Scottish Poetry Library Podcast

Scottish Poetry Library's Sam Tongue runs a monthly online meet-up, where Friends of the Poetry Library get together to read and discuss a fresh poet and their poems. In this podcast, Sam introduces us to Daniel Sluman Have a look at our website to find out about becoming a Friend, and join us for the next Nothing but the Poem meet-up. Or simply enjoy this podcast and the excellent poems therein. 

Scottish Poetry Library's Sam Tongue runs a monthly online meet-up, where Friends of the Poetry Library get together to read and discuss a fresh poet and their poems. In this podcast, Sam introduces us to the general style and format, and enjoys the work of Jay WhittakerHave a look at our website to find out about becoming a Friend, and join us for the next Nothing but the Poem meet-up. Or simply enjoy this podcast and the excellent poems therein. 

Almost a year and a half into the Covid-19 era, the publisher Shearsman Books has published 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.’

Anthony Caleshu chairs a lively chat about pandemic poetry with two poets who collaborated for the anthology: from India, Sharmistha Mohanty, and from England, David Herd.

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.

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.

 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. 

Rob A. Mackenzie's latest collection of poetry, which is published by Salt, is called The Book of Revelation. The first half of the book pairs chapters from the Biblical Book of Revelation with poems inspired by them.

Mackenzie was born in Glasgow. He studied law and then switched to theology then spent a year in Seoul, eight years in Lanarkshire, five years in Turin, and now lives in Leith. He is reviews editor of Magma poetry magazine and until the pandemic struck he co-organised the monthly Edinburgh live poetry event, Vespers.

During the interview Mackenzie discusses why prophets usually come to bad ends, the genius of Mark E Smith, why twitter might not be good for poets and contemporary religious poetry.

Image: Ryan McGoverne

Louise Peterkin's debut collection The Night Jar (published by Salt) adds new twists on fairy tales, Bond henchmen, Hitchcock and HP Lovecraft to its devil's brew. Based in Edinburgh, Peterkin discusses how her love of classic horror films inspired poems, how to approach the work of great artists whose personal life and views are troubling, and her recurring character, a nun called Sister Agnieszka.

Index of Haunted Houses, the debut collection by Adam O. Davis, uses ghosts and hauntings to talk about the perilous economic and social moment the United States finds itself in currently.

During this podcast, released in time for Halloween, Davis discusses how we've come to use the language of the uncanny to describe the world we live in today, why hauntings are, counter-intuitively, a great metaphors for the nature of life, and what capitalism has in common with Bruce Willis' character in The Sixth Sense.

Adam O. Davis is a poet, teacher and photographer, and his haunting photos appear throughout Index of Haunted Houses. He was in born in Tucson, Arizona and raised in various places including Utah, France, New Jersey, California, and Scotland. His work has appeared in many journals, including The believer, the Paris review, and the Poetry Review.

Beverley Bie Brahic is a Canadian poet and translator who lives in Paris, France and the San Francisco Bay Area. Her poetry collection, White Sheets, was a finalist for the Forward Prize and a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. Her translations include Guillaume Apollinaire, Francis Ponge and Yves Bonnefoy. Suzannah V. Evans spoke with her at StAnza 2020, where she discussed how translating poetry inspires her own work, owning a secret shelf of erotic literature, and being a 'selfish translator'.