Launching Poetry in St Andrew Square two festivals ago.

Is this poetry in motion or poetry parked?  Either way, the Poetry Garden will bloom for a day in Castle Street on Friday 16th July between 10 am and 3pm, with the help of a mobile library, some potted plants – and of course the essential poetry.

In fact the Poetry Garden is rooted in St Andrew Square (where it was planted almost two years ago) but – Scottish summers being what they are – outdoor events can be a bit of a gamble.  So Friday’s Summer Reading/Poetry in Motion  has the great bonus of the mobile library van (thanks to Ian Kirkby and Jane Douglas from Edinburgh City Libraries Direct Services).

As  parking in the square can also be a bit of a problem Mike Gallagher of Essential Edinburgh suggested taking the van to Castle Street linking two of Edinburgh’s new public spaces managed by the city’s first Business Improvement District – and showing how streets can come to life when people make creative use of them.

With a little instant gardening (thanks to the horticulture team at the Botanics) and another inspired collection of poems handpicked by Lilias Fraser of the Scottish Poetry Library…how can anyone just walk on by?  You can even use your library card to take out a book from the van right there and then.

SUMMER READING / POETRY IN MOTION

Friday 16 July, 10.30am-3pm
Mobile library van, Castle Street

Spot the poetry in St Andrew Square?

Sadly, we missed the event in Leith last week when performance poet Mark Thompson carried poetry to the Library, for an evening about life and learning with adult learners and tutors from CLAN Edinburgh. But there’s still two weeks to go in the Carry a Poem campaign with free events all round town – not least the snowdrop walks in the Botanics every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday in February.  And look for the poetry planted in St Andrew Square.

Carry a Poem is this year’s brilliant idea for the annual reading campaign organised by Unesco City of Literature and the Scottish Poetry Library.  There are all kinds of stories behind the poems people choose to carry with them as you can find out from the free books they are handing out all over the city.

At the Botanics you go for a snowdrop walk with the Rangers (meet at the new John Hope Gateway building at 11 am) and get a snowdrop poem to take home.  In the Poetry Garden in St Andrew Square you can discover poems planted around the pond.

The little video here was taken on a mobile phone with sun blazing down on the snow – we just wanted to show that people were stopping to read the poems as soon as they were planted.

Lots more happening all over the city.  Take a look at the Carry a Poem blog for details.

here, there and gone: where?

Home is a controversial word for Iyad Hayatleh, a Palestinian poet who was born in a Syrian refugee camp. “The most controversial word of my life,” he told us. He has never been to Palestine but to mark Refugee Week, Iyad read poems about home in Arabic and English as we gathered round a dead tree in Edinburgh’s Poetry Garden. 

It was a simple idea. Poems about home written by refugees were hung in the old cherry tree near the Coffee Republic pavilion in St Andrew Square.   In pouring rain words gathered tears of their own.

That was Tuesday 16 June. Oddly when we met for the poetry picnic on the sunnier 18th some of the poetry had vanished.  Including the three word poem, “Here and There” and Iyad’s three poems written in beautiful Arabic script.

Iyad Hayatleh (photograph by Nick Gardner)

Never mind. We had real, live poetry  while shoppers passed by.  Iyad, who now lives in Glasgow, read two of his own poems and one by Mahmoud Darwish in both Arabic and English. Ryan read one about his family home in the US.  Gordon Munro (a Leith councillor with a not so private passion for poetry) read a poem in Scots dialect about Leith’s welcoming internationalism by the Leith poet Rodney Relax. While Jason Bergen of Oxfam reminded us that Scotland is not always a welcoming place for refugees.

Gordon reading Rodney Relax. (Pic by Nick)

Poems in the tree were written by refugees at a workshop in The Welcoming led by Ryan van Winkle, Reader in Residence at the city libraries and Scottish Poetry Library. The workshop was organised by the poetry library in partnership with The Welcoming and Oxfam.

And the poetry was supposed to be on display until Monday 29 June but the poems were vanishing so fast it looks as if poetry library volunteers won’t have much clearing up to do after the weekend. Where “Here and There”?

