Scottish Poetry Library Podcast

Podcasts from the Scottish Poetry Library, the world’s leading resource for poetry from Scotland and beyond.

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Episodes

Sunday Mar 16, 2025

In this podcast the poet and artist MacGillivray reads from and discusses her book, The Last Wolf of Scotland (Pighog).
The collection is an exploration of connections between Scotland and the American Frontier whose form brilliantly reflects the subject matter of the poems. MacGillivray joins Jennifer Williams in a conversation that maps the rich web of influences from which her poetry emerges, taking in Doors front-man Jim Morrison, mock ancient Scottish bard Ossian, and the mysterious ‘Man with Fourteen Lives’. Plus a debate about whether poetry works better on the page or read aloud, or memorised and recited.

Sunday Mar 09, 2025

In this 2013 podcast, Jennifer Williams talks to poet, playwright and recording artist Kate Tempest* about hip hop, poetry, their play Brand New Ancients, mythology, world peace and much more. Kate has written plays for Paines Plough and the Battersea Arts Centre, written poetry for the Royal Shakespeare Company, Channel 4 and the BBC, worked in schools and won the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry 2012, for Brand New Ancients. 
*In 2020 the musician and poet formerly named Kate Tempest changed their name to Kae Tempest, and announced they are non-binary. In the announcement on Instagram, Tempest said they were changing the pronouns they use, from she and her to they and them.
Image © Melanie Flash

Sunday Mar 02, 2025

Jenny Lindsay was co-creator of the popular ‘poetry cabaret’ Rally and Broad (which ran from 2012-2016), a hit originally in Edinburgh that spread its wings to Glasgow. In this 2014 podcast, we talked to Jenny about her poetry and the lively spoken word scene in Scotland.
Photo by Alex Aitchison.

Nothing But The Poem - RS Thomas

Wednesday Feb 26, 2025

Wednesday Feb 26, 2025

The famous Welsh poet RS Thomas is the subject of this month's Nothing But The Poem podcast.
Anne Stevenson of the Listener describes Thomas as a religious poet who 'sees tragedy, not pathos, in the human condition' ... 'He is one of the rare poets writing today who never asks for pity.'
'Like the Welsh countryside he writes about, Thomas's poetry is often harsh and austere, written in plain, somber language, with a meditative quality.' - The Poetry Foundation 
Our resident podcast host Sam Tongue took an immersive dive into two RS Thomas poems: From The Farm  and Reservoirs. Find out what Sam - and the Friends Of The SPL group - took from these poems in this Nothing But The Poem podcast.

Sunday Feb 23, 2025

Poet Chrys Salt talks about who has the right to write about certain subjects, about writing war poetry when you have a son who is a soldier, and how poetry can benefit from a good performance.
Thanks to James Iremonger for the music in this podcast.

Sunday Feb 16, 2025

Brian Johnstone (1950 - 2021) was a poet and former director of the StAnza poetry festival. In this archive podcast he discusses the highlights of his StAnza career, what he thinks makes a good poetry festival, his own work and his creative improvisations as part of jazz-poetry combo Trio Verso. Featuring the tracks ‘Storm Chaser’ and ‘The Sound of Breaking Glass’.
Presented by Ryan Van Winkle. Produced by Colin Fraser. Incidental music by Ewen Maclean.

Sunday Feb 09, 2025

Alexander Hutchison (1942-2015) was a poet and translator in Scots and English. His first book Deep-Tap Tree (University of Massachusetts Press, 1978) is still in print. Other collections include The Moon Calf (Galliard, 1990) and Carbon Atom (Link-Light, 2006). Melodic Cells, an interview with Hutchison conducted by Andrew Duncan appears in Don’t Start Me Talking: Interviews with Contemporary Poets (Salt: Cambridge, 2006). Salt also published Scales Dog: New and Selected Poems in 2007. In this podcast former SPL Programme Manager Jennifer Williams talks to Alexander about his then most recent collection, Bones & Breath (Salt), tardigrades, ancient spears, the poet’s voice and much more!

Thursday Feb 06, 2025

Niall Campbell is the subject of this month's Nothing But The Poem podcast. The South Uist poet has had three collections of poetry published, has won many major poetry prizes, and is currently poetry editor of Poetry London.
​‘Noctuary is a homage to night-time, to "that midnight thrill of being alive", to the small, stray moments that make up a life. It is also a passionately tender examination of what it means to have and care for a small child.’ – Suzannah V. Evans, Times Literary Supplement
'The poems in the book place his Hebridean homeland in an ever-shifting mosaic of tidal gifts, memories, folklore, conversations and people. Always there is an awareness of the sea that surrounds, that change is constant, and that there is no going back.’ – The Scotsman, Poem of the Week, on The Island in the Sound
Our resident podcast host Sam Tongue took an immersive dive into two Niallcampbel poems. The Night Watch from his second collection 'Noctuary' (2019, Bloodaxe) and Apprenticeship from his third collection 'The Island in the Sound' (2024, Bloodaxe). Find out what Sam - and the Friends Of The SPL group - took from these poems in this Nothing But The Poem podcast.

Sunday Feb 02, 2025

Walking With Poets was an SPL project that looked at an old subject, nature, using new media. We put four poets – Sue Butler, Mandy Haggith, Jean Atkin and Gerry Loose – into Scotland’s botanic gardens. For this special podcast, we interviewed each of the poets in their garden.

Thursday Jan 30, 2025


Possessing a friendship that spanned the Atlantic, Scotland’s John Burnside (1955-2024) and America’s Allison Funk were captured in conversation, speaking about what they enjoy about each other’s countries, from poetry and music to the mutability of the landscape and people.
Allison Funk is the author of four volumes of verse, including The Tumbling Box (2009). John Burnside’s Black Cat Bone (2011), is one of only two titles to have won both the Forward Prize and the TS Eliot Prize for Poetry.
In a conversation that runs from delta blues to Virginia Woolf, Funk and Burnside explain the way in which they’ve influenced each other’s work while still being ‘opposite sides of the same coin’.

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Welcome to the Scottish Poetry Library podcast

Our podcast is published fairly regularly with a combination of new and archive episodes going back to the opening of the new library building in 1999. The Scottish Poetry Library website also has a wealth of poems and resources to explore. Finally, you can visit us in our beautiful building just off the Royal Mile in Edinburgh. It's free to join and free to visit.

Photo of the mystery book sculpture Poetree is by Chris Scott.

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