The Scottish Poetry Library is thought into being
Tessa Ransford, OBE, born Mumbai, 1938, died Edinburgh, 2015; poet, editor, translator, activist, and founder of the Scottish Poetry Library, the only – as far as is known – purpose-built, independent public poetry library in the world.
I didn’t exist, till, at Festival time,
a visitor to the capital asked her where I was,
and in that one beat, her thought created me,
the future now:
a space for poetry and people to tryst
on three foundation stones of language –
Gaelic, Scots and English, a glimmer of syllables
signalled from spines, bound sheaves murmuring distillations,
an infinite exchange of the world’s flickering lexicons,
bearing light from centuries’ vaults, outward and home again,
thumbed, leafed and loved, cross-fertilised, the way she’d learned
from her Scottish-Indian roots, whose shoots
branched across horizons
into the future now.
Poetry goes through walls, she wrote,
and took that thought to the road,
driving our bus from home base,
my store to be shared, poems fluttering
like flags all along the hairpin bends
of Scotland’s rugged map,
always reaching, reaching out,
into the future now.
Note: ‘Future Now’ and ‘Poetry Goes Through Walls’ are titles of poems by Tessa Ransford.
