Best Scottish Poetry Library Podcasts (2025)

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From the Archive: Fiona Sampson. August 2012 25:21

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Fiona Sampson is an award-winning poet whose honours include the Cholmondeley Award and Newdigate Prize, as well as being shortlisted twice for both the T.S Eliot Prize and for the Forward Prize. She is the author of 2010’s Rough Music and (in 2012 when this was recorded) the soon-to-be-published Coleshill. She took time out during her appearance a…

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From the Archive: Glyn Maxwell. October 2013 54:57

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In this podcast, recorded in August 2013 during the Edinburgh International Book Festival, Glyn Maxwell reads poems from his collection Pluto (Picador) and talks with Jennifer Williams about the breath and blood of poetry, how actors are the best first readers, why Auden is so important to his work and much more. Photo by David Shankbone.…

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Samuel Tongue In Conversation with Taylor Dyson 18:41

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Our resident podcast host, Samuel Tongue, speaks with the Dundee poet Taylor Dyson about her work and her appointment as the new Dundee and Angus Scots Scriever, based at the National Library of Scotland. The residency aims to support the creation of original writing in Scots, as well as the promotion of the language with communities throughout Sco…

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From the Archive: Judy Brown. September 2012 23:30

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Judy Brown’s first book, Loudness (Seren, 2011) was shortlisted for the 2011 Forward Felix Dennis prize for best first collection. Jennifer Williams met her in 2012 to discuss how she approaches poetry, using her poem ‘Spontaneous Combustion’ as a way into her work and methods of composition. Thanks to Andrew Forster and the Wordsworth Trust. Photo…

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From the Archive: Kay Ryan. August 2013 1:08:55

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In this longer-than-usual podcast from 2013, Jennifer Williams talks to Kay Ryan, American poet, educator and 16th United States Poet Laureate. Kay was a 2011 MacArthur Fellow, won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and received the National Humanities Medal from President Barack Obama, among many other awards and accolades. She was in Edinburgh to read…

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From the Archive: Ken Babstock. May 2013 43:11

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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 t…

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From the Archive: Lynn Davidson & Alyson Hallett. January 2014 30:03

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In this 2014 podcast Jennifer Williams talks to two Hawthornden Fellows: Lynn Davidson and Alyson Hallett about where they come from, loneliness versus aloneness, and their current and upcoming work. Lynn Davidson’s fiction and poetry has appeared in journals and her short fiction has been broadcast on national radio. Davidson has received several …

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From the Archive: Marie Howe. October 2012 31:45

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“I feel poets have saved my life. The poets are our companions. They have found words for states all of us have experienced.” So said Marie Howe on a 2012 visit to Scotland, where she was appearing as a guest of the Edinburgh International Book Festival. Howe’s first collection, The Good Thief (1988), was chosen for the National Poetry Series by Ma…

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From the Archive: Robert Wrigley. December 2013 55:38

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In this podcast Jennifer Williams talks to Robert Wrigley about his collection and first book to be published in the UK, The Church of Omnivorous Light: Selected Poems (Bloodaxe). They also touch on narrative in poetry, the infinite capacity of poetry to talk about love and, wild horses on the southern plains of Idaho. Robert was at the SPL in Nove…

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Nothing But The Poem - Mick Imlah 14:38

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In this Nothing But The Poem podcast, our usual host Samuel Tongue, with the SPL Friends Group, take a look at two poems from Mick Imlah. In a Guardian obituary, Alan Hollinghurst wrote that, when he died, Mick Imlah was mourned as one of the outstanding British poets of his time. He was also a particularly Scottish poet of distinction and his fina…

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From the Archive: Sean Borodale. August 2012 32:54

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We met up with Sean Borodale at the Edinburgh International Book Festival in August 2012, where he was reading from his debut collection Bee Journal, which was subsequently shortlisted for the 2012 T S Eliot prize and Costa Book Awards. Here Sean reads poems from Bee Journal, a remarkable account of the two years he kept a bee hive. He likens the w…

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From the Archive: Tadeusz Dąbrowski. June 2013 23:56

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In this podcast, Jennifer Williams 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. Taseusz has been the winner of numerous awards, among others, the Kościelski Prize (2009), the Hubert Burda Prize (2008) and, fr…

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Nothing But The Poem - Naomi Shihab Nye 17:27

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The prize-winning and former Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, Naomi Shihab Nye is the subject of this month’s Nothing But The Poem podcast. Known for poetry that lends a fresh perspective to ordinary events, people, and objects, Nye has said that, for her, “the primary source of poetry has always been local life, random characters met o…

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From the Archive: Tony Lopez. February 2013 33:04

