Scottish Poetry Library Podcast

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...

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...

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 o...

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...

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...

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 spir...

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...

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 worl...

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...

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 poem...

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 tal...

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 poet...

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 p...

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...

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, includ...

“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 obsess...

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...

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...

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 documentar...

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 f...

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...

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 writi...

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.  M...