Scottish Poetry Library Podcast

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 Poem is 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:
1. Failing and Flying
2. 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.