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In this podcast, Jennifer Williams discusses constructivist poetry and more with award-winning poet, fiction writer, critic and professor Tony Lopez at a rather noisy 2012 Edinburgh International Book Festival. Tony reads from his book Only More So and talks about upcoming projects. (from Wikipedia): Tony Lopez (born 1950) is an English poet who fi…

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From the Archive: Tracey S. Rosenberg. April 2013 46:54

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On 15 February 2013, Jennifer Williams and poet/author Tracey S. Rosenberg 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 …

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Nothing But the Poem - Ngwatilo Mawiyoo 15:58

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The multidimensional Kenyan poet, filmmaker and writer Ngwatilo Mawiyoo is the subject of this month’s Nothing But The Poem podcast. Keguro Macharia, in The New Inquiry, writes that Ngwatilo’s poetry "draws out my own memories [which] speaks to its generative power: its particularity is generous, opening ways for readers to encounter and inhabit it…

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From the Archive: Eddie Linden. May 2013 30:56

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Who was Eddie Linden (1935-2023)? A poet, an editor, and a man with an extraordinary range of contacts and friends who ranged from Tom Leonard to Harold Pinter. Linden was a person who 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 w…

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From the Archive: George Szirtes. March 2013 33:33

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Born in Budapest and brought up in England after coming to the UK as a refugee in 1956, George Szirtes has remained one of the country’s most interesting poets since his first prize-winning collection, The Slant Door, was published in 1979. That wasn’t the last trophy he was to take home; he won the T S Eliot Prize for his 2005 collection Reel. The…

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From the Archive: Marianne Boruch. January 2013 28:33

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Good poetry gets beneath the skin of readers. This episode features a poet who, for a short period, literally got ‘under the skin’. In the autumn of 2008, poet and essayist Marianne Boruch was awarded a ‘Faculty Fellowship in a Second Discipline’, permitting her to study something new for a semester. Her choice? Anatomy classes. ‘Cadaver, Speak’, a…

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From the Archive: Liz Lochhead 40th Anniversary of Memo for Spring. September 2012 43:13

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In 1972, Liz Lochhead published her debut collection, Memo For Spring, a landmark in Scottish literature. In an extended interview with Colin Waters, the then Scots Makar discusses what the early 1970s poetry scene she emerged into was like, one in which women poets were few and far between. She recalls early meetings with the elder generation – No…

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From the Archive: Ross Sutherland. October 2013 32:36

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In 2013, Edinburgh-born Ross Sutherland was described as one of the most interesting young poets working in Britain. Inspired by cut-ups and technology, his collection Emergency Window (Penned in the Margins) featured a sequence of classic poems fed through Google Translate many times until they become something else entirely. He wrote a sequence o…

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Nothing But The Poem - Norman MacCaig 18:42

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In this episode of Nothing But The Poem podcast, our usual host Samuel Tongue goes in deep on two weel kent poems by Norman MacCaig, one of Scotland's most loved and influential poets. Norman MacCaig famously, and self-deprecatingly, described writing his poems as "one fag" poems or "two fag" poems. Nothing could be further from the truth for reade…

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‘I escaped the Nazis then fixed Lancaster Bombers for the RAF.' 58:53

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Send us a text During the Second World War, Ruth Brook escaped Nazi persecution in Germany and followed her wartime sweetheart, a Lancaster Bomber into the RAF. As a WAAF, she quickly found a sense of her own purpose. Ruth was offered a job as a cook, a typist or a flight mechanic. She picked up a spanner and her life began. From welding to hydraul…

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From the Archive: Iain Sinclair. July 2013 39:09

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Iain Sinclair is one of the UK’s greatest living writers. Famed for his novels, such as Downriver, and documentary prose, of which London Orbital is perhaps the best known, Sinclair began his career self-publishing his own poetry on his Albion Village Press in the 1970s. 2013 saw the publication of three books – two poetry collections and a longer …

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From the Archives: The Gift to See Ourselves – The Best Scottish Poetry Collections. December 2012 45:49

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We have all heard the arguments in favour of Scotland’s best poet or favourite poem, but what about its greatest collection? In this recording from 2012, the SPL invited two guests – James Robertson, poet, publisher and author of the novels And the Land Lay Still and The Testament of Gideon Mack, and Dorothy McMillan, editor of Modern Scottish Wome…

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From the Archive: Anita Govan. November 2014 38:23

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Anita Govan has been involved in performance poetry for many years, long before it became as widespread as it is today, both as a performer and an organiser of events. Sceptical of the competitive aspects of slams, she still takes part in them and organises them for young people as she recognises their part in giving people a forum in which to shar…

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From the Archive: The Written World. October 2012 36:14

