This podcast was recorded at-and in partnership with-the 2014 StAnza International Poetry Festival. Jennifer Williams talked to Jacob Polley about meaning and lack thereof, about resisting the idea of ‘home’ and about remaining open to possibility when you’re writing and much more.

Jacob Polley is the author of three acclaimed poetry collections, The Brink, Little Gods and, most recently, The Havocs, as well as a Somerset Maugham Award-winning novel, Talk of the Town. Born in Cumbria, he lives in Scotland where he teaches at the University of St Andrews.

Many thanks to James Iremonger for the music in the podcast.

Image: Mai Lin Li.

Performance poet Jem Rolls tells all about the page/stage debate, what it takes to make a living from performing poetry and how rhyme helps you remember.

Thomas A Clark's latest poetry collection - thrums - is an experimental book-length sequence of minimalist verse. The poems reward repeated reading, out loud, or quietly, very slowly, connecting with the words and sounds as they're encountered, experiencing the work as visceral entities in themselves. Clark's short verses are meditations on rurality, landscapes, all living things, and the sensory experience of walking in the natural world.

Our resident podcast host, Sam Tongue, reads and discusses sections of thrums with the Nothing But The Poem group (which is free to anyone who becomes a Friend of the Scottish Poetry Library). In this podcast Sam examines his own thoughts and experiences when connecting with thrums, as well as the opinions and feelings of the group.

thrums by Thomas A Clarke was published by Carcanet (2025).