Poetry In The Library

A special initiative to increase poetry readership and to make poetry more accessible will be running at libraries in Dingwall, Dornoch, Portree, Nairn and Culloden.

The Highland Council in partnership with Moniack Mhor and The Scottish Poetry Library in Edinburgh have set up a series of “poetry in the library” workshops to coincide with the poetry libraries new initiative, “The Novel Approach”. 

The idea of the initiative is to match up novels and poetry.  Lilias Fraser, Reader Development Officer at the Poetry Library said:  ““Matching up novels and poetry collections is an addictive pleasure, and you find yourself enjoying books you never thought you’d try. I put together the [Novel Approach] list with Andrew Forster, at the Dumfries and Galloway Arts Association, who’s also a poet himself.  We wanted to share some of the many really readable new poetry books out there.”

The Highland Council’s Chairman of Education, Culture and Sport, Councillor Bill Fernie was pleased that through partnership working the Council was going to promote poetry.  He said: “The Highland Council supports a number of reading groups throughout the Highlands with an increasing number of groups meeting in our libraries and using our Multiple Copy Titles Collection from the extensive list available to borrow.  We thought that including poetry would be an excellent way of enriching our readers experience and are really excited to be working with Moniack Mhor and The Scottish Poetry Library on this project.”

The workshops, which are funded by the Scottish Arts Council will be held in five different libraries throughout the Highland area with seven different reading groups taking part.  The libraries involved in the project are : Dingwall Tuesday 27th at 7.30pm and Wednesday 28th November at 2pm, Dornoch Library Tuesday 4th December at 7.30pm, Portree Library Thursday 6th December at 5.30pm and Nairn Library on Tuesday 11th December at 7.30pm.  The workshop will also be held with Culloden reading groups in January.

Writer Cynthia Rogerson, a director at Moniack is delighted to be involved in working with Highland Libraries and the Scottish Poetry Library.  She said: “Moniack is devoted providing the conditions for excellent writing either through outreach with schools and libraries or in residential courses.  Future writing workshops will be tutored by such well known authors as Carol Ann Duffy, A.L.Kennedy, Ali Smith and Jackie Kay.