Episode 297: Happy 100th Birthday, Muriel Spark! With Rob A Mackenzie and Louise Peterkin

Muriel Spark’s 100th birthday was celebrated in 2018 in several ways honouring her status as arguably the greatest Scottish novelist of the twentieth century. One of the more imaginative ways came late in the year with the publication of Spark: Poetry and Art Inspired by the Novels of Muriel Spark, which was edited by poets Rob A Mackenzie and Louise Peterkin and published by Blue Diode. With contributors including Tishani Doshi, Vahni Capildeo and Sean O’Brien, the anthology does Spark justice. Mackenzie and Peterkin came into the SPL to talk about Spark and her career as a poet, from her controversial time at the Poetry Society in the 1940s to how poetry informed her novels. Plus a tribute to the late Matthew Sweeney.