The Scottish Poetry Library

Our journey to bring poetry to your life

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www.scottishpoetry library.org.uk

Royal Mile

Canongate Kirk

New Street

People’s Story

BUS – 35

Canongate Museum of Edinburgh

Find us just along from the Scottish Parliament Holyrood Road

To Holyrood Crichton’s Close

@ByLeavesWeLive

To Castle St Marys Street

5 Crichton’s Close Canongate Edinburgh, EH8 8DT 0131 557 2876 reception@spl.org.uk

Jeffrey Street

Our journey to bring poetry to your life

SPL The Tun

Thank you for picking this up.

We want to convey the heart and soul of one of Scotland’s great cultural resources, the Scottish Poetry Library, and bring to life our approaches to bringing people and poetry together.

We hope you enjoy it – please get in touch and let us know what you think.

The recent building renovation project for the SPL has provided the perfect opportunity to evaluate how the library works for visitors and staff.

Developing the building so that it is accessible, welcoming and can accommodate growth and new technologies is an inspiring challenge.

What is the purpose of a poetry library? That’s something we often discuss, and our views of what is most important are as individual as our tastes in poetry, but there’s one thing we all agree on: the Scottish Poetry Library exists to bring people and poems together.

Some people like to listen to poems, others to read, others to write them – some people don’t know yet that a poem could be the answer to their need for expression of certain feelings.

All these people we can provide for, by collecting and caring for books, and lending them for free; by hosting reading groups and writing workshops; by bringing poets from all over the world to read at the SPL and other places in Scotland; by providing poems (to read and hear), resources, information through our website, available to anyone online anywhere.

You can download our podcasts.

We take poems and poets into schools, galleries, libraries and care homes. We strive to be accessible to a range of readers, from beginners to experts, and while English, Scots and Gaelic are our core languages, we collect and support translations from many others.

The poem is at the heart of everything we do. We passionately believe that there’s a poem for everyone – more than one poem! – that will enrich their lives. The poem and the person just need to be introduced.

And that’s what the Scottish Poetry Library is here to do.

We want the core of the Library – the poems – to remain freely accessible. The poets of Scotland, alongside the poets of many nations, surprise, stimulate, delight, encourage and comfort readers and listeners. We only collect their work in order to share it with as many people as possible.

Once they enter the Library, people comment on its atmosphere – ‘a haven’, ‘something magical’, even ‘my favourite library in the world’ (from a New Zealand visitor).

Our ambition is to get more people through the physical doorway, and alterations to make the entry more welcoming will help there. Extending outwards, letting more light into the building, will make the life of the Library more visible – and approachable – to passers-by.

Robyn Marsack Director

Not everyone can visit a building in the centre of Edinburgh, though, and we are exploring ways of making the poems we have easier to access beyond the building.

We already offer postal loans – our catalogue is online.

You can download our poetry posters wherever you live.

The website is full of poems, too, and we’re planning to increase our broadcasting: the fortnightly podcasts and recordings of the annual Best Scottish Poems are a good start. So the virtual door is always open, and we need to keep up with the changing technology that will keep it open.

A library is more than just the bricks-and-mortar building that houses the collection, but the shelves can’t hold much more, so we are in the process of altering the building to make room for expanding the collection and the range of our activities. The Scottish Poetry Library began with 300 donated books in 1984, and now it has over 40,000 items, including CDs (not including Edwin Morgan’s typewriter and his desk!). We want to maintain the SPL’s unique capacity to hold its collection under one roof for as long as possible – it’s best for readers, borrowers, researchers, and enables us to answer all kinds of inquiries.

Often a child’s first contact with poetry is through children’s books and nursery rhymes. Rhyme and rhythm help a child to begin to understand the rules of language.

