Scottish Poetry Library Podcast

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.

Helen Mort

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.

Harry Josephine Giles

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’.

Fiona Moore

Fiona Moore works today as a full-time writer but, as you’ll hear in this podcast, she joined the Foreign Office after graduating from university, and it was through this job that she lived for periods in the 1980s in Eastern European countries behind the Iron Curtain. Her insights into totalitarianism inspired several poems which are all too timely. She reviews poetry, having served as an assistant editor for The Rialto. In 2014, she was Saboteur Best Reviewer. Her debut pamphlet, The Only Reason for Time, was a Guardian poetry book of the year and her second, Night Letter, was shortlisted for the Michael Marks Award for Poetry Pamphlets. Her first full collection, The Distal Point was published by HappenStance last year, and was described by her publisher as a book ‘in which she confronts personal loss and irretrievable change, as well as wider, more public themes—recent European history and the politics of power.’ In this podcast, Moore discusses grief, dictators and Brexit.
Many thanks to StAnza, Scotland’s International Poetry Festival, for making this podcast possible.

Ella Frears

Ella Frears is a poet and visual artist based in south-east London. She has had poetry published in the LRB, Poetry London, Ambit, The Rialto, Poetry Daily, POEM, and the Moth among others. Her pamphlet Passivity, Electricity, Acclivity was published by Goldsmiths Press 2018. Her debut collection, Shine, Darling is published by Offord Road Books, and came out in April, 2020. Suzannah V Evans spoke with Ella Frears at the StAnza Poetry Festival in 2019. Frears reads her poems and discusses sand, vintage porn, and the interplay between her roles as a writer and visual artist.

Don Paterson and Krystelle Bamford

Two poets, one podcast. Krystelle Bamford and Don Paterson are reading together at the Scottish Poetry Library at an event we’re holding on Wednesday 23 November, 6pm. Tickets are £7 (£5). Seemed like a good time to interview them together.
Bamford was born in the US but has been living in Edinburgh for over five years now. She completed an MLitt in Creative Writing at the University of St Andrews and has been published in The American Poetry Review and The Kenyon Review, and she has also won a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award.
Two-time winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry, Don Paterson more than deserves his reputation as one of Britain’s foremost poets. His latest collection is 40 Sonnets (Faber). He hails from Dundee, and is living in Edinburgh these days.
Both poets came into the SPL in July where the poets spoke about translations, sonnets and what sort of a character makes for a good poem.
If you would prefer to read, rather than listen to, our podcast with Don Paterson and Krystelle Bamford, click here to see a transcript of the interview.

Claire Askew

Claire Askew is the author of an acclaimed debut, This Changes Things (Bloodaxe), and has been shortlisted for the 2016 Edwin Morgan Poetry Award. Her poetry challenges its readers to consider the position from which they interpret it. She isn’t content to merely point the finger; her work proceeds from an ongoing questioning of her own background and what it might blind her to. In our latest podcast, Askew discusses privilege, the danger of appropriating the experience of others, and why she’s so drawn to writing poems about her grandparents.
If you would prefer to read, rather than listen to, our podcast with Claire Askew, click here to see the transcript of the interview.

Nina Bogin, Eoghan Walls and Beverley Bie Brahic

Our latest podcast departs from our usual interview format. It’s a recording of a reading held in the Scottish Poetry Library in March. The poets featured are Nina Bogin, Eoghan Walls and Beverley Bie Brahic.
Nina Bogin (pictured) was born in New York City and received a B.A. degree from New York University. She has lived in France since 1976. She taught English and literature at the University of Technology of Belfort-Montbéliard in France, until her retirement in 2017. Graywolf Press published her first book of poems, In the North, in 1989. Two books of poems followed, The Winter Orchards in 2001 and The Lost Hare in 2012, both published by Anvil Press. Her latest collection, Thousandfold, is published by Carcanet.
Eoghan Walls was born in Derry in Northern Ireland. He attended Atlantic College on the coast of South Wales and has lived and taught in Germany, Rwanda, Scotland and presently, northern England. He won an Eric Gregory Award in 2006. His first collection of poems, The Salt Harvest, was published by Seren in 2011 and was shortlisted for the Strong Award for Best First Collection. He teaches creative writing at Lancaster University. His latest collection is Pigeon Songs, which is published by Seren.
Beverley Bie Brahic is a poet and translator. A Canadian, she lives in Paris and the San Francisco Bay Area. Her second poetry collection, White Sheets, was a finalist for the 2012 Forward Prize. Brahic’s translations include Guillaume Apollinaire’s The Little Auto, winner of the 2013 Scott Moncrieff Prize; and books by Jacques Derrida and Julia Kristeva. Her latest collection is The Hotel Eden, which is published by Carcanet.