Here you can learn more about the staff, Board, Honorary Presidents and the Poets Advisory Group of the Scottish Poetry Library.
Our people
Our staff
Asif Khan
Director. Contact Asif about strategic partnerships, sector advocacy or becoming a patron.Aly Barr
Deputy Director/Head of Operations. Contact Aly about matters related to the running of the Library building or staffing.Colin Waters
Communications Manager. Contact Colin about the SPL's social media, web site, press enquiries, and the Scots Makar Jackie Kay.Beth Cochrane
Events and Volunteers Manager. Contact Beth about event proposals, venue hire, the Fringe Festival and volunteering at the Scottish Poetry Library.Hannah Lavery
Learning & Engagement Co-ordinator. Contact Hannah about supporting schools and community groups engaging with the SPL. (Hannah will take up the learning role from January 2019.)Matthew Fellion
Library Assistant. Contact Matthew if you have an inquiry about the collection, events or online shop.Samuel Tongue
Projects Co-ordinator. Contact Sam about National Poetry Day, Tools of the Trade, publications or new project ideas.Our Board
Below you can learn more about the members of the SPL Board. Members of the SPL Board are elected by Friends of the SPL, having been nominated by a Friend with a Friend as seconder. These nominations are put to the vote at the Annual General Meeting in November. The SPL Board includes a wide range of expertise, from writing, librarianship, publishing and digital to legal, financial and human resources. The Members are committed to ensuring that the Library remains financially sustainable and fulfils its mission to bring people and poems together. You can read our company governing documents, plans and accounts via this link https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/Company papers/
Jane Ryder, OBE (Chair)
Appointed 2017. Chair of Historic Environment Scotland and Board member of other public bodies. Former Chief Executive of the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator (OSCR) and former Chair of Arts and Business Scotland.Martyn Wade, OBE
Appointed 2012. Former National Librarian and Chief Executive, National Library of Scotland.Dr John Gillies, OBE (Company Secretary)
Appointed 2016. Honorary Professor, Department of General Practice, Population Health Sciences; Senior Adviser, Global Health Academy; Co-Director, GHA Compassion initiative; Deputy Director, Scottish School of Primary Care.Dr Kyra Pollitt
Appointed 2014. Kyra translates and interprets between signing and speaking communities. She was awarded a PhD for her thesis Signart: (British) sign language poetry as Gesamtkunstwerk (2014).Nuala Watt
Appointed 2017. Writer and lecturer.Stuart A. Paterson
Appointed 2017. Poet.Marcas Mac an Tuairneir
Appointed 2017. Poet.Gordon Munro
Appointed 2017. Councillor, City of Edinburgh Council.Rory Anderson QC
Appointed 2017. Lawyer.Dr James Ripley
Appointed 2018. Academic Librarian.Dr Fiona Forbes
Appointed 2018. Retired Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist.Events
Discover poetry events at the Scottish Poetry Library and beyond.Our Honorary Presidents
From time to time, the Board of the SPL asks distinguished poets to become Honorary Presidents of the Library.
The current Honorary Presidents are Douglas Dunn, Liz Lochhead, Michael Longley and Aonghas MacNeacail.
Previous Presidents have been George Bruce, Seamus Heaney, Norman MacCaig, Sorley MacLean, Naomi Mitchison, Edwin Morgan, Iain Crichton Smith, Derick Thomson, and Tessa Ransford
Poets Advisory Group: Chair and Deputy Chair
Diana Hendry, Chair
Diana Hendry has published six collections of poetry, most recently The Watching Stair (Worple Press, 2018). She’s been a Royal Literary Fund Fellow, a co-editor of New Writing Scotland and a tutor on courses at Arvon and Moniack Mhor. She’s assistant editor of Mariscat Press,
Kevin Mclean, Deputy Chair
Kevin Mclean is a spoken word poet and promoter based in Edinburgh. Since 2013, he's won multiple slam titles and helped build Loud Poets into one of Scotland’s leading poetry nights with five years of successful monthly nights, Edinburgh Fringe runs and touring the UK and abroad
Poets Advisory Group Members
Henry Bell
Henry Bell is a writer and editor from Bristol. He lives in Glasgow and edits Gutter Magazine. He was mentored by St Mungo's Mirrorball's Clydebuilt mentoring programme and has edited books including A Bird is Not a Stone (Freight).
