2. Scots Language and Scottish Worlds – with Billy Kay

This episode's guests are publisher David Graham and writer Kirsty Gunn — the joint directors of North House Press, a new publishing house based in the Highlands.

This episode's guest is Garry MacKenzie — the award-winning, ecologically attuned poet and scholar, Fifer, Glaswegian, and translator from Gaelic. He is the author of Ben Dorain: A Conversation with a Mountain (Irish Pages, 2021) and, most recently, Firth (Irish Pages, 2026) We talk about Scotland, the Firth of Forth, the planet, deep time, oysters, glaciers and deer. We also listen to Garry’s exquisite verse, and, in so doing, we touch on the mad poet’s dream of rendering the world into words. Overall, it is a hopeful conversation: a vindication of local insight, art and craft against the forces of global extraction. 02:30 - Writing about "the burning world" 07:20 - Garry's journey as a Scottish/Glaswegian eco-poet 20:10 - Poetry, ecology, spirituality and the non-human world 35:00 - Ben Dorain: Garry's experimental translation from 18th-century Gaelic 52:30 - Ecology and philosophy of translation 01:09:20 - Firth: Garry's latest collection about the Firth of Forth 01:16:50 - Glacier and Oysters 01:32:35 - Geology, History, and Revolution 01:41:00 - Scotland's eco-poetic scene

This episode's guests are Dr Erin Farley, historian of Dundee literature and archivist at Dundee's Public Library, and Taylor Dyson, the award-winning Dundonian poet. In the first part of the episode, Erin paints a broad and vivid picture of Dundee's literary history, from Reformation verse and the poetry of the jute industry and from William McGonagal to Mary Brooksbank, W.N. Herbert and Michael Marra. In the second half, Taylor reads from her own work and reflects on the past few years, which have seen her emerge as one of the most exciting new voices in Dundee and Scottish poetry. Together, these conversations explore how a distinctive literary culture is made and sustained, and the many rewards and challenges of nurturing a local, democratic writing scene.

This episode's guest is Dr Clément Guézais, a French historian, lecturer at the University of Arras, and specialist of the Auld Alliance between Scotland and France. We discuss the alliance itself - its origins, its history, and its legacy - as well as the ways in which French and Scots have imagined, understood and misunderstood one another across the centuries. At its heart, this is a discussion about the possibility of genuine friendship between nations, rather than merely a relationship of political convenience. 02:00 - Clément's journey as a scholar and into Scotland 07:30 - The origins of the Auld Alliance 16:00 - Why was the "Alliance" called "Auld"? 23:27 - The alliance and medieval notions of riendship 26:30 - The alliance and the Hundred Years' War 35:45 - The "Garde Ecossaise" 38:20 - Why the Auld Alliance came to an end 47:15 - How the French understood the Scots in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance 57:37 - The legacy of the Auld Alliance 01:07:00 - "Distance Unites": Clément's Franco-Scottish identity and his future works

This episode’s guest is Robert Crawford, Emeritus Professor at the University of St Andrews and a distinguished poet. We discuss his work, which since the 1980s has played an important role in reshaping our understanding of Scottish literature in more multilingual and multicultural terms. We also speak about his engagement with Robert Burns and T. S. Eliot, as well as his interests in fields as varied as philosophy, computing, and the Japanese haiku. The result is a wide-ranging conversation on literature, influence, and the many directions Scottish writing and scholaship can take.