIPS Scotland, to chat about three poems by three much loved Scottish LGBTQ+ poets.
STRAWBERRIES by EDWIN MORGAN
GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN by MAUD SULTER
BIOGRAPHY by JACKIE KAY
The poems were discussed at an open-to-all meetup of Friends of the Poetry Library hosted by Toni and Kirsten. An enthralling chat ensued by all accounts!
Have a look at our website to find out about becoming a Friend, and join us for the next Nothing but the Poem meet-up. Or simply enjoy this podcast and the excellent poems therein.
'S e pod-chraolaidh ùr Leabharlann Bàrdachd na h-Alba a th' ann an Hai-àidh! Air gach clàr bi dà phìos bhàrdachd air a thaghadh le dà bhàrd (neo cuideigin aig a bheil ùidh ann am bàrdachd). Sa chiad fhear thagh Pàdraig MacAoidh 'Anns an Dealachadh' le Deborah Moffat agus Màrtainn Mac an t-Saoir 'Chuala sinn losgadh' le Daibhidh Eyre Leughaidh Pàdraig agus Màrtainn na dàin mus bi iad a' còmhradh le chèile mun deidhinn.
Hai-aidh! is the Scottish Poetry Library’s new Gaelic language poetry podcast. In each episode two Gaelic language poems are selected by two poets (or by guests who love poetry). In this episode Peter Mackay chose 'Anns an Dealachadh' by Deborah Moffat, and Martin MacIntyre chose 'Chuala sinn losgadh' by Daibhidh Eyre Leughaidh. Peter and Martin read the poems and have a chat about them.
In this podcast, Scottish Poetry Library's Sam Tongue introduces us to three poems by the late Scottish poet, Roddy Lumsden, whose influence continues to reverberate around contemporary poetry.
Roddy's poems were read and discussed at January's monthly online meet-up of Friends of the Poetry Library hosted by Sam. In the podcast Sam reads the 3 poems and gives us his thoughts on them and the discussion they generated.
Have a look at our website to find out about becoming a Friend, and join us for the next Nothing but the Poem meet-up. Or simply enjoy this podcast and the excellent poems therein.
Scottish Poetry Library’s Sam Tongue runs a monthly online meet-up, where Friends of the Poetry Library get together to read and discuss a fresh poet and their poems.
In this podcast, Sam introduces us to the general style and format, and enjoys the work of Will Harris.
Have a look at our website to find out about becoming a Friend, and join us for the next Nothing but the Poem meet-up. Or simply enjoy this podcast and the excellent poems therein.
Scottish Poetry Library’s Sam Tongue runs a monthly online meet-up, where Friends of the Poetry Library get together to read and discuss a fresh poet and their poems.
In this podcast, Sam introduces us to the general style and format, and enjoys the work of Hannah Hodgson.
Have a look at our website to find out about becoming a Friend, and join us for the next Nothing but the Poem meet-up. Or simply enjoy this podcast and the excellent poems therein.
This podcast with author Christian McEwen was recorded in the summer of 2013. Christian talks about her book World Enough & Time: On Creativity and Slowing Down, and about a life built around making the spaces to write and create. Christian works as a freelance writer and workshop leader. For many years, she taught poetry to teachers through the Creative Arts in Learning Program at Lesley University. A collection of her poems, In the Wake of Home, was published by Meadowlark Press in 2004.
Music composed by James Iremonger
Published 26 June, 2014.
Edinburgh’s former Makar, or poet laureate, Christine De Luca wasn’t born in the capital. In this podcast, she tells us about her childhood in Shetland, and how she’s taken her native dialect around the world. She recalls the unexpected impact her poem about the Scottish Referendum ‘The Morning After’ had, and she talks about translating the Finnish epic The Kalevala.
Nicholas Lezard called William Letford ‘the new Scottish genius’, a judgement the SPL is not inclined to disagree with. With a new collection, Dirt (Carcanet), in the shops, we thought it was a good time to catch up with him. We discussed how India changed his life and poetry, whether he’s funnier in Scots, and the influence of work.
This podcast is a recording of the 2015 StAnza International Poetry Festival Round Table event in which SPL Programme Manager and poet Jennifer (JL) Williams was in conversation with the poet Alice Notley. It was recorded shortly before she won the 2015 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize.
Alice Notley has published over thirty books of poetry, including (most recently) Songs and Stories of the Ghouls, Negativity’s Kiss, and the chapbook Secret ID. With her sons Anselm and Edmund Berrigan, she edited both The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan and The Selected Poems of Ted Berrigan. Notley has received many awards including the Academy of American Poets’ Lenore Marshall Prize, the Poetry Society of America’s Shelley Award, the Griffin Prize, two NEA Grants, and the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Poetry. She lives and writes in Paris, France.