Home is a dead tree in the garden.  Well, not quite so dead now that it is fluttering with poems about home to mark Refugee Week in Edinburgh.

The poems are in many languages – Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, Russian, English – but they all focus on thoughts of home.  The shortest is just three words: “Here and there” a simple reality of a new life in Edinburgh far from the home that was Pakistan. You can fill in your own emotion.

Poems about home were written at a workshop in The Welcoming led by Ryan van Winkle, Reader in Residence at the city libraries and Scottish Poetry Library. The workshop was organised by the poetry library in partnership with The Welcoming and Oxfam. Then, in pouring rain, we hung the poems  on the tree near the Coffee Republic Pavillion on Monday 15 June, the start of Refugee Week.

Some of the poems will be read at a simple lunchtime event in St Andrew Square Garden (Edinburgh’s poetry garden) on Thursday between 1pm and 2pm.  With luck this time the rain will stay away – but the poetry will remain on the tree until 29 June.

[PS Or will they? You better hurry – at lunchtime, today Thursday, there were empty wires where the poems had been. Ryan says he refuses to be insulted: "I hope they are decorating someone's fridge somewhere"]

Suddenly out of the darkness, out of the night, there swooped something with a swish like an aeroplane. Ed Malone in the Lost World

It’s the stuff of dreams:  you are travelling in time to a place where dinosaurs crash through forests of dripping trees. Ok, so The Lost World Read won’t really bring you face to face with a live dinosaur (or even a stuffed one for that matter) but the trail leading from Palm House in the Botanics to Poetry Garden in St Andrew Square is full of excitement all the same.  Join the adventure beginning on 31 January. And pick up your free copy of Conan Doyle’s Lost World at the same time.

thanks to Lost World Read for book cover images

The Lost World Read is the third big give away by City of Literature: following Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped in 2007 and Jekyll and Hyde last year, they have thousands of copies of Conan Doyle’s adventure story to hand out across Edinburgh from Saturday 31 January.

During February the Scottish Poetry Library picks up the theme with readings of poetry by Ryan van Winkle in the Temperate Palm House in the Botanics and more poetry ‘planted’ in St Andrew Square garden.

A huge black shadow, twenty feet across, skimmed up into the air; for an instant the monster wings blotted out the stars, and then it vanished over the brow of the cliff above us.

Now read on…Lost World Read

Beautiful but cold for outdoor poetry events during the winter, fortunately there is somewhere much warmer just around the corner…

Thanks to the National Portrait Gallery, (conveniently situated in York Place) the poetry garden is coming indoors for at least some of the winter, starting with a lunchtime event on Friday 19 December between 12 and 2pm. So that’s food, warmth, a chance to pick up some last minute presents plus the inspiration of poems chosen specially for you. What more could you possibly need?

Look for Lilias Fraser of the Scottish Poetry Library who will be sitting somewhere quiet in the beautifully Christmassy space of the Portrait Gallery ready to find  a poem to suit your mood.  (She’s gathering a suitably “festive and starry” store for the occasion).  Ryan van Winkle, the library’s Reader in Residence, will also be there to bring poetry of all kinds to life.

Incidentally, the Scottish Poetry Library in the High Street is closed until early January but their website is still very much open for business – and now features the first of a poetry podcast series with readings and music chosen by Ryan.

Look out for more poetry events in the National Portrait Gallery in March – and we’re told the poetry garden committee are looking for other warm  inspiring spaces close to St Andrew Square before returning poetry to St Andrew Square in the spring.

PS Apologies for blurry pictures: it’s too cold and dark for LOS photographer!

Here’s an invitation you can’t refuse. Come to St Andrew Square and find a poem chosen specially for you. “It personal, it’s fast and it’s absolutely free,” says Lilias Fraser of the Scottish Poetry Library who will be one of the ‘poetry army’ celebrating National Poetry Day on Thursday 9 October in Edinburgh’s very own Poetry Garden by handing out poems and poetry postcards. Better still, why don’t you join the army for the day?

