Scottish Poetry Library Podcast

In this podcast SPL Programme Manager talks to poet, teacher and editor Antonio Ochoa about living and working with, translating and editing the Uruguayan poet Eduardo Milan (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Selected-Poems-Eduardo-Milan/dp/1848612001). Antonio reads some of Eduardo’s poems as well as his own, in both Spanish and English.

Find some of Antonio’s poetry here: http://www.spdbooks.org/Producte/15367479/ecopoetics-no-67.aspx

Find out more about Antonio here: http://www.mobius.org/events/cut-time

Music by James Iremonger: http://jamesiremonger.co.uk/

Iain Sinclair is one of the UK's greatest living writers. Famed for his novels, such as Downriver, and documentary prose, most famously perhaps London Orbital, Sinclair began his career self-publishing his own poetry on his Albion Village Press in the 1970s. This year sees the publication of three books, 2 poetry collections and a longer book on his relationship with the Beats. Colin Waters travelled to Sinclair's home in Hackney in May 2012, where he asked Sinclair about his Scottish roots, John Clare and his lost 1970s collection Red Eye, which is being published this year by Test Centre.

Picture of Iain Sinclair by Luca Del Baldo.

In January this year Reel Festivals http://reelfestivals.org organised a series of events and translation workshops in Erbil, Iraq with Scottish and Iraqi poets. They then came over to Scotland in March (with one exception) and gave readings of the translations they had worked on earlier in the year. This podcast features all of the participants talking about their experience and reading from a selection of the translations and includes the following poets: John Glenday, Jen Hadfield, Ghareeb Iskander, William Letford, Krystelle Bamford, Awezan Nouri, Sabreen Kadhim, Zaher Mousa with support from Dina Mousawi and Lauren Pyott. Presented by Ryan Van Winkle @rvwable. Produced by Colin Fraser @kailworm of Culture Laser Productions http://culturelaser.com @culturelaser. Music by Khyam Allami.

In this podcast, Jennifer Williams, SPL Programme Manager, talks to Polish poet, essayist, editor and critic Tadeusz Dąbrowski. They are joined by Kasia Kokowska of Interaktywny Salon Piszących w Szkocji, who came along to help with translating. He has also been the winner of numerous awards, among others, the Kościelski Prize (2009), the Hubert Burda Prize (2008) and, from Tadeusz Różewicz, the Prize of the Foundation for Polish Culture (2006). He is the author of six volumes of poetry, and edited the anthology Poza słowa.

Tadeusz has been widely published and translated into 20 languages, and a collection of his poetry in English, Black Square, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, was published by Zephyr Press (http://www.polishculture.org.uk/literature/books/news/article/black-square-by-tadeusz-dabrowski-1625.html) in 2011. He lives in Gdańsk and says in this interview, “All art is something like self-recognition.”

Kona Macphee has been many things in her lifetime, from waitress to motorcycle mechanic to computer scientist. Poetry lovers will know her as a poet, although the word she uses to describe herself is 'thingwright'. Colin Waters interviewed her earlier this year about her new collection What Long Miles (Bloodstone). During the interview, Kona discusses reality and the media, being inspired by history and how her garden is her R and D lab, as well as reading poems from her new collection.

Tusiata Avia is a poet and performer from New Zealand and a recent Fulbright Pacific Writer at the University of Hawai’i. She performs her poems and talks with Ryan Van Winkle about her work and influences, including how she rediscovered poetry in her 30s. Her two collections of poetry are Wild Dogs Under My Skirt (2004) and Bloodclot (2009).

David Stavanger aka Ghostboy is a poet and one of Australia’s premier young adult and children’s spoken word presenters. As well as reading a few of his poems, David also talks about his love of poetry, how he is developing his voice and the way he plays with genre and audience expectations. We also include one of his music tracks with the Golden Virtues, 'The Woman Who Is All Heart'. http://www.ghostboy.net

Presented by Ryan Van Winkle http://www.ryanvanwinkle.com. Produced by Colin Fraser of Culture Laser Productions http://www.culturelaser.com. Music by Ewen Maclean.

SPL Programme Manager Jennifer Williams talks with Griffin Award Winning Canadian poet Ken Babstock about 'the thingyness of things', Paul Muldoon, the weather, Canadian garrison mentality's effect on the work of Canadian writers and much more, including his own extraordinary poems. This interview is from StAnza 2013, and takes place in a tiny attic room at the top of the Town Hall, in the midst of all sorts of weather.

Ken Babstock’s most recent collection, Methodist Hatchet (Anansi, 2011), won The Griffin Prize for Excellence in Poetry and was a finalist for The Trillium Book Award. He lives in Toronto.

Music by James Iremonger www.jamesiremonger.co.uk

Image: Ken Babstock, Toronto by Steve McLaughlin, under a Creative Content licence

Who is Eddie Linden? A poet, an editor, and a man with an extraordinary range of contacts, friends who ranged from Tom Leonard to Harold Pinter. Linden is a person who has achieved much considering his incredibly tough childhood. Born illegitimate, he was passed from pillar to post as a boy in Glasgow. Later, he suffered much anguish when his Roman Catholicism conflicted with his sexuality. In the 1960s, after moving to London, he began an extraordinary literary magazine Aquarius, which over 30 years became a veritable Who’s Who of contemporary poets. In the SPL's latest podcast, he discusses his life and verse from his home in Maida Vale.

Image by Mazengarb

Erín Moure discusses her recent book The Unmemntioable, an exploration of her complex family history and subsequent travel to western Ukraine. In conversation with Ryan Van Winkle at the StAnza poetry festival, where she was the poet in residence, they discuss "how you can identify who you are and where you come from when your mother says you come from nowhere." And nowhere, she discovered, was western Ukraine.

Presented by Ryan Van Winkle http://www.ryanvanwinkle.com @rvwable Produced by Colin Fraser of Culture Laser Productions htto://www.culturelaser.com @culturelaser. Music by Ewen Maclean.

On 15 February 2013, Jennifer Williams, SPL Programme Manager, and poet/author Tracey S. Rosenberg (http://tsrosenberg.wordpress.com/) had a chat about that dreaded and unavoidable demon that every publishing writer must do battle with: rejection. We hope this podcast will be of interest to all writers who have to deal with inevitable rejection, and especially to young and emerging writers who are starting down the challenging path towards publication. We’re grateful to Inky Fingers (http://inkyfingersedinburgh.wordpress.com/), that marvellous Edinburgh creative writing organisation, for creating the Rejection Workshop that inspired this conversation.

Find Tracey’s pamphlet here: Lipstick is Always a Plus http://stewedrhubarb.org/post/34371009207/lipstickisalwaysaplus.

Music by James Iremonger www.jamesiremonger.co.uk.