We are delighted that St Andrew Square, now open to the general public for the first time in over 230 years, is being developed as a new space for celebrating poetry in the City of Literature. The new space will link to work by the Edinburgh Makar, as well as plans for National Poetry Day.

Tell us your poetry dreams for this garden

The possibility of physical expressions of poetry is being investigated, as well as ways to help school and community groups use the space to celebrate poetry. St Andrew Square will become a place where poetry new and old is heard, read, displayed, promoted and enjoyed.

The garden has already played host to poetry events - poems related to our Lost World reading campaign popped up in the flower beds - and the nearby National Portrait Gallery hosted some poem picking sessions during the colder months of the year.

If there is anything you would like to see in the Poetry Garden - poetry read aloud, something simple that would put poetry in the garden every day, anything - why not email us with your idea? It is your garden!

Large-scale poems will be displayed on the glass frontage of the cafe, with quotes and poems printed on the napkins. The first poem to be displayed is by local poet and previous Makar Valerie Gillies:

To Edinburgh

Stone above storms, you rear upon the ridge:

we live on your back, its crag-and-tail,

spires and tenements stacked on your spine,

the castle and the palace linked by one rope.

A spatchcocked town, the ribcage split open

like a skellie, a kipper, a guttit haddie.

We wander through your windy mazes,

all our voices are flags on the high street.

From the sky’s edge to the grey firth

we are the city, you are within us.

Each crooked close and wynd is a busy cut

on the crowded mile that takes us home

in eden Edinburgh, centred on the rock,

our city with your seven hills and heavens.

Valerie Gillies