Many thanks to StAnza International Poetry Festival and to James Iremonger for the music in this podcast.
Image: Alice Notley 11.03.11 by kellywritershouse, under a Creative Commons licence
The SPL is pleased to be able to share a treasure from our audio archives: from 2008, a talk by poet and novelist John Burnside on fellow Scottish poet W.S. Graham. During the talk, recorded at the National Library of Scotland before an audience, Burnside talks about poetry and visual art, the poet as nomad and ‘feeding the dead’.
Beverley Bie Brahic is a Canadian poet and translator who lives in Paris, France and the San Francisco Bay Area. Her poetry collection, White Sheets, was a finalist for the Forward Prize and a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. Her translations include Guillaume Apollinaire, Francis Ponge and Yves Bonnefoy. Suzannah V. Evans spoke with her at StAnza 2020, where she discussed how translating poetry inspires her own work, owning a secret shelf of erotic literature, and being a ‘selfish translator’.
Nancy Campbell is a poet and non-fiction writer who grew up in the Scottish Borders. A series of residencies with Arctic research institutions between 2010 and 2017 has resulted in many projects responding to environmental concerns including How To Say ‘I Love You’ In Greenlandic: An Arctic Alphabet (winner of the Birgit Skiöld Award 2015) and Disko Bay (shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection 2016 and the 2017 Michael Murphy Memorial Prize). Carol Ann Duffy describes Disko Bay as ‘a beautiful debut from a deft, dangerous and dazzling new poet writing from the furthest reaches of both history and climate change’.
In 2018 Nancy was appointed the Canal Laureate, a project managed by The Poetry Society and the Canal & River Trust. Many of the poems written during this residency were installed along the waterways where they could be seen projected onto warehouses at night, stencilled onto towpaths, or cemented into new fish gates. The poems are collected in Navigations, a pamphlet published by HappenStance Press.
In 2020 Nancy received the Royal Geographical Society Ness Award for the popularisation of geography through literature. She is currently working on a translation of traditional Greenlandic songs.
In our latest podcast, she talks to Suzannah V. Evans at StAnza, Scotland’s poetry festival.
In this podcast Jennifer Williams interviews poet William Bonar about the publication of his most recent pamphlet, Offering (Red Squirrel Press, 2015). They also discuss the mythology of memory, Hugh MacDiarmid’s influence on Scots language poetry and a walk through the frozen cradle of Scotland.
William Bonar was born in Greenock and grew up in the neighbouring shipbuilding town of Port Glasgow. He is a graduate of the universities of Edinburgh and Strathclyde and he gained a distinction on the MLitt in Creative Writing at Glasgow University in 2008. He retired after working in education for 30 years and is a full-time writer. He is a founder member of St Mungo’s Mirrorball, Glasgow’s network of poets.
In this podcast, Jennifer Williams talks to Sophie Collins about experimenting with starting points for creating poems, including using online translators and working with the unconscious; feminism and her role as co-editor of tender, a journal celebrating writing by women and the wide-ranging world of poetry translation from radical to faithful; and much more!
Sophie Collins is also editor of translation anthology Currently & Emotion (Test Centre, 2016). She received an Eric Gregory Award in 2014.
In this podcast Jennifer Williams speaks to Jamaican-born, American-based poet Shara McCallum about her new Robert Burns poetry project which brought her to Scotland for a research visit; the lyric self; female and minority voices in poetry and much more.
Originally from Jamaica, Shara McCallum is the author of five books of poetry, the latest of which is Madwoman.
In this podcast, the T.S. Eliot Prize-winning poet Sarah Howe talks to Jennifer Williams about kicking off the 2016 Edinburgh International Book Festival, writing with multiple languages and alphabets, sense and non-sense in poetry and much more.
Sarah Howe is a British poet, academic and editor. Her first book, Loop of Jade (Chatto & Windus, 2015), won the T.S. Eliot Prize and The Sunday Times / PFD Young Writer of the Year Award, and was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Centre Poetry Prize and the Forward Prize for Best First Collection.
Born in Hong Kong in 1983 to an English father and Chinese mother, she moved to England as a child. Her pamphlet, A Certain Chinese Encyclopedia (Tall-lighthouse, 2009), won an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors. Her poems have appeared in journals including Poetry Review, Poetry London, The Guardian, The Financial Times, Ploughshares and Poetry, and she has performed her work at festivals internationally and on BBC Radio 3 & 4.
If you would prefer to read, rather than listen to, our podcast with Sarah Howe, click here to see a transcript of the interview.
