Poet and translator Donald Adamson, winner of The Herald Millennium Poetry Prize launches his new collection From Coiled Roots, with special guests. Published by Indigo Dreams, he book explores life, landscapes and history in Finland and Scotland. Finnish Nobel Prize nominee Eeva Kilpi likens his translations to ‘the humming of the trees around our human suffering and joys’.

Joining him will be poet Liz Niven, who has worked with up-and-coming Finnish poet and translator Aila Juvonen on ‘chain’ poems – poems and responses on Finnish themes. An award-winning poet, she has appeared at Literary Festivals across Europe, China and Australia, and her fourth and most recent collection, The Shard Box (Luath Press), was selected as a Scottish Libraries Summer Read. She has promised to read extracts from her Scots versions of the Karelian saga The Kalevala, the national epic of Finland and one of the most significant works of Finnish literature.

Finnish poet Aila Juvonen has published two books – Kipeä Katse and Skidikantti – and is currently working on a novel called The Green Stone, play for adolescents called The Cream-cake Soldiers and a poem collection. Aila’s poetry has appeared in Northwords Now and she has translated Liz Niven’s poems into Finnish for Liz’s reading tours in Finland.

SWC founding member Gerry Loose also has a long-standing relationship with the culture and ecology of Finland, and been honoured with a Finnish Koneen Säätiö Award, as well as a Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship and a Creative Scotland Award. Publications include: The Elementary Particles (Taranis Books, 1993), Tongues of Stone (Mariscat Press, 1998), Eitgal (Mariscat Press, 2001) Printed on Water: new and selected poems (Shearsman 2007 ), Ten Seasons (SPL & Luath, 2007), the deer path to my door (Oystercatcher 2009) and that person himself (Shearsman 2009).