Scottish Poetry Library Podcast

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.

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.