Commonwealth Poets United was an international exchange between six Scottish poets and poets from six Commonwealth nations. Toni Stuart is a South African poet named in the Mail and Guardian’s list of 200 Inspiring Young South Africans for her work in co-founding I Am Somebody! – an NGO that uses storytelling and youth development to build integrated communities. Rachel McCrum, originally from Northern Ireland, is a poet and the co-creator of popular spoken word event Rally and Broad (2012-2016). Both poets visited each other’s countries to draw inspiration from a different culture. When Toni was visiting Scotland, she came into the Scottish Poetry Library with Rachel to talk about their exchange trips, how food united them, and how ‘when you learn a new language, you gain a new soul’.

In August 2014, our then regular podcast host Colin Waters travelled to Faslane, home of the UK’s nuclear deterrent, to talk to poet Gerry Loose. Loose’s collection fault line is a suite of poems inspired by the area, which is his backyard. The great natural beauty contrasts with the ugliness of the military base, inspiring Loose. He guides Colin around the area, sharing its history and his thoughts on the nature poetry’s radical past and present.

This edition of our Nothing But The Poem podcast, hosted as usual by Samuel Tongue, features two poems by Isabelle Baafi, from her 2025 Forward Prize winning debut collection Chaotic Good. ‘In this wise-hearted and deft debut, Baafi gets to the grain of family, inheritance, the grit of growing up and the grappling to become oneself.’ - Rachel Long ‘Isabelle Baafi’s Chaotic Good is a debut of amazing endurance. Its formal pressures create a kind of kaleidoscopic intensity that – with each turn of the chamber – brings newly beautiful and painful shapes into focus. - Will Harris The two poems discussed in the podcast from Chaotic Good are The Cottage and Burst Me Into Song

Hugo Williams won the 1999 TS Eliot Prize for Billy’s Rain, a collection that captured a certain amount of journalistic interest for its unvarnished depiction of an affair. His collection, I Knew The Bride, was also been nominated for the TS Eliot Prize (as well as the Forward), although it’s subject matter is a little darker, taking in the death of his sister and his own kidney failure, which requires him to spend a significant amount of time every week on dialysis. We were lucky to spend time with the poet in 2014 when he was up for the Edinburgh International Book Festival. He talks about the influence of popular music on his work, mortality, and what Hardy was doing with Shelley’s heart.

When we think of World War One, our images of the conflict are largely shaped by those of the Western Front or perhaps Gallipoli. It was a truly global conflict, however, and one less remarked upon campaign was that of an ill-fated Anglo-Indian force dispatched to secure oil supplies in what is, today, southern Iraq.  Poet, playwright and songwriter Jenny Lewis’ father fought as part of that force. Her collection Taking Mesopotamia (Carcanet) re-imagines the campaign using her father’s diaries. It also takes in more recent wars in the region as well as the story of Gilgamesh, the ancient Sumerian warrior king, to create a vision of a mankind that repeatedly fails to learn the lessons of war. Lewis took time out from the StAnza poetry festival, where she was appearing in March 2014,to talk to us about war, oil, myth, and the gods. Photo by Ben Prestney

The latest edition of our Nothing But The Poem podcast, hosted as usual by Samuel Tongue, features two poems by Juana Adcock. Samuel Tongue comments: "Juana Adcock is a poet who works between languages and registers and themes, ever inventive and risk-taking. In this all too brief intro to two of her poems, I hope you get a sense of all of these elements. And please come and borrow her books from the SPL." Liz Lochhead said of her first collection Split: "Here is sharp specificity, humour, daring. These poems rock. They sing." The two poems discussed in the podcast are The Task of the Translator and The Guitar's Lament.

J.L. Williams is a poet fascinated by the possibility of metamorphosis, whether it be witnessed in the natural world or experienced in one’s own life. Her first collection Condition of Fire (Shearsman) was inspired by Ovid, and in her second collection Locust and Marlin (Shearsman) she returns to the theme of change from a fresh perspective. In this 2014 podcast, she talks to us about the nature of stone, the poetry of locusts, and just how spiritual she is. Photo by Chris Scott.

On Monday 19th November 2018 the poet Tony Harrison took part in a special event at Edinburgh Filmhouse. It was a rare public appearance from harrison which consisted of a conversation with his friend and collaborator Peter Symes, intercut with screeings of Harrison's film poems. These film poems hadn't been seen in public since they were originally screened on BBC and Channel 4 in the 80s and 90s. The event was organised by the Scottish Poetry Library in partnership with Edinburgh Filmhouse. The discussion, including the extracts from the film poems was recorded and the audio has been digitised as part of the SPL's extensive archive. The recording quality wasn't great but thanks to the tech we have at out disposal we've managed to clean up the audio, get rid of most background noises. So here for the first time, in podcast format, is the full discussion between Tony Harrison and Peter Symes, with the film poem extracts left in. Enjoy.

