Triptych: Ballads of the Book

The most surprising thing about Ballads of the Book is that the concept and format has not been adopted more readily in the past. From Jim Morrison's obsession with Aldous Huxley and Arthur Rimbaud to Morrissey's penchant for a bit of Keats and Yeats, Rock music's obsession with books and poetry has been almost as much of a staple as sex, drugs and hissy-fits.

Nevertheless, occasions when the spheres of literature and music have collided head on have been few and far between - until now that is. The BOTB project, spearheaded by Idlewild frontman Roddie Woomble, saw various luminaries of the Scottish music scene - including among others: King Creosote, Norman Blake and James Yorkston - adapt lyrics contributed by top home-grown writers such as AL Kennedy, Michael Faber and Alasdair Gray - the results of which were released to great acclaim on the Chemikal Underground label in early March.

This month sees the whole multi-faceted hoopla converge upon Glasgow's Tramway Theatre for a one-off extravaganza to mark the union of some of Scotland's finest creative minds. Among those appearing will be former Delgados member Emma Pollock, whose bittersweet and darkly humorous collaboration with novelist Louise Welsh is one of the album's highlights.

Pollock, speaking to the Skinny after her show-stopping appearance at the last Tennent's Versacoustic event at Edinburgh's Bongo Club, is lavish in her praise for the project, saying that it has opened up new avenues of songwriting for her. "I definitely believe that," she agrees. "It has been really great for me as a songwriter having to work around someone else's set of lyrics. Normally when I'm writing I'll fit the words around a vocal melody but here it was a new thing for me to have to phrase things differently and I think that the result is very different."

Pollock nearly missed the boat for the album due to recording commitments for her own debut, but a delay in the BOTB camp saw a window of opportunity open that she was only too glad to slide through. "I'm really chuffed to have been able to take part in all this," she says. "I've been reading loads of Louise Welsh stuff since we did the collaboration, so hopefully, as well as turning on the artists involved on both sides to other possibilities, it will encourage listeners to investigate further as well."