It takes a bit of nerve to walk up to complete strangers and ask them what kind of poem they would like. But that’s what Ryan van Winkle was doing during the first lunchtime poetry event in St Andrew Square in September (Ryan is Reader in Residence for the city libraries). And you would be amazed how well people responded. Or maybe it’s not amazing at all. There is something very nice about having someone choose a poem for you.

After meeting Ryan, some adventurous souls made their way to the tent where Lilias had a folder full of poems to suit almost every taste. No-one went away disappointed. In fact, the first Personal Poetry Shopper went so well that the team are expanding the idea to celebrate National Poetry Day in three shifts – 8-10am, 12-2pm, 5-6pm – to meet people on the way to work, at the lunchtime break and when they are on the way home again.

Lilias says you are welcome to join in: “If you or anyone you know would like to pop along and help give out poetry postcards, we’d love your company. It is truly the best fun; weird, but true! You get a great response.”

For more information, call Lilias Fraser, Scottish Poetry Library, 0131 557 2876 or email lfraser@spl.org.uk

Poetry in St Andrew Square began in September with a symbolic floating of lotus blossoms on the pond. Two Leith Open Space members were there: Nick Gardner to take pictures and Fay Young as a member of the steering group now working on plans for future poetry events in the garden.

Poetry in the Garden is supported by Essential Edinburgh, Edinburgh UNESCO City of Literature Trust, Coffee Republic, The Scottish Poetry Library, Edinburgh International Book Festival, Scottish Book Trust and The Writers’ Museum.

Wring the Scottish rain clouds dry…Ron Butlin

Some hope. It rained of course but the sun shone too so Edinburgh’s new Makar, Ron Butlin, brought the perfect poem to launch Poetry in St Andrew Square: A Recipe for Whisky, laced with all the elements of Scotland’s weather. Come rain, hail, sleet or sun, the poetry garden is now open for business and waiting for you to help it grow…

The next event is on Friday 5 September when a lunch time Personal Poetry Shopper is open and free to anyone who happens to be in the garden at the time. Between 12.30 and 1.30, Reader in Residence, Ryan van Winkle (seen below) will help passers by to find a poem to read to suit their mood. And if it rains, well then, he will just lead a retreat to Tiles.

Kindred spirits
This is the spirit of Poetry in St Andrew Square launched on Monday 25 August by floating poetry on lotus blossoms across the water. The opening of the poetry garden coincided with the last day of the book festival at the other end of George Street neatly making the point that creative life goes on even when the festivals have left town. With another nice coincidence both Richard Holloway, chair of the Scottish Arts Council (on the right), and Ron Butlin, the city’s poet laureate, chose whisky as their theme to celebrate the start of a bold new venture in the heart of Edinburgh.

For the first time in 230 years St Andrew Square is full of people. Dedicating the space to poetry, Richard Holloway said, ‘…the wonderful thing about having a poetry garden in a famous square in a beautiful city is the way it will help people to pause for a minute or two and let poetry into their lives.’

This is just the start of a public project led by Ewan Aitken (former council leader and city councillor for Restalrig) with support from the city’s literary groups (see the full list below) as well as Essential Edinburgh, the city’s first business improvement district, and Coffee Republic who host the bustling cafe in the square.

In October the poetry garden will celebrate National Poetry Day and after that, who knows? You can help to decide what happens by making a wish on the poetry postcard in Coffee Republic, or logging on to the City of Literature website which invites you to email them with your ideas to make poetry happen every day in the garden. As the website says, “It is your garden!”

Or in some of the words of the outgoing Makar Valerie Gillies (soon to be displayed in the coffee pavilion)

We wander through your windy mazes,
All our voices are flags on the high street.
From the sky’s edge to the grey firth
We are the city, you are within us.

Poetry in St Andrew Square is supported by: Scottish Poetry Library, Edinburgh UNESCO City of Literature Trust, Essential Edinburgh, Ewan Aitken, Coffee Republic, Edinburgh International Book Festival, The Edinburgh Makar, Scottish Book Trust and The Writers’ Museum.

See also the excellent picture story by our own Leith Open Spacer, Nick Gardner