Knotbrook Taylor is an award-winning poet who is originally from England and is now living in Scotland. The Museum of Scottish Lighthouses commissioned him to write a book of Scottish lighthouse poems in 2010, and he was the poet in residence for a time at the museum. His experimental photography has also received wide acclaim. In this live stream episode Knotbrook reads a number of his poems about Scottish lighthouses and discusses his own experiences traveling the coasts of the UK.

The video can be seen here.

Jim Claflin, who is based in Massachusetts, is a recognized authority on antiques of the U.S. Lighthouse Service, Life-Saving Service, Revenue Cutter Service and early Coast Guard. Jim has specialized in antiques of this kind since the early 1990s. He is the owner of Kenrick A Claflin & Son Nautical Antiques, which has been in business since 1956.

Jim specializes in out-of-print books, documents, postcards, photographs, maps and charts, engravings, lithographs, uniforms and insignia, tools, lamps, lens apparatus, equipment and apparatus and much more. You can see his latest offerings at lighthouseantiques.net. He’s also the author of ten books on lighthouse and life saving history, and he has served as a volunteer “keeper” at Race Point Light Station on Cape Cod.

This is part two of a two part interview with Richard Cummins, a native of Ireland who worked as a lighthouse keeper in that country for a decade. This is an edited version of a conversation first heard on the podcast in 2020. Richard spent time as a keeper at the very famous Fastnet Rock Lighthouse; at Hook Head, one of the oldest operating lighthouses in the world; and some other well known light stations – more than 20 in all.

In this part of the interview we talk about what it was like to live at isolated lighthouses, and also about Richard’s more recent career as a photographer and an acclaimed builder of ships in bottles.