People want, need and discover poems for different reasons for different times of their lives: small children find the sound and rhythm compelling, many of their favourite books are rhymed; young people find poems expressing some of their sadness, confusion and joy in relationships, and want to write them, too; teachers need them, to show how language can be used to maximum effect; there are practising poets at all stages who want to read other poets’ work; there are those who seek for words of comfort at dark times, or words of love in times of hope and new beginnings.

Of course for those times in life that people need memorable words, especially weddings and funerals, poetry is the answer.

Is there a poem for a Scot marrying in Australia – yes there is! My friend was a great golfer, is there a poem that’s right for his funeral? Y es, there’s a good one.

We answer all sorts of inquiries: people from abroad as well as within Scotland come to us for the half-remembered words of poems their mothers or grandmothers recited to them – we’ve had verbal bouquets as well as real ones (and chocolates!) from grateful

The SPL deals with over 2000 poetry-related inquiries a year.

People often approach us seeking a poem for a particular occasion.

Or a poem will cross someone’s path just waiting to be discovered. inquirers. We heard from a daughter whose mother had lost most of her memories except a few lines of a oncefamiliar poem; she was entranced to hear the whole poem when we identified that.

The SPL has always been actively committed to engaging people far beyond the limits of the library walls.

People who don’t seek out the SPL discover us through the poems we distribute: the 350,000 poetry postcards that are available in Scottish schools, libraries, arts centres, hospitals, prisons around National Poetry Day each October (and online); the weekly poem in The Scotsman, which we know is cut out and kept or pinned up by many

readers; the occasional poems on buses or Glasgow subway – we’d love to do more of those.

Poetry by stealth is a great way to present a poem, before people have a chance to say that they don’t read poetry.

We hope that there are many more people who wish to seek us out or discover our fantastic collection in the future.

To start finding poems at the SPL, visit spl.org.uk/poetry

By making poetry both relevant and accessible, the SPL hopes it will become a part of people’s everyday lives.

An old copper kettle became one of the symbols for the Living Voices project. It reflects how objects, words and songs from people’s past can help memories and stories flow.

The development of the programme has resulted in collaborations and discussions with other interested care homes as well as the NHS. The hope is to bring the project to as many people as possible.

Since 2012 we have been working with the Scottish Storytelling Forum on ‘Living Voices’, a national pilot programme developing a model for poets and storytellers to facilitate regular activities with residents in care homes, supported by volunteers and care staff.

Living Voices starts with a simple premise – words can bring us together. Poems, s tory and song are the starting point for conversations, responses to the pieces read, reminiscence and encouraging the groups’ imagination and creativity to flow. Each artist brings their unique style to sessions, and works collaboratively with the residents and staff. They develop session plans that suit their practical needs and nurture and explore individual interests and histories.

The links between the arts and wellbeing are well-known, and so are the pressures of our ageing population – it is predicted that the number

of people aged over 75 will increase by over 80% by 2033. Through Living Voices, the Scottish Poetry Library is exploring the role we can play in offering creative ways to support the quality of life of older people living in long-term care, working collaboratively with other arts organisations and the care sector.

Find out more about t he Living Voices project at spl.org.uk/learn/carers

An important element of the project is finding the right people to become artist facilitators. They need to be flexible in adapting the sessions to an individual’s needs and personality.

Often watching the quiet moments reveals the impact of Living Voices – the man who has advanced dementia lifting his head, really listening to a poem that speaks to him; the woman who recites, word perfect, a 96-line poem she loved at school, the group animatedly comparing favourite recipes over cups of tea, inspired by a poem about baking. We can lose our voice as we age, become isolated, silenced – poems, stories can bring those voices back: words to inspire imagination, break down barriers to memory, create common ground and help to spark social interaction.

There is real power in listening; and in someone being listened to.

Living Voices creates a safe, unpressured space to share, giving residents and staff ways to engage as people, not ‘carer’ and ‘cared for’, inspired by poetry and story. As one of the Living Voices facilitators said, ‘I had hoped that the group would enjoy the session, but was completely unprepared for the sheer engagement and delight, the difference made by spending an hour listening to poems, stories and singing together.’

