Our usual host, Sam Tongue, puts two poems by the wonderful Yorkshire poet Caroline Bird, under the groupchat microscope. Caroline Bird has published eight collections of poetry to date; usually to great acclaim, awards and rave reviews. Her latest collection, Ambush at Still Lake (Carcanet) has her trademark surreal wit, and is a kaleidoscope of startling imagery, lyrical unexpectedness, and is typically hard to classify, but so easy to fall in love with.

UK Poet Laureate, Simon Armitage said of her: "Bird is irrepressible; she simply explodes with poetry. The work erupts, spring-loaded, funny, sad, deadly - you don't know if a bullet will come out of the barrel or a flag with the word BANG on it."

Sam Tongue took his customary immersive dive into two poems from Ambush at Still Lake: RSVP and Cuckoo. Find out what Sam - and the Friends Of The SPL group - got from these poems in our Nothing But The Poem podcast.

Ann an Hai-Àidh #7, tha Petra Johana Poncarová agus Donnchadh Sneddon a’ coimhead air dìleab Ruaraidh MhicThòmais mar bhàrd, neach-deasachaidh, agus iomairtiche, agus a’ bruidhinn mun leabhar-rannsachaidh a nochd am bliadhna bho Chlò Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann, Derick Thomson and the Gaelic Revival.

In Hai-Àidh #7, Petra Johana Poncarová and Duncan Sneddon look at Derick Thomson’s legacy as a poet, editor, and activist, and discuss the academic monograph Derick Thomson and the Gaelic Revival which came out earlier this year from Edinburgh University Press.

Ann an Hai-Àidh #6, thagh Niall O’Gallagher ‘Bisearta’ le Deòrsa Mac Iain Dheòrsa agus Alasdair C. MacIlleBhàin ‘Gur fad ’am thàmh mi gu tostach sàmhach’ le Dòmhnall Eachainn à Muile. Tha Niall agus Alasdair a’ leughadh nan dàin agus a’ bruidhinn orra, a’ lorg cheanglaichean eadar bàrdachd-cogaidh anns an fhicheadamh linn agus bàrdachd nam Fuadaichean anns an naoidheamh linn deug, agus a’ beachdachadh air an dàimh eadar snas an fhoirm agus cuspairean aognaidh.

For Hai-Àidh #6, Niall O’Gallagher chose George Campbell Hay’s ‘Bisearta’ and Alasdair C. Whyte went for ‘Gur fad ’am thàmh mi gu tostach sàmhach’ by Donald MacGillivray. They read the poem and discuss them, finding connections between twentieth-century war poetry and nineteenth-century poetry of the Clearances, and consider the tensions between formal beauty and disturbing subject matters.