Scottish Poetry Library Podcast

Angela Cleland

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

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.

Vahni Capildeo

‘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

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

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. 

Stewart Conn

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.

Sean O’Brien

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

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.’

Niall O’Gallagher

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.

Mary Jean Chan

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.