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The Written World was the Scottish Poetry Library’s London 2012 project. To mark the Olympics, we launched a scheme to find a poem for each of the 204 countries taking part, which were then broadcast on BBC Radio. In October 2012, with the project over, we took the chance to look back on The Written World with its project manager Sarah Stewart. We …

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From the Archive: Aonghas MacNeacail. Feb 2013 30:28

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Aonghas MacNeacail (1942-2022) was a leading voice in Gaelic poetry for decades, as poet, and as a regular literary commentator in print and on Gaelic radio. To celebrate his seventieth birthday in 2012 he published a new selected poems, Laughing at the Clock / Déanamh Gáire Ris A’ Chloc. MacNeacail came into the SPL in 2013 to talk about his life …

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'How we feel': Live at StAnza - Nuala Watt & Charlotte Van den Broeck 39:04

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'How we feel' was the theme for the 2025 StAnza international poetry festival, and the Lantern Live team were on stage, bringing all the feels! Kathleen Jamie and Ally Heather were joined by award-winning performance poet Charlotte Van den Broeck, and Nuala Watt, whose first collection - The Department of Work and Pensions Assesses a Jade Fish - is…

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From the Archive: Ian Bell on Bob Dylan. December 2013 31:40

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Bob Dylan has played many roles in his life: voice of a generation, rock ‘n’ roll Judas, Christian convert, even Victoria’s Secret salesman. The one that concerned the SPL podcast in 2013 was ‘poet’. Across two biographies – Once Upon A Time and Time Out of Mind (both Mainstream) – Ian Bell (1956-2015) considered Dylan in a more literary context th…

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Wild Writing talk to the SPL 18:32

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Lorna French and Anna Gray lead small groups of (mostly) women to let loose their wild side, to dive in to their unconscious and find their buried treasure. Wild Writers are creatives, public sector workers, teenagers, or any other type of human who is boldly, and often messily, transforming on their hero’s or heroine’s journey. Ahead of their work…

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From the Archive: Best Scottish Poems 2012 54:57

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Best Scottish Poems is the Scottish Poetry Library’s annual online anthology of the 20 Best Scottish Poems, edited each year by a different editor. Bookshops and libraries – with honourable exceptions – often provide a very narrow range of poetry, and Scottish poetry in particular. Best Scottish Poems offers readers in Scotland and abroad a way of …

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From the Archive: MacGillivray. February 2014 50:36

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In this podcast the poet and artist MacGillivray reads from and discusses her book, The Last Wolf of Scotland (Pighog). The collection is an exploration of connections between Scotland and the American Frontier whose form brilliantly reflects the subject matter of the poems. MacGillivray joins Jennifer Williams in a conversation that maps the rich …

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From the Archive: Kae (Kate)Tempest. September 2013 48:43

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In this 2013 podcast, Jennifer Williams talks to poet, playwright and recording artist Kate Tempest* about hip hop, poetry, their play Brand New Ancients, mythology, world peace and much more. Kate has written plays for Paines Plough and the Battersea Arts Centre, written poetry for the Royal Shakespeare Company, Channel 4 and the BBC, worked in sc…

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From the Archive: Jenny Lindsay. August 2014 42:49

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Jenny Lindsay was co-creator of the popular ‘poetry cabaret’ Rally and Broad (which ran from 2012-2016), a hit originally in Edinburgh that spread its wings to Glasgow. In this 2014 podcast, we talked to Jenny about her poetry and the lively spoken word scene in Scotland. Photo by Alex Aitchison.By Scottish Poetry Library

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Nothing But The Poem - RS Thomas 16:47

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The famous Welsh poet RS Thomas is the subject of this month's Nothing But The Poem podcast. Anne Stevenson of the Listener describes Thomas as a religious poet who 'sees tragedy, not pathos, in the human condition' ... 'He is one of the rare poets writing today who never asks for pity.' 'Like the Welsh countryside he writes about, Thomas's poetry …

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From the Archive: Chrys Salt.April 2015 38:25

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Poet Chrys Salt talks about who has the right to write about certain subjects, about writing war poetry when you have a son who is a soldier, and how poetry can benefit from a good performance. Thanks to James Iremonger for the music in this podcast.By Scottish Poetry Library

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From the Archive: Brian Johnstone. August 2010 44:32

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Brian Johnstone (1950 - 2021) was a poet and former director of the StAnza poetry festival. In this archive podcast he discusses the highlights of his StAnza career, what he thinks makes a good poetry festival, his own work and his creative improvisations as part of jazz-poetry combo Trio Verso. Featuring the tracks ‘Storm Chaser’ and ‘The Sound of…

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From the Archive: Alexander Hutchison. March 2014 35:31