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ar the online catalogue. We also have some exciting archives, with a special emphasis on visual poetry, and have a programme of exhibitions throughout the year.

Our main role as librarians is to gather, care for, and interpret the collection. We want to help you find what you need, and help you discover the riches of a world-

We think you’ll find our building a good place to discover poetry – tell us what you need to help you navigate our building, as we want to make it a welcoming

wherever you are in the world we have created an extensive online resource that contains hundreds of texts, recordings, and useful information about poets.

experience. After our building renovations in 2015 you’ll discover new comfortable spaces to read and work in. The collection was designed to be really

It is one of the many aspects of our work that we aim to provide a rich diversity of ways to experience and learn about poetry. For us, the idea of a library

used, and our lending books flow in and out of the building in the hands of borrowers, or by post to those living far away.

Our reference collection is a

collection will continually evolve beyond the physical. As librarians we embrace the challenges that technological change can, and will, bring to ensure that the unique

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pamphlets, children’s books and many other items – more than 45,000 – into an accessible arrangement on the shelves, and we record useful information in

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bilingual editions of most poetry in European and international languages on our shelves and on our website. We organise the books, magazines, CDs, Braille,

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Scotland’s peoples? How do its librarians collect all of the poetry being written, in all its wonderful, unpredictable variety? Our aim is to collect the poetry of

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class collection. We have poetry in Gaelic, Scots, Shetlandic, but also in many other languages due to our focus on the importance of translation – you’ll find

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into our lives? Will they actually change what a poem is? And how does a poetry library need to respond when curating an international collection for all of

Scotland with an emphasis on the 20th and 21st centuries and then surround that core national collection with a rich diversity of poetry from all over

formats that we have begun to digitise, and we are collecting and creating new recordings every day. To make our resources and expertise available to you

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resource we are shaping for the people of Scotland is always accessible, useful and inspiring.

Explore the online catalogue at spl.org.uk/library/online-catalogue

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the world. We rely on people letting us know what they are publishing or what they would like to be reading so that we can be as inclusive as possible.

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a library? In physical or downloadable form? Do you want to read it, listen to it, or watch it?

How will new technologies help shape the way we let poems

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“Other people point out things I never noticed, and enrich my reading experience.”

“I love meeting other people to talk about poems, they always see something I’ve never seen.”

“It’s great when someone else’s interpretation makes you see the world in a different way.”

I love our reading groups. Love ’em. The format has changed a bit over time, but the single most important moment is when a reader will stop suspecting secretly that everybody else knows the secret ‘Poetry Rules’.

They’ve become so absorbed in a discussion about a poem that they surprise themselves with insight: for a second they look privately stunned, as if they’re holding a winning Lottery ticket.

We set up sessions so you don’t need expert knowledge, and nobody presumes that knowledge in others. You don’t need to read any poems in advance; we’ll provide copies. We’ll ask people to try reading poems aloud (only if they want to – no pressure), because there’s nothing to beat listening to poems and even more importantly, feeling their demands on breathing, mouth muscles, eyes. And who cares if anybody stumbles over a word?

That’s often most interesting of all, because it suggests you expected something else. And we ask readers to slow down, to think about the sound and texture and effects and patterns of a poem before they explore meaning; think that’s too easy to get interesting results? Just try.

I love that we begin by emphasising how open and easy the discussion needs to be, but the result is a level of insight and concentration that is a surprise to everybody. And I love that the designer of this page came along to a reading group as research, planning to just sit quietly and watch, but found himself joining in the debate and enjoying how each different readers’ understanding built up in layers, and through coming along to the group he’s designed the page like this. He used the experience to change how he saw poetry, and that’s what I love most of all.

“There’s a real sense of freedom to the group which allows you to be very honest and open.”

