Scottish Poetry Library Podcast

Best Scottish Poems 2015

Best Scottish Poems is an online selection of twenty of the best poems by Scottish authors to appear in books, pamphlets and literary magazines during 2015. The latest edition was guest edited by novelist and poet Ken MacLeod. Our latest podcast features the poets who appear in the anthology reading their work. Includes Kathleen Jamie, Ryan Van Winkle, Ron Butlin, Christine De Luca, JL Williams and many, many more.
Image: Helen Douglas

Andrew McMillan

Andrew McMillan is the author of Physical (published by Jonathan Cape), which won the Guardian First Book Award, the first time a collection of poetry won the prize. He was born in 1988 and grew up in a small village outside Barnsley in south Yorkshire, studying English at Lancaster and University College London before becoming a lecturer in creative writing at Liverpool John Moores University.
He visited the SPL in August of 2016 while up in Edinburgh for the EIBF. During the course of the interview he talks about the one thing he tries to instill in his creative writing students, the criminal neglect of poet Thom Gunn, and why there are so few poems about going to the gym.
Image: Urszula Sołtys
Apologies: during the course of the podcast we say that Physical is published by Picador. It is in fact published by Jonathan Cape.

Alan Spence

Our first podcast of 2018 features an interview with new Edinburgh Makar Alan Spence. Novelist, short-story writer, dramatist and, of course, poet, Spence is one of the leading lights of the Scottish literary scene. With his work informed by his Buddhism, Spence imbues his poetry with both a cosmic perspective and a Scottish sensibility to comic and enlightening effect. During the course of the interview, Spence discusses Zen and the art of poetry, working with visual artists, and the rivalry between Glasgow and Edinburgh.

Alan Riach

Over 250 years ago, Alasdair Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair (Alexander MacDonald) wrote The Birlinn of Clanranald (Kettillonia, £5), an epic poem in Gaelic describing the troubled voyage of a galley from South Uist to Northern Ireland. Scotland itself was going through a stormy period post-Culloden, which the author, as a Jacobite sympathizer, knew fine well.
Poet and Professor of Scottish literature Alan Riach has recently published an English-language version of The Birlinn of Clanranald, and he came into the Library to discuss it. Over 30 minutes he talks about translating from Gaelic when you’re not fluent in the language, Alasdair Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair’s dangerous times, and why the climatic storm sequence is reminiscent of H.P. Lovecraft.

Peter Mackay

Pàdraig MacAoidh / Peter Mackay is a native Gaelic speaker from the Isle of Lewis. He is an academic, writer and broadcaster whose work is influenced by the diverse linguistic heritage of his birthplace. His debut collection, Gu Leòr / Galore, was published by Acair. In our latest podcast, Mackay discusses repressed Scots, journalism versus poetry, and growing up bilingual.

Don Paterson on Aphorisms

Towards the end of 2018, Don Paterson came to the Scottish Poetry Library to discuss his latest book, The Fall at Home: New and Collected Aphorisms, which is published by Faber. Winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize and Whitbread Poetry Award, Paterson is one of Scotland’s most accomplished poets, not to mention a musician, and in recent years has published several volumes of aphorisms, which are brought together in The Fall at Home. During the podcast, he discusses the relationship between poetry and aphorisms, why the English-speaking world doesn’t have a strong tradition of aphorisms, and what happened the time he attended an aphorists convention.

Poetry and Covid-19 part 1

A year into the Covid-19 era, the publisher Shearsman Books is putting out a new title, Poetry and Covid 19 – An Anthology of Contemporary International and Collaborative Poetry. It’s edited by Anthony Caleshu and Rory Waterman, the idea being to pair 19 UK-based poets with poets from around the world to work on poems together. As the blurb puts it: ‘The poems herein are as personal as they are communal, and as local as they are international. Between them, the writers reside in all of the world’s permanently populated continents, recognising that the pandemic has truly hit us everywhere.’
We have not one but two podcasts based on the book coming up, this month’s and we’ll put out another next month. The contributors to this podcast are Rory Waterman, who’ll chair proceedings, a poet from Nottingham who has three collections published by Carcanet. Linda Stern Zisquit is an American-born Israeli poet and translator. And finally Declan Ryan, who was born in County Mayo, and who has lived mainly in London. His first pamphlet was published in the Faber New Poets series.

Aileen Ballantyne

Before becoming a poet, Aileen Ballantyne was a journalist, and it’s her former profession that informs her poetry, not least in a sequence of poems in her recently published collection Taking Flight that explore the aftermath of 1988’s Lockerbie bombing, still the worst terrorist attack to take place on British soil. Ballantyne also reads poems about the moon landing and childhood flights to the USA.

Sinead Morrissey

Winner of the 2017 Forward Prize, Sinéad Morrissey visited the Scottish Poetry Library to talk about her latest collection, On Balance (Carcanet).
Morrissey grew up in Northern Ireland. At the age of 18, she won the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award, an early indicator of future success. She’s worked with schools, charities, prisoners, and while Laureate of Belfast, she met the Queen. Currently, she’s living in Northumberland and working in the creative writing department at the University of Newcastle.
During the course of the podcast, Morrissey talks about her fascination with engineering, her grandfather’s communism, and why writing is a ‘spooky art’.
You can buy On Balance online from the SPL Shop, if you click here.

Happy 100th Birthday, Muriel Spark! With Rob A Mackenzie and Louise Peterkin

Muriel Spark’s 100th birthday was celebrated in 2018 in several ways honouring her status as arguably the greatest Scottish novelist of the twentieth century. One of the more imaginative ways came late in the year with the publication of Spark: Poetry and Art Inspired by the Novels of Muriel Spark, which was edited by poets Rob A Mackenzie and Louise Peterkin and published by Blue Diode. With contributors including Tishani Doshi, Vahni Capildeo and Sean O’Brien, the anthology does Spark justice. Mackenzie and Peterkin came into the SPL to talk about Spark and her career as a poet, from her controversial time at the Poetry Society in the 1940s to how poetry informed her novels. Plus a tribute to the late Matthew Sweeney.