Olympics take poetic turn with Scots help

THE Scottish Poetry Library has launched its most international project yet – helping to find a poem to represent each of the countries competing at this year’s Olympic Games.

At the moment, there are 204 of them, and as not all of them have an extensive literary tradition, selecting the verses has involved a lot more work than just taking down the odd anthology from the library shelves.

The first of the poems will be broadcast on BBC Scotland’s Culture Cafe today at 1.15pm, but others will be peppered throughout the schedules so that by the time of the closing ceremony of the Paralympic Games on Sunday, 9 September, every one of them will have been aired.

The project, called The Written World, is being managed by Sarah Stewart of the Scottish Poetry Library, who is working in collaboration with BBC Scotland and Creative Scotland.

In each case, the poems will be read by members of the public with family ties to the country concerned.

Selecting each poem took hours and suggestions came from all over the world in response to a request on the library’s website, from its own international contacts with poets, translators, and editors.

“Making the final selection was not easy,” said Ms Stewart.

“We had to reject many beautiful poems because they were too long, too sad or too abstract.

“The project needed poems that were instantly accessible and relatively upbeat; if sad or about loss, we chose works that balanced the darkness with a little hope too, in the spirit of the 2012 Games.”