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The Scottish winter is enlivened for a month by celebrations: from Christmas to New Year to Burns night. We added another in 2009, when the Scottish Poetry Library turned 25. he question of the future has been much on our minds this past year, and we have been trying, as Burns says, to see ourselves as others see us. We want to build rather than rest on our achievements, as considerable as these have been – evident in the history of the spl we published for our 25th anniversary. We had much to contend with this year: not only the financial climate, which has affected everyone, of course; not only the uncertainties of the formation of Creative Scotland, to which I referred last year and would have thought resolved by now; but also the problem of the rising water-table level, which caused leaks in the Library’s basement and immense disruption to our work. Yet we were able to mark our anniversary with a gathering full of poetry and laughter, drawing the line under our physical difficulties and facing resolutely forward. We also had much to celebrate. Visits and audiences for spl events in Edinburgh and partner locations such as Shetland and Dumfries numbered over 10,000 during 2008-09; in the same period, 3,500 school pupils throughout Scotland took part in spl workshops; more than 300 librarians, teachers and poets benefited from spl professional development opportunities. The spl now has over 2,000 registered borrowers, and in this year, half a million users visited the spl website. As you will read in the following pages, we use tried and trusted as well as new ways of bringing people and poems together. We would not be able to find those poems were it not for the steady, often unobtrusive, labours of our immensely knowledgeable librarians. The spl would not be what it is today without their skills, and those of the assistants and volunteers who support them. In this year, when we added to our existing
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stock the marvellous printed archive of Edwin Morgan’s work, Julie Johnstone deserves special mention for her superb management of the project.Apart from the clearly labelled Librarians and Education Officers (Juliet Rees joined Lorna in that capacity in June), you may wonder what we all do. But if you have encountered any of my colleagues, you will have been struck by their passion for poetry, their imaginative ways of bringing people and poems together, their knowledge and their openness – all the staff work by those values. The spl owes its high reputation to the devotion and creativity of its staff, past and present. The spl would not exist without its funders, friends and supporters, who have given their time, talents and money to developing this unique institution. We are immensely grateful for those grants and gifts, and given
we were able to mark our anniversary with a gathering full of poetry & laughter, drawing the line under our physical difficulties and facing resolutely forward
the current circumstances, they are especially important to us. In hard times, who needs poetry? I hope that’s not a question that would occur to anyone reading this report. Even more, I hope that it’s a question every reader could answer. If you can’t, you need to come to the Scottish Poetry Library – physically or virtually – more often! We look forward to your visits over the next year. Robyn Marsack – Director
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Reaching out: The SPL exists to collect, catalogue and make available the poetry of Scotland & beyond, for the people of Scotland. eyond our beautiful Edinburgh building lies a whole nation of people whose poetic heritage we are safeguarding, and to whom we reached out this year in various different ways. With the continuing support of the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, we started to roll out the final stage of our Poet Partners scheme to local libraries in Benbecula, Grangemouth and Paisley – where we delivered training sessions that aimed to equip librarians with the skills and knowledge they need to encourage borrowers to explore poetry in the branches. While each of our Poet Partners is backed up by the resources and expertise of the spl, they have the freedom to devise their own events and respond to the needs and desires of their local communities. Working with partner organisations meant we were able to reach out to audiences that would otherwise be difficult for us to access. Our 2007 project with Oxfam in Scotland set up poetry workshops with asylum seekers and native Scots in Glasgow; the success of these sessions inspired us to adapt them in 2008 for the classroom, with poets taking themes of migration and identity into schools in Inverness. New web technology has meant that people throughout Scotland and further afield can connect with the Library in ways we couldn’t have imagined a few years ago. Over the past year we’ve made use of social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, as well as launching a blog (scottishpoetrylibrary.wordpress.com) to give an insight into what goes on behind the scenes at the spl, and recording a series of podcasts – and we’ve reached new audiences as a result. This web 2.0 technology is making it possible to converse with borrowers and friends of the Library, and providing a way for audiences to reach us, and to tell us what they
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just one of the ways we support poets in Scotland while slipping poems into people’s everyday lives
think – as when we asked our Facebook friends what the spl should look like ten years from now. No less important are the tried and tested ways of delivering poems all across Scotland: for the fifth year, we distributed hundreds of thousands of National Poetry Day postcards to schools, libraries, bookshops and arts venues across the country – just one of the ways we support poets in Scotland while slipping poems into people’s everyday lives, here in a collectable, shareable format. Reaching beyond Scotland, we explored poetic connections across many borders: from Japan and New Zealand to Poland and Germany. From Kyoto to Carbeth, a magical exhibition of ikebana, poetry, ceramics and calligraphy from Scotland and Japan, transformed the spl during August. With funding from Creative New Zealand, we acquired a collection of contemporary New Zealand poetry and created an online resource featuring New Zealand poets introduced by Scottish writers. Our World Poetry season brought poems from Poland and a close look at Rilke, while a week of translation workshops with Literature Across Frontiers crossed the boundaries between poetry and song, with poet/musicians from Scotland, Iceland and Lithuania. And we presented Scottish poetry in locations as different as Kolkata and Brussels – always aware that our international programme exists not only to bring poems from different countries, cultures and languages to Scottish readers and writers, but also to showcase the marvellous variety of Scotland’s poetry to audiences overseas.
