The Scottish Poetry Library is now just over 30 years old. The building in Crichton’s Close was itself a new beginning when it opened, but now it needs to change, and the library will have to close to allow that to happen. It will open again in several months’ time, but will have a completely different look and feel to it.
The SPL explain the reasons behind the changes on their website:
“Most people think of a library as a silent space, a place where hush prevails. It is true that the Library provides just such a space, away from the hustle and bustle of the Royal Mile: a place of retreat, reflection, and academic inquiry. But we also need to allow for sound, so that users can encounter poetry in different ways in the one building, the home of poetry in Scotland. Researchers working, people quietly reading poetry, people listening to poems being read and/or poets reading their own works, people interpreting and discussing poems, classes visiting, staff creating podcasts so that people can listen to them on the website – all these activities need to be catered for simultaneously. They are what people expect of a twenty-first century library.
“Our building was designed for what we were doing in the 1990s, and now we need to plan for the 2020s, and even for what we can’t imagine doing yet.”
We met Colin Waters who is the Communications Manager at the library and who explains what will happen now, and how you can help if you are so minded:
Founding Editor of The Edinburgh Reporter.
Edinburgh-born multimedia journalist and iPhoneographer.
