Scottish Poetry Library Poetry Issues

Other recommendations

Essentials

100 Favourite Scottish Poems

This is one of the anthologies that almost always goes in the SPL travel bag, because we can be sure there's something for everybody's taste and all occasions where you might need to pull a pleasing poem out of the hat. It is also available in a sturdy and attractive large print edition, and good poetry anthologies in large print are rare beasts; so, as well as getting one out of a good few tight corners, it's a particularly useful poetry title for older readers who find standard print size difficult.

ISBN 978-1905222612, Luath Press, £7.99, pbk
LARGE PRINT EDITION: ISBN 978-1905222629, £14.99, hbk

Children and young adults

Inside Out: Children's poets discuss their work

ed JonArno Lawson

Can't resist this thoughtful and well-designed anthology/ideas book, where 24 poets of the likes of Michael Rosen, Roger McGough, Jackie Kay and Carol Ann Duffy describe how they came to write their poem on a facing page. Walker Books suggest it's for 11+; we think you'll also find this an inspirational book to browse if you are an adult working with children and exploring writing with them.

ISBN 9781406321814, Walker Books, £6.99, pbk

Don't miss ...

If you've got main poetry titles covered, but want to add extra sparkle...

At the Loch of the Green Corrie

by Andrew Greig

'I should like you to fish for me at the Loch of the Green Corrie... if you catch a fish, I shall be delighted. If you fail, then looking down from a place in which I do not belive, I shall be most amused.' Norman MacCaig's affectionate challenge to Andrew Greig, and some of MacCaig's own finest poems, are the centre of this book which, apparently effortlessly, causes poetry, fishing and male friendship to illuminate each other (Greig gave golf a similarly magic treatment in Preferred Lies). Reasons to buy: a delightful angle on MacCaig's centenary year (born in November 1910), by an increasingly well-known novelist, guaranteed to please a beautifully broad readership.

ISBN 978-1-84724-996-8, Quercus 2010, £16.99 hbk.

Scots, Gaelic and translation

The Greek Poets: Homer to the Present

edited by Peter Constantine, Rachel Hadas, Edmund Keeley and Karen Van Dyck

If you are looking for substantial, scholarly and readable additions to your stock of European literature, this excellent new survey of Greek poetry will fill (quite a large) gap on the shelves. It's worth the higher cover price for the broad range and the emphasis on quality - including the translations by eminent English-language poets. A well-produced book, indexed by translator as well as poet, and with useful and succinct introductions to each era of Greek poetry.

ISBN 978-0-393-06083-6, W W Norton, $39.95 hbk

What works…? Try this!

Wanting to explore poetry with teenagers and young adults?

Library colleagues often feel they'd like ideas for working with this wide group of library users, who are too old for kids' stuff, but just not inspired by a lot of the adult fare on offer. Enter Ryan, the Reader in Residence we share with Edinburgh City Libraries. He's written our new tip-sheet to describe five activities to add to your techniques for working with this imaginative, exploratory and thoughtful group of potential readers, writers and library users. And yes, we did ask him to come up with activities that cost very little, adaptable and - despite talk of graffiti walks and stealing poems - entirely legal. Download the tipsheet below.

• Send us your tips. What's worked for you?

Poetry and politics

Are you obsessively devouring all the election commentary you can eat? Or at risk of election fatigue?

Take a couple of minutes out to find inspiration - without a whisker of political bias - in these poems by James Robertson and Edwin Morgan.

To finish, restore your sense of humour with the delightful poetry choice of BBC Scotland's political editor, Brian Taylor.

• Edwin Morgan, 'For the Opening of the Scottish Parliament'
• James Robertson's 'A Manifesto for MSPs'
• Brian Taylor's top ten poems