In this podcast, Jennifer Williams meets Nora Gomringer just after her Poetry Centre Stage reading at Scotland’s International Poetry Festival StAnza 2016. They talk about poetry on TV, how poetry can and should include a multiplicity of tones and registers, the joy of bringing poetry alive through the body and much more. Gomringer was born in 1980. Her background is in page-related poetry and spoken word, her present is the vast variety of poetry and recitation.
This podcast was recorded in cooperation with Scotland’s International Poetry Festival StAnza 2016 and with Literature Across Frontiers as part of the Literary Europe Live project supported by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union.
If you would prefer to read, rather than listen to, our podcast with Nora Gomringer, click here to see a transcription of the interview.
In this podcast, Jennifer Williams speaks to American poet Linda Russo about the complexities of writing a poetry of place, the challenges and rewards of creating with empathy, and the question, ‘why aren’t we giving up hope?’.
Linda Russo is the author of two books of poetry, Mirth (Chax Press) and Meaning to Go to the Origin in Some Way, and a collection of literary-geographical essays, To Think of her Writing Awash in Light, selected by John D’Agata as winner of the Subito Press lyric essay prize. Participant, winner of the Bessmilr Brigham Poets Prize (Lost Roads Press), is forthcoming. Scholarly essays have appeared in Among Friends: Engendering the Social Site of Poetry (University of Iowa Press) and other edited collections, and as the preface of Joanne Kyger’s About Now: Collected Poems (National Poetry Foundation). She lives in the Columbia River Watershed (eastern Washington State, U.S.A.) and teaches at Washington State University.
In this podcast Jennifer Williams speaks to our New Voices from Europe Literary Europe Live SPL Poets in Residence Juana Adcock and Árpád Kollár about writing poetry while listening to Hungarian punk music, the definition of Spanglish, how to write multi-lingual poems and much more. This project was made possible by Literary Europe Live, Literature Across Frontiers and the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union.
In this podcast Jennifer Williams talks to the poet Isobel Dixon about the universal and the particular, collaboration and making space in a busy schedule to write, how to bring in the personal in poetry and much more.
Please note: unfortunately there is a buzz from a mobile signal through some short sections of this podcast. We hope it won’t detract from your enjoyment in listening. Many thanks.
Isobel Dixon was born in South Africa. She studied in Edinburgh, and now lives in Cambridge and works as a literary agent in London, returning frequently to Cape Town and her family home in the Karoo. Her fourth collection Bearings is published by Nine Arches, along with re-issues of A Fold in the Map and The Tempest Prognosticator (later in 2016). Her new pamphlet, The Leonids, is published by Mariscat. She has been published in The Paris Review, The Manhattan Review, The Guardian, The Dark Horse and Prairie Schooner, among other publications.
Many thanks to James Iremonger for the music in this podcast.
In this podcast, Jennifer Williams speaks to Iain Morrison about poetry and art, being able to write about sex and identity, the influence of Emily Dickinson and much more.
Iain has a frequently collaborative practice as a writer and performer, presenting within live literature and live art contexts. Recent projects have included a night of drag queen poetry at the Scottish Poetry Library in January 2016, and Subject Index a durational installation of the complete poems of Emily Dickinson developed in residency at Forest Centre+ and toured to Berlin’s SOUNDOUT! New Ways of Presenting Literature Festival in May 2014. Publishing includes work in the forthcoming collection of Edinburgh poems from Freight, poem-responses to fin de siècle Vienna in the Austrian Cultural Forum’s Kakania anthology, and writing in magazines such as Gutter, The Burning Sand, HOAX, Soanyway and Scree.
In this goodbye podcast from Jennifer Williams, she shares her very first SPL interview, a previously unaired conversation with the American poet Eleanor Wilner. Jennifer first met Eleanor at the Scottish Poetry Library soon after she started, and Eleanor continues to be a friend and mentor for Jennifer in her life as a poet and person who believes that art can do good work in the world.
With many thanks, always, to James Iremonger for the music in this podcast.
If you would prefer to read, rather than listen to, our podcast with Eleanor Wilner, click here to see a transcript of the interview.
In this podcast Jennifer Williams talks to Carrie Etter about her newest collection, Scar (Shearsman 2016), a sequence exploring the impact of climate change on her home state of Illinois which speaks to problems faced by all of us as we enter this period of environmental catastrophe. Carrie Etter is an American poet resident in Bath since 2001. Previously she lived in Normal, Illinois (until age 19) and southern California (from age 19 to 32). They also discuss the importance of introducing students to a diverse range of poetic styles and voices, trends in American and UK poetry and much more.