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We asked the poets to blog about their experiences, post pictures and use social media to take their experiences and those of their participants beyond the gardens. This experiment with technology exceeded expectation; poets received fantastic feedback and poems online. They also shared poetry games developed in their residencies and offered stories and anecdotes collected along the way.

Walking with Poets allowed people to discover poets, and their own creativity, while out enjoying Scotland’s Royal Botanic Gardens. Through the SPL’s trust and belief in the talent of the poets and the open-mindedness of each garden’s dedicated staff, the project was a huge success and an innovative example of working in partnership.

Much was shared and learned and the results showed that through creativity, strong planning and curating, and most importantly through the work of extraordinary poets, poetry can come to life in the most fertile and unexpected places.

Visit the Walking with Poets blog to find out more spl.org.uk/connect/blog/ category/walking-poets

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Walking With Poets was a collaborative project undertaken with the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh and Cove Park We chose four poets to set up workshops in some of Scotland’s most beautiful natural settings, to gather inspiration from nature and offer a fresh perspective to visitors.

From remote settings to city gardens, the poets developed their ideas around each location, enabling the visitor‘s experience of the gardens to become a seamless and sensual interaction with poetry.

The SPL set out to find poets with diverse styles and approaches.

They were asked to create a series of workshops and activities that would appeal to a wide range of age groups and backgrounds.

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The SPL believes it is important to deliver projects that are enjoyable, inspirational and always engaging.

The Library looks for innovative ways to share poetry.

While running a regular programme of imaginative poetry events both within and beyond the walls of the Library, the SPL creates varied and inspiring projects that take poetry out of the Library and make it more accessible to people across Scotland.

By bringing poetry to people’s everyday lives in unexpected ways, we can help the public feel a deeper connection with poetry, and often with their own emotional, intellectual and creative lives.

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The SPL encourages trust and supports the skill of its staff and collaborators.

This approach helps to create strong ideas, close working relationships and positive results.

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Over the summer months, the poets were given the freedom to explore, create and deliver their workshops in their own way. Some developed a more structured approach while others instigated conversations with passing visitors. It was important to create a project structure that supported the poets but also allowed them to work in ways that best suited their individual practice. This helped each residency to have its own distinctive flavour and to engender a sense of relaxation and warmth within the workshops. Following their garden residencies, the poets were each given a two-week residency at Cove Park with no community commitment; just time to think, write and enjoy the splendid natural setting overlooking Loch Long.

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The SPL has published a number of poetry anthologies, for example, an anthology of Scottish First World War poetry to coincide with the War’s 100 year anniversary, and a series of anthologies of poems suitable for namings/ christenings, weddings and funerals.

Tools of the Trade is a pocketsized anthology of poems to help new doctors – just graduating and about to start working in hospitals – with ways of thinking about the challenges they face.

Lesley Morrison, a GP in the Borders, brought us this idea to commemorate her late friend and colleague Dr Pat Manson, a caring and compassionate GP and trainer of new doctors.

We knew straight away this would add to the poems we find for crucial moments in people’s lives. With Lesley and her colleagues Dr John Gillies, the Chair of the Royal College of GPs in Scotland, and Revd Ali Newell, Associate Chaplain at the University of Edinburgh, we picked nearly fifty poems.

We looked for poems that were ‘tools’ for the job at hand; powerful, rich but immediately readable poems that would reach out and grab the reader with an understanding of what it feels like to be on solitary night shifts, or in oncology or geriatric or maternity wards; to say that other doctors know the burden and responsibilities, and to help understand what it feels like to be the patient, too.

Each of the 916 new doctors graduating in Scotland in 2014 got a copy, free, with the help of the medical schools. We gave our time. The cash costs are funded entirely by donations from GPs and individuals, in memory of Dr Manson or simply because they think this is a great idea.

