Scottish Poetry Library Podcast

From the Archives: The Gift to See Ourselves – The Best Scottish Poetry Collections. December 2012

We have all heard the arguments in favour of Scotland’s best poet or favourite poem, but what about its greatest collection?
In this recording from 2012, the SPL invited two guests – James Robertson, poet, publisher and author of the novels And the Land Lay Still and The Testament of Gideon Mack, and Dorothy McMillan, editor of Modern Scottish Women Poets and former Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Glasgow – to join then SPL director Robyn Marsack to discuss what might be Scotland’s best collections of poetry in an extended podcast.
Image: Seaweed by Lucy Burnett

From the Archive: Anita Govan. November 2014

Anita Govan has been involved in performance poetry for many years, long before it became as widespread as it is today, both as a performer and an organiser of events. Sceptical of the competitive aspects of slams, she still takes part in them and organises them for young people as she recognises their part in giving people a forum in which to share their experiences. In this podcast Jennifer Williams talks to Govan about her time as the Stirling Makar, coping with dyslexia, and standing up for young people.

From the Archive: The Written World. October 2012

The Written World was the Scottish Poetry Library’s London 2012 project. To mark the Olympics, we launched a scheme to find a poem for each of the 204 countries taking part, which were then broadcast on BBC Radio. In October 2012, with the project over, we took the chance to look back on The Written World with its project manager Sarah Stewart.
We also talked to Richard Price, whose poem ‘Hedge Sparrows’ was chosen to represent Team GB, and William Letford, who the SPL asked to write a poem marking the end of the tournament. A trio of poets is rounded out by Mariama Khan, a poet representing Gambia at Poetry Parnassus, another international event linked to the Olympics.

From the Archive: Aonghas MacNeacail. Feb 2013

Aonghas MacNeacail (1942-2022) was a leading voice in Gaelic poetry for decades, as poet, and as a regular literary commentator in print and on Gaelic radio. To celebrate his seventieth birthday in 2012 he published a new selected poems, Laughing at the Clock / Déanamh Gáire Ris A’ Chloc. MacNeacail came into the SPL in 2013 to talk about his life and career, from his childhood in Uig on the Isle of Skye to his membership of Philip Hobsbaum’s legendary writing group. He also talked about his struggles as a Gaelic speaker in an English language-dominated culture, including an oddly strenuous struggle with the telephone directory people.

From the Archive: Ian Bell on Bob Dylan. December 2013

Bob Dylan has played many roles in his life: voice of a generation, rock ‘n’ roll Judas, Christian convert, even Victoria’s Secret salesman. The one that concerned the SPL podcast in 2013 was ‘poet’.
Across two biographies – Once Upon A Time and Time Out of Mind (both Mainstream) – Ian Bell (1956-2015) considered Dylan in a more literary context than any other biographer of His Bobness. Over the course of this podcast, we discussed whether Dylan can really be considered a poet, the writers who influenced him, his Scottish connection, and his encounters with poets such as Carl Sandburg, Archibald McLeish and Allen Ginsberg.
Image: Bob Dylan, Paris, France 1966 by Paul Townsend, under a Creative Commons licence.

Wild Writing talk to the SPL

Lorna French and Anna Gray lead small groups of (mostly) women to let loose their wild side, to dive in to their unconscious and find their buried treasure. Wild Writers are creatives, public sector workers, teenagers, or any other type of human who is boldly, and often messily, transforming on their hero’s or heroine’s journey.
Ahead of their workshops at the SPL in April and May 2025, Kevin Williamson chats to Lorna and Anna about what they mean by 'wild writing', and how this can help stimulate a different, more unconscious or free way in to workshop writing.
Tickets for the SPL Wild Writing workshops are available here.
Other Wild Writing courses can be found here.

From the Archive: Best Scottish Poems 2012

Best Scottish Poems is the Scottish Poetry Library’s annual online anthology of the 20 Best Scottish Poems, edited each year by a different editor. Bookshops and libraries – with honourable exceptions – often provide a very narrow range of poetry, and Scottish poetry in particular. Best Scottish Poems offers readers in Scotland and abroad a way of sampling the range and achievement of our poets, their languages, forms, concerns.
It is in no sense a competition but a personal choice, and this year’s editors, the novelists Louise Welsh and Zoë Strachan, checked and balanced each other’s predilections. Their introduction demonstrates how widely they read, and how intensely. All the Best Scottish Poems selections are available on the SPL website.
This special podcast features readings by established voices and emerging talent. With readings by Kathleen Jamie, Liz Lochhead, Robin Robertson, John Burnside, and many more. 
Photo by Jen Hadfield.

From the Archive: MacGillivray. February 2014

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.

From the Archive: Kae (Kate)Tempest. September 2013

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

From the Archive: Jenny Lindsay. August 2014

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.