With poems about the internet, the suburbs and boxing, Angela Cleland is a poet whose subject matter is pleasingly diverse. A resident of London now, she was born in Inverness in 1977 and grew up in Dingwall by the Cromarty Firth. Approachable but deeply accomplished, her poems are witty, smart and distinctive. When she visited the SPL, we had to grab her for a chat, not least because her second collection Room of Thieves (Salt, 2013) is a favourite of the staff. In our latest podcast, we talk to her about writing from an early age, moving down south and writing science fiction.
Vicki Husband is one of the most interesting Scottish poets to have emerged in the past year. 2016 saw the publication of her debut This Far Back Everything Shimmers (Vagabond Voices), which was shortlisted for the Saltire Society’s Scottish Poetry Book of the Year Award, where she found herself shortlisted alongside Kathleen Jamie and Don Paterson. Her poems mix science and the everyday, finding the cosmic in the quotidian and vice versa. She talks to the SPL about using bees to diagnose illness, her mentor, the late Alexander Hutchison, and why there are so many animals in her poems.
Buy This Far Back Everything Shimmers from the SPL shop.
‘I write because I must,’ says Vahni Capildeo, winner of the 2016 Forward Prize for Best Collection for Measures of Expatriation (published by Carcanet). ‘I think poetry,’ she says, ‘is a natural expression of humanity that has not been brutalized – which is able to take time and concentrate.’
In this podcast, Capildeo discusses the impact studying Old Norse at university had on her poetry, how women’s voices are silenced, and why she objects to the word ‘migrant’.
Tolu Agbelusi is a Nigerian British, poet, playwright, performer, educator and lawyer. Her work ‘addresses the unperformed self, womanhood and the art of living’. For our latest podcast, Suzannah V. Evans interviewed Agbelusi at StAnza, Scotland’s poetry festival, earlier this year. Agbelusi talks about building communities and empowering people through literature; she is the founder of Home Sessions, a development program and community for Black poets under 30.
Tishani Doshi’s third collection Girls are Coming Out of the Woods is one of the great collections of 2018. In August, while appearing at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, Doshi visited the SPL where she spoke about the new collection. On the podcast, she discusses writing poems that address violence against women during the MeToo era, how comfortable she is to describe herself as a poet, and why Patrick Swayze is worthy of an ode.
Over a decade has passed since Stewart Conn was Edinburgh’s Makar or Poet Laureate, yet the city continues to exert its influence upon him. His latest collection Aspects of Edinburgh maps the city as well as his fascination with its buildings, history and people.
Conn was born in 1936, growing up mainly in Kilmarnock, where his father was a minister. He worked at the BBC from 1962, mainly as a radio drama producer, becoming Head of Radio Drama, until he resigned in 1992. Publications include An Ear to the Ground (Poetry Book Society Choice); Stolen Light (shortlisted for the Saltire Prize), The Breakfast Room (2011 Scottish Poetry Book of the Year) and a new and selected volume The Touch of Time (Bloodaxe).
In our latest podcast, Conn discusses his collaboration with illustrator John Knight, and how he was initially wary of writing about the capital because he isn’t a native.
As the age of Brexit continues to bear down on Britain, Sean O’Brien returns with a collection called Europa(Picador). One of only two poets to win the Forward and T.S. Eliot Prizes for the same collection (The Drowned Book in 2007), O’Brien talks to the SPL about fascism, leaving Europe (and whether it’s actually even possible) and liking bands long after they’ve passed they sell-by date.
Penny Boxall is the winner of the 2016 Edwin Morgan Poetry Award and the 2018 Mslexia / Poetry Book Society Poetry Competition. She’s the author of two collections, Ship of the Line and Who Goes There?, both published by Valley Press.
She was born in 1987 and grew up in Aberdeenshire and Yorkshire. We spoke earlier this year and at the time of the interview she was Development Manager at Shandy Hall, Laurence Sterne’s house in the North York Moors.
Jackie Kay, who was one of the judges the year Boxall won, said of her poetry: ‘Penny Boxall runs a tight ship. Her poems are beautifully crafted. Reading her is to go on an interesting journey of exploration—stopping at fascinating places along the way. She has a curator’s mind and is always putting one thing beside another in an unexpected way.’
To coincide with Niall O’Gallagher’s appointment as Bàrd Baile Ghlaschu, Glasgow’s Gaelic poet laureate, we present an interview with O’Gallagher. His first book of poems, Beatha Ùr (Clàr), was published in 2013. Beatha Ùr continued Gaelic poetry’s long-running engagement with Scotland’s largest city. O’Gallagher’s second collection, Suain nan Trì Latha (2016), made this explicit in a series of poems, many addressed to the poet’s infant son, echoing classical Gaelic love lyrics. Although he’s translated other’s poetry from Gaelic to English, O’Gallagher has declined to translate his own poetry, preferring to rely on others, like Deborah Moffat and Peter Mackay, to produce English versions of his poems. During the podcast he talks about why he refuses to translate his own work, why Glasgow has always been a linguistic hub for Gaelic poetry, and what he plans to do as Bàrd Baile Ghlaschu.
