Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

Boots!

Where would we be without boos?

Where would we be without good-nosed bird?

It's a rhetorical question, sir, but where would we need without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com, this is Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm.

Today I'm very excited to have, as my guest, Jackie Kay, she has been the national poet of Scotland, the Makher, a Scottish word for Maker, and she has written a biography of Bessie Smith. It's a poet's biography of a blues legend,

and the book simultaneously attempts to give us in detail a thrilling life of Bessie Smith and the life of the biographer, Jackie Kay,

who is a black woman who grew up in Scotland and became the Scottish national poet.

When did you first encounter the singing shouting of Bessie Smith?

Oh, I like that, the singing shouting.

I first encountered her when I was 12 years old.

My dad bought me any woman's blues, double album,

and it was for my 12th birthday.

So that was just so exciting.

I mean, it was such a great birthday present.

I loved the two faces of her on that album because in the front she looked quite sad

and on the back she was smiling and laughing.

And there was always this kind of, you know,

doubleness right away in that album cover.

And I loved the stories that were in the blues. I didn't understand a lot of them back then in the sense

that I'd hear something like Kitchen Man and his Frankfurters were nice and sweet. And I think

...