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Shaping the future: Just as we aim to build on our achievements by imagining afresh what a 21st century library can be, so we recognise the need to be ready for change in our work with children & young people. s the education environment is transformed by new technology, opportunities are opening up for arts organisations to extend their virtual reach into classrooms across Scotland. This year we began to work with Learning and Teaching Scotland to develop a presence on glow, the national intranet that digitally links teachers, pupils, parents and schools throughout the country. The possibility is of a poet delivering a single workshop to thousands of schools, backed up by high-quality learning resources made easily available to teachers and librarians; the challenge, to retain the magic of a personal connection through the mechanism of an online network, and on a national scale. Meanwhile we continued to deliver the inspiring, poet-led sessions that encourage pupils to find new ways of seeing, interpreting and imagining the world. Regular features such as our annual Ghosts of War workshops, in partnership with National Museums Scotland, were as much in demand as ever, demonstrating the strength of poetry as a means of enriching the Curriculum for Excellence and approaching a wide range of subjects. We worked with teachers and librarians in various ways, directly in classrooms as well as through advice and consultancy. Our practical continuing professional development sessions supported teachers to develop the confidence they needed to inspire pupils of all ages – for instance, Making the Most of National Poetry Day offered tips and techniques that were tailored to each key stage, from early years to secondary. National Poetry Day, with this year’s theme of ‘work’, was also a focus for a cross-border collaboration that brought Scottish and
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Northern Irish poets into schools and workplaces across Glasgow to deliver sessions on reading and writing poetry. Offering our expertise to other organisations is an effective way of using our limited resources to make an impact. For example, this year we acted in an advisory capacity to Strathclyde Partnership for Transport, supporting them to secure funding for a Poet in Residence – an initiative that resulted in such diverse activities as a British Sign Language interpreted poetry reading, a Burns-themed poetry competition for young people and the establishment of an adult writing group, the Underground Poets. At a wider level, we promoted poetry to arts, education and cultural organisations through our presence at showcasing events such as Creative Sparks and the Scottish Learning Festival. And as a member of the Literature Forum for Scotland, the national advisory body for literature in Scotland, the spl continued to help shape policy and to create a culture of collaborative working, innovation and expansion. We were active on issues including the future of literature funding under the new Creative Scotland, and the commissioning of a major piece of research on literature in schools, which will allow us to tailor our services to the changing needs of education professionals, and continue to inspire a love of poetry in new generations.
the possibility: a poet delivering a single workshop to thousands of schools, backed up by high-quality learning resources made easily available to teachers & librarians; the challenge: to retain the magic of a personal connection
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Sharing poems is integral to our purpose, and over the past twelve months we worked to make this happen in all sorts of ways – often in partnership with other organisations. or much of the year our librarian Julie Johnstone directed her energies to the project management of our newly-acquired Edwin Morgan Archive. Our vision is that the Archive should be freely accessible to everyone, and all sorts of people, from teachers to teenage readers, were involved in developing resources to help everybody get the most out of this hugely significant collection. Reading groups were a key way of sharing the pleasures of poetry and encouraging people to dip into our rich collection. Our Getting Into Poetry sessions gave readers the confidence to explore further, while our Nothing But the Poem format allowed people to discuss their reactions to the words on the page without the need for background reading. Our Reader in Residence, Ryan Van Winkle, took poetry out of the Library with activities that ranged from reading to children in care on Christmas Eve, to galvanising volunteers to help with ‘personal poetry shopping’– providing individual reading recommendations based on people’s interests, hobbies and passions. Edinburgh’s St Andrew Square Garden was the setting for some of these sessions, after a summer ceremony designated it as a place for poetry in the heart of the city. Throughout the year the spl worked with Essential Edinburgh, the City of Edinburgh Council and a number of other literature organisations to embed poems in the fabric of the garden, hanging them from trees and planting them in flowerbeds. Looking forward, funding from Essential Edinburgh and Neighbourhood Partnerships will help us develop this calm green space into an inspiring Poetry Garden. Events of all kinds provided opportunities for people to come together and listen to poets. We collaborated with the National Library of Scotland on our series of Close Readings, featuring Kate Clanchy, Kathleen Jamie,
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John Burnside and Benjamin Markowitz. In our long-running Selected Works series, A L Kennedy chose her favourite poems for an anti-Valentine’s Day special, while Jackie Kay, Michael Hofmann, Andrew O’Hagan and David Malouf each talked us through their own choices. A special 25th anniversary event in January saw spl founding director Tessa Ransford share the poems that matter to her, and our Burns season brought the launch of an anthology of contemporary responses to Burns, a close reading session from Rab Wilson, and an spl stall at the Edinburgh Farmers’ Market! We hosted the central-belt celebration of An Leabhar Mòr, or The Great Book of Gaelic, while Mother’s Day saw the launch of Kin, a collection of family-themed poems that formed the latest addition to our Great Occasions
to connect with others, through a shared passion for the possibilities of the page
anthologies. Throughout the year poet Christine De Luca welcomed poetry-lovers into the shared pleasures of reciting verse in our Poems Aloud sessions, with subjects ranging from haiku to Edinburgh, Burns to Iain Crichton Smith – while spl staff took great pleasure in reading for frail elderly people. Our first Noisy Day in October raised the volume as the sung and spoken word resounded through the stacks, live performance mixing with recordings from our audio collection. And By Leaves We Live, our annual festival of artists’ books and small presses, entered its fourth year, with people coming together from all over the uk and relishing the chance to feel part of a community of poets, publishers, artists and readers – to connect with others, through a shared passion for the possibilities of the page.
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