The Scottish Poetry Library alongside journalist and broadcaster James Naughtie are set to delight or annoy readers and certainly create debate in an anthology naming the very best Scottish poetry of the past 15 years.
In 2004, the library published the first Best Scottish Poems (BSP), an online anthology featuring the finest Scottish poetry published that as chosen by a guest editor. Since then, BSP has been published each year on the Library website, with editors including novelist Janice Galloway, poet Alan Spence and musician Roddy Woomble of Idlewild.
Former Today presenter Naughtie has read each anthology and chosen twenty poems for a list titled: the ‘Best of the Best Scottish Poems’. The poems include work by well-known names such as Liz Lochhead, Don Paterson, Kathleen Jamie, Robin Robertson, Edwin Morgan, and Aonghas MacNeacail. In addition to choosing the 20 poems, Naughtie has also provided an introduction and comments on each of the poems he has selected.
Naughtie said: “It was exhilarating to revisit the selections of our best poems going back fifteen years. They’re a rich harvest, bursting with life. Picking the best of them was difficult, naturally, and involved hairsbreadth decisions, but I’m happy that this crop represents the range and depth of our poetry. Anyone wondering about the state of it will just have to read these poems, rest easy – and then read them again. They all deserve a long life.”
The anthology will be published on the poetry library website tomorrow to mark Burns Night.
Naughtie will also appear at a special event at Aye Write!, where he will discuss the process of selecting the Best of the Best Scottish Poems.
The oldest poems he chose were Edwin Morgan’s Love and Winter Visitors, Carluke by Aonghas MacNeacail. both from 2004. The most recent are Full Stretch by Tom Pow, In the Mid-Midwinter by Liz Lochhead, and Outwith by Katie Ailes, all from 2016, and 2017’s Plinky-Boat by Jen Hadfield.
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