This month Suzannah V Evans takes over as host; she’s in conversation with Mary Jean Chan in an interview recorded at StAnza, Scotland’s poetry festival, earlier this year.
Chan was born in 1990 and raised in Hong Kong before continuing her education at the Universities of Oxford and London. She’s already been nominated for the Forward Prize for Poetry’s Best Single Poem category twice and earlier this year she won an Eric Gregory Award. Her first full-length collection Flèche has just been published by Faber.
During the podcast, Chan discusses fencing (where the term ‘flèche’ comes from), how learning English at a young age made her realise some languages are more valued than others, and queerness.
Since forming in 2014, the Loud Poets have been wowing festival audiences from Edinburgh to Prague with their live shows. Comprised of Kevin Mclean, Catherine Wilson, Doug Garry, and Katie Ailes, plus musicians, plus a large number of ‘reserve members’, the Loud Poets have attracted a lively and loyal following.
In the SPL’s latest podcast, we ask the Loud Poets about their ‘origin story’, making space for their brand of spoken word, and what they plan to do at the special Christmas show they’re putting on here at the SPL.
That’s right. The Loud Poets will be performing at the SPL on Wednesday 7 December, 6pm (with tickets £7 pr £5 concessions). Figgy pudding not supplied. Tickets can be bought here.
If you would prefer to read, rather than listen to, our podcast with The Loud Poets, click here to see a transcript of the interview.
Liz Berry was born in the Black Country which gave her first collection its title. Black Country won a chorus of praise, not to mention a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, a Somerset Maugham Award, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Award and Forward Prize for Best First Collection. The collection is characterised by poems written in the Black Country dialect.
Her recent pamphlet The Republic of Motherhood was a Poetry Book Society Pamphlet choice and was shortlisted for the Michael Marks Award, while its title poem won the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem 2018. Recorded at the StAnza Poetry Festival in St Andrews, Berry talks about the lack of poetry that tells the truth about the experience of childbirth and rearing, the Black Country accent and pigeons.
Ken MacLeod is a novelist, poet and the editor of the SPL’s online anthology Best Scottish Poems 2015. We caught up with Ken last year to talk about the slim volume he’d just published, Poems, a collaboration with his friend, fellow Scot and poet/novelist Iain Banks. Banks, who died in 2013, has suggested co-publishing their poetry before his death, but the book’s appearance took on a new significance when it became clear it was going to be his last one. Ken discusses Poems’ genesis, the poets who turned him and the young Banks onto poetry, and the limericks that gave him the courage to take on T.S. Eliot with a poem that talks back to The Waste Land.
This month’s podcast features not one but two poets, both published by Blue Diode: Juana Adcock, author of Split, and Tessa Berring, author of Bitten Hair. The poets discuss what their other creative endeavours (translator and visual artist) feed into their poetry. They also discuss violence against women in Mexico, writing long poems, and why language is like froth.
Juana Adcock is a Mexican-born Scotland-based poet and translator who works in both English and Spanish. In her first book Manca, she explored her native country’s violence. Her translations have been published in Asymptote and Words Without Borders, and she has worked on translations for the British Council and Conaculta, Mexico’s council for culture and the arts.
Tessa Berring is an Edinburgh-based artist and writer. Her poetry has recently appeared in Gutter Magazine, Magma, and The Rialto. In 2017 her poetry sequence Cut Glass and No Flowers was published by Chicago-based Dancing Girl Press. She is also 1/12th of ’12’, a women’s poetry collective based in Scotland.
Joni Wallace grew up in Los Alamos, the birthplace of the atom bomb. Her latest collection Kingdom Come Radio Hour (Barrow Street Press), which is inspired by her childhood, focuses on the extraordinary life of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the nuclear bomb. Wallace discusses her personal connection to Oppenheimer, ‘documentary poetics’, Hank Williams, and why deer appear so often in her work.
J. L. Williams (also known as one of our former podcast hosts, Jennifer Williams) recently published a new collection After Economy (Shearsman), inspired by nanotechnology and a vision of a post-capitalist society. In May, she launched the book at Edinburgh's Talbot Rice Gallery, accompanied by cellist Atzi Muramatsu. In the latest episode of the SPL's podcast series, we include excerpts of Williams' and Muramatsu's performance, plus Williams talks about the inspiration behind After Economy.
