“ The function of poetry in public spaces is to stimulate the viewer to look again”

Asif Khan

Scottish Poetry Library

Kenneth Clark wrote that a survey of civilisation cannot omit Scotland, “The Scottish character shows an extraordinary combination of realism and reckless sentiment…Where, but in Edinburgh, does a romantic landscape come right into the centre of the town?”

The Scottish Poetry Library (SPL) embodies this duality. The official biography published for the SPL’s 25th anniversary reflected on its rapid journey to institutional status from the germ of an idea articulated by founding director Tessa Ransford in 1981. Ransford’s vision led to the establishment of the SPL Association of 300 members launched in January 1983 with Naomi Mitchison, Sorley MacLean and Norman MacCaig as Honorary Presidents. These three esteemed poets feature in the original Twelve Poets sculpture commissions at Edinburgh Park.

Some cultural theorists, such as Jose Oretga Y Gasset, philosophise that society must be wary of associating art with pleasure as, according to Gasset, this was a source of “confusion” in Ancient Rome where pleasure represented “an excess, an extravagance of commodities.”

Leap forward two millennia to 1960’s Scotland and you find poet Ian Hamilton Finlay musing that, “people are very scared of charm, they do not care to be delighted.” At the time Finlay believed that audiences struggled with poetry made visual off the page, finding the experience somewhat less authentic and challenging.

Today, we are more accustomed to seeing verse presented in public spaces; for example the writing of Sir Walter Scott posted around Edinburgh’s Waverley station. John Berger asserted in ‘About Looking’ that a city is a construct of a series of images and “a circuit of messages that teaches and conditions.” If this is the case, one might ask: What added value does poetry provide to the built environment?

Johanna Drucker theorised in ‘Figuring the Word’ that writing provides “leverage” through being the only element in the landscape that challenges us to re-evaluate what we see according to ideas not indicated by the physical setting. The function of poetry in public spaces is to stimulate the viewer to look again and I trust that the poets commissioned for the project will find expression in Scotland’s extraordinary combination of realism and sentiment.