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Alexander Hutchison (1942-2015) was a poet and translator in Scots and English. His first book Deep-Tap Tree (University of Massachusetts Press, 1978) is still in print. Other collections include The Moon Calf (Galliard, 1990) and Carbon Atom (Link-Light, 2006). Melodic Cells, an interview with Hutchison conducted by Andrew Duncan appears in Don’t …

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Nothing But The Poem - Niall Campbell 13:21

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Niall Campbell is the subject of this month's Nothing But The Poem podcast. The South Uist poet has had three collections of poetry published, has won many major poetry prizes, and is currently poetry editor of Poetry London. ‘Noctuary is a homage to night-time, to "that midnight thrill of being alive", to the small, stray moments that make up a l…

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From the Archive: Walking With Poets. November 2013 33:10

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Walking With Poets was an SPL project that looked at an old subject, nature, using new media. We put four poets – Sue Butler, Mandy Haggith, Jean Atkin and Gerry Loose – into Scotland’s botanic gardens. For this special podcast, we interviewed each of the poets in their garden.By Scottish Poetry Library

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From the Archive: John Burnside and Allison Funk.November 2012 33:12

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Possessing a friendship that spanned the Atlantic, Scotland’s John Burnside (1955-2024) and America’s Allison Funk were captured in conversation, speaking about what they enjoy about each other’s countries, from poetry and music to the mutability of the landscape and people. Allison Funk is the author of four volumes of verse, including The Tumblin…

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Nothing But The Poem - Victoria Chang 14:17

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Victoria Chang is the subject of this month's Nothing But The Poem podcast. The Taiwanese-American poet has had seven collections of poetry published, her most recent - With My Back To The World (2024) - winning the Forward Prize for Best Poetry Collection. 'Chang has liberated the Ekphrastic form to new lyric heights and depths. Inventive, medita…

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Jean Fullerton, policewoman and district nurse turned novelist on why there is no such thing as an ordinary life. 54:37

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Send us a text Former policewoman and district nurse turned novelist, Jean Fullerton has written over 20 novels but recently published something a bit closer to home, her memoir, A Child of the East End. In conversation at the Write Idea Festival, Jean shared eye-watering stories of her childhood in Wapping, the curse of family secrets, bum-stampin…

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Author Louisa Treger investigates the audacious woman who tricked her way into a brutal insane asylum to expose the truth 41:35

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Send us a text In the 19th century it was surprisingly easy for a woman to be consigned to the misery of an asylum. Many in fact weren't actually mentally ill. Husband tired of his wife? A woman who bore an illegitimate child? A woman who didn't want to marry the man her parents had chosen for her? Or anyone, in short, who didn't conform to the nar…

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Celebrating 30 years of Dream State with its editor Donny O'Rourke 1:08:18

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In this extended version of Nothing But The Poem Kevin Williamson interviews Donny O'Rourke, editor of Dream State - The New Scottish Poets which was published in 1994 and remains the gold standard of poetry anthologies, and, arguably, the most visionary poetry anthology ever published in Scotland. Dream State's contributors were all aged under 40 …

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British booksellers in the Blitz 1:07:59

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Send us a text Historical fiction author Kristy Cambron wears a lot of hats. She's a Christy Award-winning author of historical fiction, including her bestselling novels, THE BUTTERFLY AND THE VIOLIN and THE PARIS DRESSMAKER, as well as nonfiction titles. She also serves as Vice President and literary agent with Gardner Literary, where she was name…

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What it's like to be a prison librarian? Neil Barclay invites us into HMP Thameside library in London. 43:56

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Send us a text Neil Barclay is an award-winning civilian librarian at HMP Thameside. Nominated by prisoners, and described by his colleagues as “our library superstar”, Neil has been praised for the outstanding dedication, skill and creativity he has shown in transforming the prison’s library into a dynamic learning and resource centre, much valued…

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The mysterious photo that inspired a tale of secrets, loss and betrayal in wartime Cornwall. 55:15

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Send us a text Rachel Hore is the multi-million selling Sunday Times author of thirteen novels with her fourteenth, Secrets of Dragonfly Lodge, coming out next year. Rachel is an avid reader. 'My reading addiction got properly under way when I was five and our family moved from Surrey, England, where I was born, to live in Hong Kong because of my f…

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Nothing But The Poem - Gboyega Odubanjo 13:50

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The poetry community was shocked and saddened when the much-loved young poet Gboyega Odubanjo died last year. Since then a full length collection of his poetry titled Adam has been published posthumously by Faber; and the Gboyega Odubanjo Foundation for low-income Black writers has been established to honour his legacy. His poetry hit many raw nerv…