Scotland’s leading living poet of its rural experience, Jim Carruth grew up on a family farm near Kilbarchan. His latest collection is Black Cart (Freight). In 2014 he was appointed Poet Laureate of Glasgow. He’s also one of the founders of St Mungo’s Mirrorball, which is responsible for one of Glasgow’s best poetry nights and for pairing emerging poets with experienced poets for a year’s mentorship.
In our latest podcast, Carruth discusses Scotland and the rural experience, mental health in the countryside, and not taking over the family farm.
The Library was saddened when we learned that the American poet Ilyse Kusnetz had died in 2016; two years before her death, she’d recorded a podcast with the Library. A new collection of work, Angel Bones, written while she was undergoing treatment for cancer, is about to be published by Alice James Books. The book has been overseen into publication by Kusnetz’s husband Brian Turner, a poet, editor and memoirist himself. He’s the author of the collections Here, Bullet and Phantom Noise and the memoir My Life as a Foreign Country. We spoke to Turner about Kusnetz and Angel Bones via Skype as he is living in Florida. He talks about her love of Scotland and its poetry, the anger contemporary politics caused her, and how her poems take you inside the process of treatment for cancer.
Hera Lindsay Bird is a poet from New Zealand. Her first poetry collection, also called Hera Lindsay Bird, was published in July 2016 by Victoria University Press and quickly sold out its first print run. A UK edition was published in November 2017. In August, when Bird was in Edinburgh to take part in the Edinburgh International Book Festival, she found time to come down to the Scottish Poetry Library. While in the Library, she spoke about hating wisely, what it’s like when a poem goes viral, and why sentiment is nothing to be scared of.
Henry Marsh is a Scottish poet who divides his time writing about the natural world and Scotland’s troubled history. In the past, he’s written about Mary Queen of Scots, John Knox and the Covenanters. In his latest collection, Under Winter Skies (Birlinn), Marsh focuses on James Graham, the first Marquess of Montrose, a brilliant soldier and poet who changed sides during the War of the Three Kingdoms. Marsh explains why he wanted to write an entire collection about this tragic figure in the SPL’s latest podcast.
Helen Mort is one of the UK’s most exciting young voices. She came into the SPL to talk about her second book No Maps Could Show Them (Chatto & Windus) and to read poems from the collection. During the course of the interview, she talks about female pioneers of mountaineering, the strange health risks men believed running posed women, and the historical characters she’s drawn to writing about.
You can order Helen’s second collection No Maps Could Show Them from the SPL shop.
If you would prefer to read, rather than listen to, our podcast with Helen Mort, click here to see a transcript of the interview.
Among the younger generation of Scottish poets, Harry Giles stands out. Shortlisted for the Edwin Morgan Poetry Award and the Forward Prize for Best Debut Collection, Giles is clearly going places. Last year saw the publication of the narrative verse sequence Drone in Our Real Red Selves (Vagabond Voices) and their full collection Tonguit (Freight Books). It seemed a good time to catch up with the poet and activist. We spoke to them about politics, a messy take on the Scots language, and the time the Daily Mail called them ‘vile’.
Fiona Moore works today as a full-time writer but, as you’ll hear in this podcast, she joined the Foreign Office after graduating from university, and it was through this job that she lived for periods in the 1980s in Eastern European countries behind the Iron Curtain. Her insights into totalitarianism inspired several poems which are all too timely. She reviews poetry, having served as an assistant editor for The Rialto. In 2014, she was Saboteur Best Reviewer. Her debut pamphlet, The Only Reason for Time, was a Guardian poetry book of the year and her second, Night Letter, was shortlisted for the Michael Marks Award for Poetry Pamphlets. Her first full collection, The Distal Point was published by HappenStance last year, and was described by her publisher as a book ‘in which she confronts personal loss and irretrievable change, as well as wider, more public themes—recent European history and the politics of power.’ In this podcast, Moore discusses grief, dictators and Brexit.
Many thanks to StAnza, Scotland’s International Poetry Festival, for making this podcast possible.
Ella Frears is a poet and visual artist based in south-east London. She has had poetry published in the LRB, Poetry London, Ambit, The Rialto, Poetry Daily, POEM, and the Moth among others. Her pamphlet Passivity, Electricity, Acclivity was published by Goldsmiths Press 2018. Her debut collection, Shine, Darling is published by Offord Road Books, and came out in April, 2020. Suzannah V Evans spoke with Ella Frears at the StAnza Poetry Festival in 2019. Frears reads her poems and discusses sand, vintage porn, and the interplay between her roles as a writer and visual artist.
Two poets, one podcast. Krystelle Bamford and Don Paterson are reading together at the Scottish Poetry Library at an event we’re holding on Wednesday 23 November, 6pm. Tickets are £7 (£5). Seemed like a good time to interview them together.
