Developments at the Scottish Poetry Library

1. Developments at the Scottish Poetry Library

2. Have you heard?developments at the Scottish Poetry Library • 1984 - SPL Founded. Moves into premises at Tweeddale Court • March 1999 - Move to purpose built premises at Crichtons Close • April 2003 - SPLs 10th outreach collection launched in Shetland • SPL employs National Poetry Audience Development Officer • June 2003 SPL employs Marketing Officer • Autumn 2003 to Spring 2004 - Expansion of office space at Crichtons Close • Thursday 20 May 2004 - ‘Poetry arrived in search of me’: Neruda Centenary Celebration and Friday 28 May 2004 - 'Love and a Life' with Liz Lochhead both events sell out • Sunday 22 August 2004 - ‘Love and Marriage’ launch of Handfast at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.

3. Have you seen?www.spl.org.uk • Contacts • Collections • Friends of the SPL • Borrowing • Audio and Braille Holdings • Popular Poems • Bookshop • Poets’ Voices • Events • Poets A-Z • Lost for Words • EPIC (European Poetry information centre) • Poets’ Pub • INSPIRE and the SPI

4. Lost for Words? • Can you help us find these quotations? • When did the Martians come to Glasgow? If you know - or even just know a poem about the event - please tell us! • Recited by a Scottish lady missionary in Bangladesh - a humorous poem about a woman who washed her underwear on a Sunday, watched with horror by the other villagers … • In the 19th century there was a poor character in Glasgow who suffered from an abnormal appetite. Known as Rab Ha', the Glasgow Glutton, he must have had a popular poem written about him, which we are trying to find. Our enquirer is now in his 70s, and remembers saying the lines as a child in Clydebank. • We are looking for a poem in Scots called 'The Apothecary'; we have tried Charles Murray, David Rorie, W.D. Cocker etc. with no luck - any other ideas?

5. EPICbrowse European poetry resources • Poets A-Z • Translating Poets Events • Poet(es) Passages • A New Alliance • Home and Away • Northern Light; • Nordic-Celtic Connections • Voyages and Versions • Featured Translation • canned searches • international links • organisations, poets and translation sections

6. Poets’ Pub • The featured poets and writings are: • Hugh MacDiarmid, Sangschaw (1925) • Sorley MacLean, 17 Poems for 6d: in Gaelic, Scots and English (1940) (with Robert Garioch) • Sydney Goodsir Smith, Under the Eildon Tree (1948) • Norman MacCaig, The Sinai Sort (1957) • Edwin Morgan, The Second Life (1968) • Robert Garioch, Doktor Faust in Rose Street (1973) • George Mackay Brown, The Wreck of the Archangel (1989) • Iain Crichton Smith, Ends and Beginnings (1994)

7. INSPIRE and the SPI • INSPIRE • full indexing • subject thesaurus • flexible searching • canned searches • Scottish Poetry Index • poetry content of 20 Scottish literary magazines • covers 1952 - present • available online, in printed volumes and shortly on CD

8. What next? • Digital archive of sound recordings • Poetry Map of Scotland • Best of Scottish Poetry • New YSPL site • I-pac “flavours”