I'm more extreme now I've got older

PEERING through the locked gate at the gap where his favourite nightclub once stood, Kevin Williamson allows himself a few moments of nostalgia.

The former site of La Belle Angele in the Cowgate evokes a whole heap of memories for the 46-year-old one-time "enfant terrible" of the Scottish literary scene.

In the 1990s, Kevin – a softly-spoken radical, poet and publisher who "discovered Irvine Welsh" – and his friends frequented La Belle Angele and the comedy club above it, the Gilded Balloon.

His most memorable occasion at La Belle – and there are many of those hazy nights, fuelled with designer drugs, he admits he can't remember – was his last visit, shortly before it was razed to the ground. The guest DJ was Grandmaster Flash and the audience absolutely loved him.

"I'd never seen anything like it," says Kevin, warming to his topic, "the whole building seemed to be moving under our feet. Even at the far end of the bar it was jumping. I've never seen a DJ have that effect. That was a special night."

The Saturday night the club burned down in December 2002, Kevin was close enough in his Jeffrey Street flat to hear the fire engines. "But I wasn't in a fit state to get out the door," he grimaces, "I went down the next day and felt total disbelief, it didn't sink in. I realised it was a chunk of the Old Town gone. It was like a wisdom tooth taken out – it left a gap that can't be filled."

Kevin, who moved to Edinburgh from Thurso in 1979 and now lives in Wester Hailes, has walked up from the gap site to the museum cafe on Chambers Street, to discuss his new poetry book. It includes a poem called Requiem for La Belle Angele.

Taking off his khaki parka with fur-trimmed hood, he suddenly looks less the 1990s clubber and more the dad-of-a-teen he now is. A cool dad though.

Requiem for La Belle Angele recalls pivotal events he experienced there – Grandmaster Flash, the time comic Phil Kay dried up on stage, and the night Kevin fell in love, though with whom he will not say. The man who masterminded the SSP's drugs policy may not shy away from explicitness in his poetry, but he's fiercely protective of his private life.

In 1993, Kevin also staged his own event at the club – Invisible Insurrection. "It was the first fusion of literature, poetry and club culture in Scotland.

"We had writers like Irvine Welsh, Paul Reekie and Gordon Legge reading on stage, writers from the Children of Albion Rovers book.

"La Belle Angele was part of the fabric of life in the 1990s that's gone now. In my mind it's tied in with the image of Edinburgh. To have it all burned down – a lot of memories were erased over-night."

Kevin published Tommy Sheridan's Socialist manifesto, Imagine, and held its launch in the club.

The first man to be thrown out of the Holyrood Parliament – he wore a George Bush mask in an anti-war protest there in 2003 – Kevin was a colleague of the then-SSP leader, but left the party amidst the furore over Sheridan's conduct in 2006, posting his reasons in a 7000-word online missive.

"It was shameful behaviour by Sheridan – I don't want anything to do with politics based on deceit," he says.

Kevin came to Edinburgh to escape the bleak north and his job as a trainee atomic scientist at Dounreay. It seems incongruous that someone known for his anti-nuclear beliefs should have once worked in the industry.

"I was the Homer Simpson of the nuclear world, but lazier and more incompetent," he laughs. "By the time I left I was pretty anti-nuclear. There were two accidents when I was there and my experience led me to believe it was not a safe place. It was all based on a culture of lies."

He studied chemistry at Heriot-Watt, but didn't finish the course. "It wasn't for me," he says simply. After that he did a variety of jobs, including working in libraries and being a door-to-door salesman. Was he writing poems at that time? "I can't remember ever not writing poetry."

Kevin has often courted controversy with his outspoken views, particularly concerning drug-taking. He founded the Scottish Cannabis Coffeeshops Movement and was the SSP's drugs spokesman, authoring the book Drugs and the Party Line.

"I've drawn a line under all that but I still feel the same, absolutely. It's just not something I want to campaign about anymore because it takes up so much of my time."

His plan to open a cannabis cafe at Haymarket in 2004 hit the dirt. "I spent two years doing all the ground work and it nearly bankrupted me. I was trying to do it on a huge scale and it was 50,000 a year in rent."

Far from mellowing, Kevin says his political views have got stronger over the years, though he has no plans to return to the frontline of politics.

"I stood for parliament a few times, which I'd never do again. I'm disillusioned by politics in general. My views are more radical. The SSP was sucked into parliament. It didn't challenge the structure of power, it became absorbed by it. I've moved to the Left and become more extreme as I've got older. I'm less angry. Anger is what the Left have relied on but it soon dissipates. We should have more love and respect for people. That should underpin radicalism."

He's earned acclaim in his publishing career, founding Rebel Inc, which began as an underground magazine in 1992, publishing early work by literary luminaries such as Irvine Welsh, Laura Hird and Alan Warner, and ended as a book imprint when he joined forces with Canongate Books.

Kevin parted acrimoniously with Canongate, and he has started a new twice-yearly newspaper, Bella Caledonia, which he calls more anarchistic and supportive of Scottish independence.

For the first time in his life, the poet supports the Government, sharing the SNP's views on independence, nuclear disarmament and putting Scottish history back on the school curriculum. "Overall I'm impressed by Alex Salmond and the SNP," he confides.

He shares his home with his 17-year-old daughter Marie. She's read her dad's books and knows he favours legalising cannabis and making heroin available on prescription.

"I tell her the truth about drugs and say find out the information and make your own mind up," he says.

With such a colourful background, it's hard to believe that Kevin, who still meets up with Irvine Welsh at Hibs games, will fall into the quiet life, no matter how he argues to the contrary.

"Nowadays I lead a really boring life," he protests. "I'm making the National Library of Scotland my second home."

As for the nightclub he loved, anyone who wants a flavour of the heady atmosphere Kevin describes should read his poem, though he warns with a sigh: "You can't recreate the atmosphere of La Belle Angele."

In a Room Darkened by Kevin Williamson is published by Two Ravens Press, priced 8.99.

LA BELLE ANGELE TAKES FLIGHT AGAIN

KEVIN WILLIAMSON will read from his debut book of poetry on Friday at 7pm at the National Library of Scotland on George IV Bridge.

Love and Resistance: An evening with Kevin Williamson will see the poet reminisce about his Rebel Inc days.

The centrepiece of the event will be a live collaboration performance of the poem Requiem For La Belle Angele with young Edinburgh film-maker Sacha Kahir.

The poem is being made into a film which will be premiered in Edinburgh this summer.

Kevin is appealing to clubbers who once frequented La Belle Angele to send photographs, videos or flyers of nights at the club which could be incorporated into the short film.

Anyone with useful material from the nightclub La Belle Angele should contact Kevin by email: [email protected]