Bamford was born in the US but has been living in Edinburgh for over five years now. She completed an MLitt in Creative Writing at the University of St Andrews and has been published in The American Poetry Review and The Kenyon Review, and she has also won a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award.
Two-time winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry, Don Paterson more than deserves his reputation as one of Britain’s foremost poets. His latest collection is 40 Sonnets (Faber). He hails from Dundee, and is living in Edinburgh these days.
Both poets came into the SPL in July where the poets spoke about translations, sonnets and what sort of a character makes for a good poem.
If you would prefer to read, rather than listen to, our podcast with Don Paterson and Krystelle Bamford, click here to see a transcript of the interview.
Claire Askew is the author of an acclaimed debut, This Changes Things (Bloodaxe), and has been shortlisted for the 2016 Edwin Morgan Poetry Award. Her poetry challenges its readers to consider the position from which they interpret it. She isn’t content to merely point the finger; her work proceeds from an ongoing questioning of her own background and what it might blind her to. In our latest podcast, Askew discusses privilege, the danger of appropriating the experience of others, and why she’s so drawn to writing poems about her grandparents.
If you would prefer to read, rather than listen to, our podcast with Claire Askew, click here to see the transcript of the interview.
Our latest podcast departs from our usual interview format. It’s a recording of a reading held in the Scottish Poetry Library in March. The poets featured are Nina Bogin, Eoghan Walls and Beverley Bie Brahic.
Nina Bogin (pictured) was born in New York City and received a B.A. degree from New York University. She has lived in France since 1976. She taught English and literature at the University of Technology of Belfort-Montbéliard in France, until her retirement in 2017. Graywolf Press published her first book of poems, In the North, in 1989. Two books of poems followed, The Winter Orchards in 2001 and The Lost Hare in 2012, both published by Anvil Press. Her latest collection, Thousandfold, is published by Carcanet.
Eoghan Walls was born in Derry in Northern Ireland. He attended Atlantic College on the coast of South Wales and has lived and taught in Germany, Rwanda, Scotland and presently, northern England. He won an Eric Gregory Award in 2006. His first collection of poems, The Salt Harvest, was published by Seren in 2011 and was shortlisted for the Strong Award for Best First Collection. He teaches creative writing at Lancaster University. His latest collection is Pigeon Songs, which is published by Seren.
Beverley Bie Brahic is a poet and translator. A Canadian, she lives in Paris and the San Francisco Bay Area. Her second poetry collection, White Sheets, was a finalist for the 2012 Forward Prize. Brahic’s translations include Guillaume Apollinaire’s The Little Auto, winner of the 2013 Scott Moncrieff Prize; and books by Jacques Derrida and Julia Kristeva. Her latest collection is The Hotel Eden, which is published by Carcanet.
Best Scottish Poems is an online selection of twenty of the best poems by Scottish authors to appear in books, pamphlets and literary magazines during 2015. The latest edition was guest edited by novelist and poet Ken MacLeod. Our latest podcast features the poets who appear in the anthology reading their work. Includes Kathleen Jamie, Ryan Van Winkle, Ron Butlin, Christine De Luca, JL Williams and many, many more.
Image: Helen Douglas
Andrew McMillan is the author of Physical (published by Jonathan Cape), which won the Guardian First Book Award, the first time a collection of poetry won the prize. He was born in 1988 and grew up in a small village outside Barnsley in south Yorkshire, studying English at Lancaster and University College London before becoming a lecturer in creative writing at Liverpool John Moores University.
He visited the SPL in August of 2016 while up in Edinburgh for the EIBF. During the course of the interview he talks about the one thing he tries to instill in his creative writing students, the criminal neglect of poet Thom Gunn, and why there are so few poems about going to the gym.
Image: Urszula Sołtys
Apologies: during the course of the podcast we say that Physical is published by Picador. It is in fact published by Jonathan Cape.
Our first podcast of 2018 features an interview with new Edinburgh Makar Alan Spence. Novelist, short-story writer, dramatist and, of course, poet, Spence is one of the leading lights of the Scottish literary scene. With his work informed by his Buddhism, Spence imbues his poetry with both a cosmic perspective and a Scottish sensibility to comic and enlightening effect. During the course of the interview, Spence discusses Zen and the art of poetry, working with visual artists, and the rivalry between Glasgow and Edinburgh.
Over 250 years ago, Alasdair Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair (Alexander MacDonald) wrote The Birlinn of Clanranald (Kettillonia, £5), an epic poem in Gaelic describing the troubled voyage of a galley from South Uist to Northern Ireland. Scotland itself was going through a stormy period post-Culloden, which the author, as a Jacobite sympathizer, knew fine well.
