About me I first joined the SPL as a volunteer cataloguer in 2000. I then worked on several freelance projects, such as managing the online Best Scottish Poems. I edited The Thing that Mattered Most: Scottish poems for children, and was Education Development Officer for a couple of years. I hold an MSc in Library and Information Services from Robert Gordon University; my MSc research was on the subject indexing of poetry. I was appointed Librarian in 2007. You can follow me on Twitter @poetrylibrarian.

Contact me about the collection, acquisitions and donations, the Edwin Morgan Archive, the annual By Leaves We Live fair, exhibitions.

My favourite poetry quote is ‘Whatever happens. Whatever / what is is is what / I what. Only that. But that.’ Galway Kinnell.

My favourite poets are… Ian Hamilton Finlay, Robert Creeley, Robert Lax, Thomas A Clark, Kay Ryan, W S Merwin, Wendell Berry, Jane Hirshfield, Denise Levertov, John Burnside, Samuel Menashe, Gael Turnbull, R F Langley, Alice Oswald, Lorine Niedecker… etc

When not at work you’ll find me running Essence Press and making minimalist artists’ books, reading, watching films, playing with my cat.

My favourite biscuit is dark chocolate gingers… My favourite cake is something moist, lemony with a bit of icing

Me as a form of poem would be something very minimal and quiet with very few words, not a haiku, but more like a monostitch (a one line poem) or one of Ian Hamilton Finlay’s one-word poems. I like silence and space, I’m a less is more sort of person…

One of the poems I carry is… The one that comes to me when I feel stressed is ‘The Peace of Wild things’ by Wendell Berry.  It’s about resting in ‘the grace of the world’, and not taxing our lives ‘with forethought / of grief’. Another that lingers always in my mind is ‘Otherwise’ by Jane Kenyon, with its simple celebration of the ordinary.