Scottish Poetry Library Podcast

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’.