Scottish Poetry Library Podcast

The Loud Poets

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

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

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.

Juana Adcock and Tessa Berring

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

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.

JL Williams- After Economy

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.

Jim Carruth

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.

Ilysa Kusnetz and Brian Turner

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

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

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.