Poet and Professor of Scottish literature Alan Riach has recently published an English-language version of The Birlinn of Clanranald, and he came into the Library to discuss it. Over 30 minutes he talks about translating from Gaelic when you’re not fluent in the language, Alasdair Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair’s dangerous times, and why the climatic storm sequence is reminiscent of H.P. Lovecraft.
Pàdraig MacAoidh / Peter Mackay is a native Gaelic speaker from the Isle of Lewis. He is an academic, writer and broadcaster whose work is influenced by the diverse linguistic heritage of his birthplace. His debut collection, Gu Leòr / Galore, was published by Acair. In our latest podcast, Mackay discusses repressed Scots, journalism versus poetry, and growing up bilingual.
Towards the end of 2018, Don Paterson came to the Scottish Poetry Library to discuss his latest book, The Fall at Home: New and Collected Aphorisms, which is published by Faber. Winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize and Whitbread Poetry Award, Paterson is one of Scotland’s most accomplished poets, not to mention a musician, and in recent years has published several volumes of aphorisms, which are brought together in The Fall at Home. During the podcast, he discusses the relationship between poetry and aphorisms, why the English-speaking world doesn’t have a strong tradition of aphorisms, and what happened the time he attended an aphorists convention.
A year into the Covid-19 era, the publisher Shearsman Books is putting out a new title, Poetry and Covid 19 – An Anthology of Contemporary International and Collaborative Poetry. It’s edited by Anthony Caleshu and Rory Waterman, the idea being to pair 19 UK-based poets with poets from around the world to work on poems together. As the blurb puts it: ‘The poems herein are as personal as they are communal, and as local as they are international. Between them, the writers reside in all of the world’s permanently populated continents, recognising that the pandemic has truly hit us everywhere.’
We have not one but two podcasts based on the book coming up, this month’s and we’ll put out another next month. The contributors to this podcast are Rory Waterman, who’ll chair proceedings, a poet from Nottingham who has three collections published by Carcanet. Linda Stern Zisquit is an American-born Israeli poet and translator. And finally Declan Ryan, who was born in County Mayo, and who has lived mainly in London. His first pamphlet was published in the Faber New Poets series.
Before becoming a poet, Aileen Ballantyne was a journalist, and it’s her former profession that informs her poetry, not least in a sequence of poems in her recently published collection Taking Flight that explore the aftermath of 1988’s Lockerbie bombing, still the worst terrorist attack to take place on British soil. Ballantyne also reads poems about the moon landing and childhood flights to the USA.
Winner of the 2017 Forward Prize, Sinéad Morrissey visited the Scottish Poetry Library to talk about her latest collection, On Balance (Carcanet).
Morrissey grew up in Northern Ireland. At the age of 18, she won the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award, an early indicator of future success. She’s worked with schools, charities, prisoners, and while Laureate of Belfast, she met the Queen. Currently, she’s living in Northumberland and working in the creative writing department at the University of Newcastle.
During the course of the podcast, Morrissey talks about her fascination with engineering, her grandfather’s communism, and why writing is a ‘spooky art’.
You can buy On Balance online from the SPL Shop, if you click here.
Muriel Spark’s 100th birthday was celebrated in 2018 in several ways honouring her status as arguably the greatest Scottish novelist of the twentieth century. One of the more imaginative ways came late in the year with the publication of Spark: Poetry and Art Inspired by the Novels of Muriel Spark, which was edited by poets Rob A Mackenzie and Louise Peterkin and published by Blue Diode. With contributors including Tishani Doshi, Vahni Capildeo and Sean O’Brien, the anthology does Spark justice. Mackenzie and Peterkin came into the SPL to talk about Spark and her career as a poet, from her controversial time at the Poetry Society in the 1940s to how poetry informed her novels. Plus a tribute to the late Matthew Sweeney.
Scottish Poetry Library's Sam Tongue runs a monthly online meet-up, where Friends of the Poetry Library get together to read and discuss a fresh poet and their poems.
In this podcast, Sam introduces us to the general style and format, and enjoys the work of Jay Whittaker
Have a look at our website to find out about becoming a Friend, and join us for the next Nothing but the Poem meet-up. Or simply enjoy this podcast and the excellent poems therein.
Scottish Poetry Library's Sam Tongue runs a monthly online meet-up, where Friends of the Poetry Library get together to read and discuss a fresh poet and their poems.
In this podcast, Sam introduces us to Daniel Sluman
Have a look at our website to find out about becoming a Friend, and join us for the next Nothing but the Poem meet-up. Or simply enjoy this podcast and the excellent poems therein.