Tools of the Trade is intended to be a comfort, inspiration and a gesture of support from the medical community to their new colleagues. As poet and doctor Martin MacIntyre puts it in the title poem, poems will be ‘there at the ready: on early, sweaty, scratchy ward rounds […] to travel the manic crash and flat-lined emptiness of cardiac arrest / thole the inevitability’. After ordering a copy for their son who is a junior doctor, one person wrote: ‘I have just spoken to my son, he had a difficult weekend. I wasn't going to mention the book but under the circumstances I did. I explained its purpose and how it might help, half expecting him to laugh at me. Much to my surprise, he thanked me. I think it will help a lot of people. The anthology is such a brilliant, thoughtful idea, which I am sure will be appreciated by many junior doctors or others working in caring professions. We all need help, encouragement, inspiration, understanding – thank you to everyone involved.’

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Making Makars, our education blog, celebrates the achievements of teachers as ambassadors for poetry. It’s a sharing space where they can post their most creative and successful class work and show how they are inspiring the next generation of poets and poetry readers.

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To visit the education blog head over to makingmakars. wordpress.com

But the SPL is not just a bricks and mortar hub for poetry teachers and students here in Edinburgh; we reach out to schools across Scotland (and further afield!) through our online virtual hub.

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It’s a noisy world, full of distractions, and we create platforms where poetry can speak out and shine. Luckily, poetry is an incredibly flexible form that has adapted well to the era of the internet. Within Twitter’s 140-character limit, you can tweet enough of a poem to give a flavour of it, something you can’t do with a novel or a play.

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The Library is a resource and hub for the Scottish poetry community.

It’s important that Scotland’s present and future poets are promoted and supported.

The future of poetry is its past.

Poetry began as an oral, not a written, form. The SPL’s podcast series puts an emphasis on poetry as a spoken word form, allowing each poet to be heard reading and introducing their work in their own voice. Our podcasts help bring poetry, and especially Scottish poetry, to all corners of the world; and we’ve registered downloads in Brazil, India and China. Whereas the average poetry reading might at most attract 50-100 audience members, our podcasts will often attract between 300 and 1,000 downloads and all within the first few months of being up online.

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The SPL has ‘library’ in its title, so you’d be forgiven for thinking our activities are restricted to the building itself. Now, however, our work can reach wherever the web can.

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The SPL’s Twitter account currently has over 18,000 followers and there are over 3,400 likes on the Library’s Facebook page.

We have pages on Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube, Soundcloud and Flickr. We use Twitter to tweet lines of verse, poetry news, and of course to flag up the SPL’s activities. We’ve experimented with Vine and recently began to stage live transatlantic poetry readings using Google+. We have recognised that we have to make poetry available to people in the way they want it, so while we can provide you with a physical copy of Dàin Do Eimhir should you want one, we can also give you a podcast to listen to in the bath, blogs to read on the bus on the way into work, and a poetry poster to download and stick on your fridge.

To connect with us online and listen to our podcasts, visit spl.org.uk/connect

Allowing the SPL’s resources to extend beyond the building opens up an infinite audience who may perhaps never get the chance to visit the library itself.

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To find out more about the present and future plans for the SPL, listen to the Director, Robyn Marsack’s podcast spl.org.uk/about

By being more mindful of the things that can limit an individual’s access to the SPL, the Library can be more imaginative about how to improve access for everyone.

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The SPL will continue to keep in touch with the organisations and people who can help it be more open in many areas. For example, Artlink’s advice on improving access to events and resources.

We hope that the Library building will be a source of calm and a source of energy, that reading, writing and listening will be going on here in traditional and newly imagined ways. We hope that the SPL’s online presence will be expansive and responsive.

We hope that as a result of the changes we’re making – to the building, to our accessibility, to our ways of thinking – readers, writers and listeners will be both more numerous and more diverse, that they’ll feel welcome and enriched by their encounters with poetry.

One of the most famous poems in English begins ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud…’ – choosing to be solitary is one thing, feeling isolated is quite another.

