About me Irredeemably bookish and over-fond of spreadsheets. Immediately before coming to the SPL, I worked in events and administration for the Methodist Church. Before that and not all at the same time, I sold books, shoes, cat-themed merchandise, birthday cakes and books again while studying English Literature and History at the University of Edinburgh. During and after that, I’m general manager of the West Port Book Festival.

Contact me about our shop: what we stock and how to buy it; our online shop; hiring our venue; volunteering opportunities; our periodicals for reference and sale; joining up as a borrower, postal loans, renewing your books; having trouble logging onto our website; and if you aren’t quite sure who to call, our reception is a good first port in a poetry storm.

My favourite poetry quote is ‘Yet the books will be there on the shelves, well born, / Derived from people, but also from radiance, heights.’ - Czesław Miłosz, ‘And Yet the Books’

My favourite poets are… ...many and as lacking in logic as my Itunes library.

When not at work you’ll find me ...out and about, possibly in a cafe with a book or paying my overdue fines at McDonald Road Library on Leith Walk, trying to hide where I work out of shame. Cinema-hopping; charity shopping; bookcrossing. That sort of thing, usually involving tea.

My favourite biscuit is a custard cream … My favourite cake is lemon drizzle cake

Me as a form of poem would be a list poem: most of the things I’m good at involve details, often mundane ones, and finding meaning or gaps in the overall picture they make.

One of the poems I carry is… I didn’t until recently but now I love Sophie Hannah’s ‘Leaving and Leaving You.’ An awful lot of my friends have left the city after graduating, jobs and life generally happened. What I love about this poem is that it perfectly captures that feeling of taking your leave of a place or person of your own free will, and missing it or them anyway, but their home and the place that they live ultimately being different from your own.