2014 marked the bicentenary of the birth of the Russian novelist and poet Mikhail Lermontov. A book, After Lermontov, featured a number of the Russian’s poems translated into English. Many of the poets involved are Scottish because Lermontov traced his ancestry back to Scotland and was a great admirer of Ossian and Sir Walter Scott. This podcast from 2014 looks at After Lermontov in the company of its editor and contributors: Peter France, Robert Crawford, Sasha Dugdale and Alexander Hutchison. We also take a look at the short, turbulent life of the poet, a controversial figure in his day who may have been the victim of a fatal conspiracy at the age of 27. Image: lino_Lermontov by Andrey under a Creative Commons licence

In 2014 Niall Campbell was described as one of the most promising poets of the younger generation of Scottish writers. Hailing from the island of South Uist in the Western Isles, Campbell is a poet whose work is as lyrical as it is intriguing. After the publication of his debut collection Moontide (Bloodaxe), Campbell took time to talk to the SPL about growing up on an island, his interest in spirituality without God, and the similarities between sculpture and poetry.

On a sun-kissed Autumn's afternoon on the banks of the River Nith two National Poets sat down to chat about Rabbie Burns, Bob Marley, Dante's Inferno, the Gaelic and Jamaican tongues, and much more besides. In this special edition of the SPL podcast, Scotland's current Makar, Peter Mackay, and the former Poet Laureate of Jamaica, Lorna Goodison, exchanged poems, stories, thoughts and much laughter at Ellisland Farm, once home to Robert Burns and his family, where he famously composed such works as Auld Lang Syne and Tam o' Shanter. The conversation took place during the poets' four day residency at the Ellisland Farm Burns Museum: who the Scottish Poetry Library partnered with to help bring the two national poets together for this unique collaboration. What unfolds in this fascinating and generous conversation is an exploration of seemingly disparate cultures and languages, that may be closer than we at first think. We can also report that Peter Mackay and Lorna Goodison got on like the proverbial house on fire!

Sheena Blackhall is a poet, novelist, short story writer, illustrator, traditional storyteller and singer who is the author, as the podcast explores, of over 100 poetry pamphlets. In 2009, she was made Aberdeen’s City Makar. She writes in English, Scots and Doric. As a child and native speaker of Doric she faced the same prejudices and challenges that speakers of minority languages around the world have faced. In this 2015 podcast, Sheena talks about her love of Aberdeen, the worst place she’s ever written a poem and why she’s written so many pamphlets. If you would prefer to read, rather than listen to, our podcast with Sheena Blackhall, click here to see a transcript of the interview.

In 2014 presenter Ryan Van Winkle talked with poet Caroline Bird after her reading at The Sutton Gallery in Edinburgh. She discussed her collection The Hat-Stand Union and read a couple of her poems. She also talked about the importance of reading for a poet and how an Arvon course she attended when she was 13 persuaded her to transform her reading habits. It obviously worked as she published her first collection at just 15 years of age. Produced by Colin Fraser.

In November 2012, we staged the first in a new series of My Life in Poetry events at the Scottish Poetry Library. My Life in Poetry invites guests to reflect upon their lives through the lens of their favourite poems. Award-winning novelist Candia McWilliam did the SPL the great honour of accepting its invitation to take part. For 30 minutes, she discusses-with enviable lucidity-her favourite poems, which includes verse by Shakespeare, George Herbert, Robert Browning and Emily Dickinson.

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 at the Edinburgh International Book Festival to talk to Jennifer Williams ahead of the publication of her latest collection and Poem, the new magazine she has begun.

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.

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 Scotland.  The conversation touches on the local poetry scene in and around Dundee, language and the distinctive Dundee tongue, the intersection of class and poetry, and Taylor's work in theatre as well as a performance poet. Taylor also reads her poem Tae Dundee: which first featured in her one woman show Ain City.

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 by Chloe Barter.

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 at the Edinburgh International Book Festival as part of a tour including Snape Maltings Concert Hall in Aldeburgh and Dromineer Literature Festival. Before Jennifer and Kay headed out to conquer Arthur’s Seat and to sample Kay’s very first can of Irn-Bru, they read and discussed a number of poems from Kay’s Odd Blocks-Selected and New Poems (Carcanet). They also talked about such varied topics as Buddhism, cycling across America, ‘cool’ poetry, the ticklish delights of rhyme and much more.

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 2011 collection, Methodist Hatchet (Anansi) won The Griffin Prize for Excellence in Poetry and was a finalist for The Trillium Book Award. He lives in Toronto. Image: Ken Babstock, Toronto by Steve McLaughlin, under a Creative Content licence