Anne (AC) Clarke
A C Clarke's fifth collection is A Troubling Woman (Oversteps Books). She was one of the winners in the Cinnamon Press 2017 poetry pamphlet competition with War Baby. A series of poems with Maggie Rabatski and Sheila Templeton in Gaelic, Scots and English is due out next year.
Patrick Errington
Originally from Canada, Patrick Errington is the author of two pamphlets, Glean (Ignition Press, 2018) and Field Studies (Clutag Press, 2018), and the French translator of PJ Harvey’s collection, The Hollow of the Hand(Éditions l’Âge d’Homme, 2017).
Miriam Gamble
Originally from Northern Ireland, Miriam Gamble is a poet, critic, and lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Edinburgh. She’s published two collections with Bloodaxe Books, with a third, What Planet, forthcoming in May 2019.
Nadine Aisha Jassat
Nadine Aisha Jassat is the author of Still, a feminist poetry pamphlet. She has performed solo shows at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, as well as speaking at Edinburgh International Book Festival, Aye Write, and Glasgow Women’s Library’s Festival of Women Writers.
Caroline Johnstone
Caroline Johnstone is originally from Northern Ireland, now living in Ayrshire. She has been published in The Galway Review, Belfast Life, the New Voices Press, and the latest Federation of Writers (Scotland) anthology. She is a member of the Federation of Writers (Scotland).
Jenny Lindsay
Jenny Lindsay is a spoken word poet, performer, and the director of Flint & Pitch Productions. She won the Creative Edinburgh Award for Leadership in 2017 for her work in building a sustainable spoken word scene. She is the author of one full collection and two pamphlets.
Rhona Warwick Paterson
Rhona Warwick Paterson is a poet and artist based in Glasgow. She was the editor for Arcade: Artists and Place-making (2006). She was the the recipient of the Scottish Book Trust Award for Poetry in 2018 and is currently working on her first collection ‘Armatures’.
Nalini Paul
Nalini Paul’s poetry practice includes collaborations across art forms, such as dance and visual art. After graduating with a PhD on Jean Rhys from the University of Glasgow, her first poetry pamphlet, Skirlags, was shortlisted for the Callum Macdonald Award (2010).
Alycia Pirmohamed
Alycia Pirmohamed is a Canadian-born poet living in Scotland. She is a PhD student at the University of Edinburgh, where she is studying poetry written by second-generation immigrants. Alycia is the author of the pamphlet Faces that Fled the Wind (forthcoming, BOAAT Press).
Harry Smart
Harry Smart has published three collections of poetry with Faber (Pierrot, Shoah, and Fool's Pardon). He continues to publish poetry in magazines and online.
Alice Tarbuck
Alice Tarbuck holds a doctorate from the University of Dundee and the Scottish Poetry Library on the poetry and practice of Thomas A. Clark. Her first pamphlet, Grid, was published by Sad Press in April 2018. She is part of 12, a women's poetry collective, based in Edinburgh.
Ryan Van Winkle
Ryan Van Winkle is a poet and editor living in Edinburgh. His second collection, The Good Dark, won the Saltire Society’s 2015 Poetry Book of the Year award. As a member of Highlight Arts he has organized festivals and translation workshops in Syria, Pakistan and Iraq.
Jay Whittaker
Jay Whittaker is the author of the pamphlet Pearl (Selkirk Lapwing Press, 2005) and a full-length collection, Wristwatch (Cinnamon Press, 2017). Her poems have also been published by Envoi, Orbis, Frogmore Papers, amongst others.
Jennifer Williams
Books by JL Williams include Condition of Fire (Shearsman, 2011), Locust and Marlin (Shearsman, 2014) and After Economy (Shearsman Books, 2017). She is interested in multimodal and cross-form cross-form work, visual art, dance, opera and theatre.The SPL Poets Advisory Group was established in December 2017 as a means for poets to share their ideas on how the library engages and works with poets across Scotland. Participants contribute topics for discussion in the meetings, and SPL staff may ask for the Group’s feedback on projects. Following the Group’s meetings, detailed notes from the discussion are shared with SPL staff to be taken into account when determining and implementing SPL activities in line with the business plan ambitions for 2018 to 2021.