Richard Price was born in 1966 and grew up in Scotland. He studied at Napier College and the University of Strathclyde. He co-edited the poetry magazine Gairfish with W.N. Herbert, Verse with Robert Crawford, Henry Hart and David Kinloch, and Southfields with Raymond Friel, and is associated with the Informationist grouping of poets. His collections include, with Carcanet, Lucky Day (2004), Greenfields (2007), Rays (2009) and Small World (2012). His translations include versions from Guillaume Apollinaire in Eftirs / Afters (with translations of other French modernists by Donny O’Rourke, Au Quai, 1996) and from Louise Labé in Lute Variations (Rack Press, 2005). His poem ‘Hedge Sparrows’ was chosen to represent Great Britain in the Scottish Poetry Library/BBC project The Written World, in association with the London 2012 Olympic Games, and recorded for BBC radio by the actor Jim Broadbent. He worked from 2003 to 2010 as Head of Modern Collections at the British Library, before becoming Head of Content and Research Strategy there. This interview with David Wheatley was conducted by email and focuses on Richard Price’s most recent collection, Small World, the winner of the Scottish Book Award for Poetry in 2013.

david wheatley: In the words of the fourth poem in Small World: ‘tell me you’re not a constructivist’.

richard price (laughs): I am afraid I am! The immediate context of that poem is the ‘speaker’, a father, jokingly worrying out loud about his daughter’s future. They have been making a little book together out ...