We’d like to bring people into the Library’s community in ways that accommodate the reader alone with a book or a voice, but also provide spaces for conversation and sharing, wherever our audience is found. From classroom to care home, from island to city, from Scotland to the South Pacific, when welcoming people into this world or saying goodbye, the Scottish Poetry Library will be doing its best to connect people with the poems that speak to them.

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How libraries will be functioning in 2020, let alone 2050, is very hard to predict. Let’s say that at present, we imagine that the Scottish Poetry Library will still have a physical collection of books at its core in 2020, and that those who read poetry will still want to see it on a page – though that will not be the only way they access it.

The Scottish Poetry Library is committed to making its resources accessible and inclusive:

At the beginning of 2013, the Scottish Poetry Library w as asked to become one of six organisations to pilot Creative Scotland’s Promoting Equalities Programme (PEP).

Creative Scotland had identified the challenge faced by creative organisations in delivering equality and reflecting Scotland’s diversity in their work. PEP set out to address this challenge as a programme that supported organisations and worked with them to define where they needed to change and how they could make this happen.

Following a period of research, each organisation decided the aspects of equalities they were going to initially explore.

For the Library, PEP offered the chance for each member of staff to look at their day-today roles and reflect upon the issues of equality and diversity.

These issues are wide ranging and ever present: from making sure everyone across the length and breadth of Scotland has the chance to access and engage with poetry; to whether the toilets in the building have adequate signage.

The SPL was already working hard to ensure equality and diversity was integral to everything it does. PEP has helped guide and strengthen this thinking. Increasing inclusivity and accessibility will be a continual part of what the Library strives to achieve.

These stories give a flavour of the journey so far.

Emma Turnbull Development Officer, Creative Scotland

This information is also available in large print, braille or audio.

If you would like a copy please call 0131 557 2876 or email the library at reception@spl.org.uk It is also available to download online www.scottishpoetry library.org.uk A PDF version of this brochure is online at spl.org.uk/about The Scottish Poetry Library would like to thank the following people and organisations who have helped to bring our story to life...

Michael O’Shea michaeloshea.co.uk Euan Robertson euanrphoto.com Creative Scotland creativescotland.com

Here’s a quick guide to help you find what you’re looking for…

Visiting & borrowing Anyone can visit the library, and you can borrow for free (we just need proof of your address) Contact us on reception@spl.org.uk or browse our website www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk

Teachers & students Call or email Learning Manager Georgi Gill georgi.gill@spl.org.uk and take a look at our education blog, Making Makars makingmakars.wordpress.com

Workshops & events Browse and book online www.spl.org.uk/connect/events or get in touch with our Programme Manager, Jennifer Williams, jennifer.williams@spl.org.uk

Podcasts To access our collection of poetry podcasts, visit www.spl.org.uk/connect/podcast

Volunteers

5 Crichton’s Close Canongate Edinburgh, EH8 8DT 0131 557 2876 reception@spl.org.uk @ByLeavesWeLive facebook.com/ scottishpoetrylibrary

www.scottishpoetry library.org.uk

If you would like to find out about becoming a Volunteer please visit spl.org.uk/about/jobs-opportunities or email reception@spl.org.uk

Become a Friend To become a Friend of the SPL and support our work, go online to www.spl.org.uk/about/become-our-friend or contact friends@spl.org.uk

from ‘ Songs of Travel: X’ by Robert Louis Stevenson I know not how it is with you – I love the first and last, The whole field of the present view, The whole flow of the past.

To find exactly the poem you need, or browse the poems you don’t yet know, go to www.spl.org.uk/poetry/search-poem If you can’t find the right poem, ask us a question online, by email or by phone.

5 Crichton’s Close Canongate Edinburgh, EH8 8DT 0131 557 2876 reception@spl.org.uk @ByLeavesWeLive facebook.com/ scottishpoetrylibrary

www.scottishpoetry library.org.uk