National Poetry Day 2024: Ten Scotsman Sessions performances from leading Scottish Poets
The Scotsman Sessions are short video performances from artists all around the country introduced by our critics. To celebrate National Poetry Day, here are ten sessions featuring leading Scottish poets
The Scotsman Sessions #7: Roseanne Watt, 25 March 2020
The Scotsman Sessions #50: Jim Carruth, 10 June 2020
The Scotsman Sessions #62: Jackie Kay, 29 June 2020
The Scotsman Sessions #77: Kathleen Jamie, 29 July 2020
The Scotsman Sessions #113: Robert Crawford, 29 September 2020
The Scotsman Sessions #183: Alycia Pirmohamed, 10 February 2021
The Scotsman Sessions #200: Alexander McCall Smith, 23 March 2021
The Scotsman Sessions #232: Len Pennie, 6 May 2021
The Scotsman Sessions #345: Don Paterson, 4 January 2023
The Scotsman Sessions #388: Michael Pedersen, 22 November 2023
About the Scotsman Sessions
The Scotsman Sessions were born out of necessity. By the middle of March 2020, with theatres and music venues about to go dark for the foreseeable future, it was clear that the Scotsman's arts team was going to have to work in a different way; if there were no longer any live performances to write about, we decided, we would just have to commission video performances from some of the people we'd been planning to cover and write about those instead. Our last reviews of live events appeared in The Scotsman on Monday 16 March. Then, on Friday 20 March, we released our first four Scotsman Sessions on scotsman.com.
From her back garden in Pathhead, Midlothian, Karine Polwart sent us an extract from her acclaimed show Wind Resistance which had been about to open at the Royal Lyceum in Edinburgh; Johnny Lynch, better known as Pictish Trail, sent us an acoustic version of his new single Double Sided from his seaside studio on the Isle of Eigg; BBC SSO violinist Alastair Savage recorded a stunning rendition of A Man's a Man at his kitchen table in Glasgow; and harpist Esther Swift sent us a brand new song called This Space from her living room in Edinburgh. Each of these films appeared on scotsman.com alongside a short essay by one of our writers – miniature programme notes for miniature performances.
More than four years later, the sessions have long-since taken on a life of their own. Filmed in locations all over Scotland, they span music, theatre, dance, poetry and comedy. For the first few months, artists were mostly confined to their homes and gardens, so the films we received reflected this. Gradually, however, as lockdown restrictions were relaxed, people started venturing further afield. Up until the summer of 2021 we published four Scotsman Sessions every week, but then, as things began to open up and our critics were able to start reviewing live shows again, we scaled that back, and we now publish one session per week.
You can find links to the first 400 Scotsman Sessions performances here
For more on National Poetry Day, visit https://forwardartsfoundation.org/national-poetry-day/
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