Arriving at the Scottish Poetry Library, off Edinburgh’s Royal Mile, I sense that my high expectations will be fulfilled. At the entrance, grey paving slates have been decorated with chiselled oak leaves. As I gaze down, looking for acorns, I find some. They are few and far between, but somehow this is the essence of their appeal.
The experience of finding something rare and valuable continues inside. After walking over the carved words “By leaves we live”, you step onto a honey-coloured parquet floor, an old-fashioned touch in a new building. It was designed specially for the library (now 23 years old) in 1999. This and the clever use of space gives the building a homely, intimate feel. On the reception desk are miniature booklets: W H Auden’s Funeral Blues, of Four Weddings and a Funeral fame. Free – and scarcely bigger than postage stamps – they are like tempting aperitifs.
In the Library’s low-ceilinged basement, Reader Development Officer Lilias Fraser speaks with quiet enthusiasm about creating a wider audience for poetry. Her PhD explored the interaction between the academic study of poetry, and poetry publishing as a business. “Sometimes they are separate worlds,” she says, but not at SPL. The Poetry Boxes project, for instance, has the energy of a marketing drive. Boxes are sent out to other libraries stuffed with poetry goodies. These include CDs of poetry, and bookmarks listing poems on popular topics such as gardening.
The publishing world embraces excellence in design, and so does the Scottish Poetry Library – unashamedly. Even the toilet signs echo a leaf motif found, in lime green, on the spine of every book. Each spine also features the “by leaves we live” motto. A gorgeously coloured rug in the children’s section depicts Hugh MacDiarmid’s poem, Hungry Waters – a giant with jellyfish, shells and raging waves. Very much a one-off, it brightens the library in the quirky way only an artist – or a poet – could.
Cocooned by stacks of books, I notice three things. A glass of wild flowers has been placed on my table. The receptionist is taking a call from an enquirer, mentioning that Simon Armitage is coming soon to read other people’s poems. And someone has left free leaflets: they explain she is planning to start a group on “both Portuguese and Scottish literature, especially poetry”, and wants to gauge people’s interest. I find myself hoping she will discover her kindred spirits. And suspecting that, through the Poetry Library, she will.
By contrast, I didn’t have to seek out Instant magazine. Available free in coffee shops – in Edinburgh, anyway – it’s a colourful, free publication that includes a poetry page. In the June/July issue, the standard is quite high. A red rose sets the tone for poems mainly about love and longing. Thankfully most were meatier than Ode to Snow, consisting of two words – “O snow”!
Did the magazine receive much attention? I asked a waitress. She said people do read it – but they don’t take it away. That’s a challenge for would-be Poetry Page poets, then! They are competing with coffee and conversation – and don’t get a second shot.
Someone else who only gets once chance to make an impact is Jude Simpson, a 34-year-old performance poet. As I write she has just started her third run at the Edinburgh Fringe. Described as a cross between Joyce Grenfell and Eminem, Jude examines what makes us adults nowadays in her show Growing Up Games.
“It’s about the things people use to define themselves as proper grown-ups – and whether we really ever want to grow up at all”, she explained. One of the poems, Brackenbury Mummy, begins “Brackenbury Mummy’s got a tummy like a vice – /Three pregnancies in four years, and she’s only missed yoga twice”.
Quick-fire humour, fast pace and punchy rhymes are everywhere in Jude’s output. The Scotsman said of her “she’s got words on a string like so many yoyos and her words sparkle with wit and panache”. Having heard her on Radio Four’s Saturday Live, I agree. Her love of words, I felt, was both free of pretension, and of the fear of being pretentious that can turn writers dry and cold.
“I love the performance side of poetry, and the fun of rhymes and rhythms and wordplay, including silliness!” she said, adding that she makes sure her work is always immaculately constructed. “I like the flexibility of rap rhythms, but add my own slants and subject matters”.
Another performer whose attention to detail pays off is Lance Pierson, who has brought John Betjeman’s Life in Verse to the Fringe. I haven’t heard Lance perform Betjeman, but I have been moved to tears by his rendition of Charles Causley’s Ballad of the Bread Man. And had my interest in George Herbert and Gerard Manley Hopkins rekindled by the wealth of understanding and sympathy behind his performances. A trained actor, he brings drama and extra layers to the poems he performs. Fresh insights arise in unexpected ways, due to the words taking on a physical dimension. After all, poetry can be a physical and social experience as well as a private, book-oriented one.
The Scottish Poetry Library has understood this, with its attention to design and its multi-media output. So have Jude Simpson and Lance Pierson in their different ways. I’m beginning to conclude that poetry doesn’t need to have anything to do with books. “By leaves we live”? Certainly – “leaves” are poetry’s bedrock, and always will be. But leaves are there to support the fruit, and I’m enjoying discovering poetry acorns.
Lance Pierson’s show John Betjeman’s Life in Verse is at St Cuthbert’s Church, Lothian Road – please note second venue change! – at 6.30pm, on 14, 16 and 18 August and at 8.30pm on 12, 13, 15 and 17 August.
Jude Simpson’s Growing Up Games is at the Pleasance Courtyard at 12.15pm, on 1 – 26 August (excluding 13 August).
