Len Pennie

Her first collection of poetry Poyums was published by Canongate Books in 2023. It won a British Book Award and was a Sunday Times best seller. The book's poems were written in rhyme with about half in English and half in Scots. Reviewing the collection in The Scotsman, Joyce McMillan lauded it as "show[ing] an impressive command of poetic technique, mainly dodging the doggerel risks of strongly rhyming verse, and sometimes showing an almost Shakespearean command of how to make a sentence flow through a complex rhythmic structure". She noted Pennie's "style is more discursive than lyrical – although she does produce some stunning images" and that "the poems... embody a raging third-wave feminism". Her second collection, Poyums Annaw was published in 2025, also by Cannongate. In its first week, the book ranked second in the Independent Bookshop Top 20, but 77 places lower in NeilsenIQ's Total Consumer Market (TCM). Caroline Sanderson in The Bookseller wrote that "With her signature clever rhyming couplets, and arresting titles... the collections confronts patriarchal norms, gender-based violence and societal injustice with a tender vulnerability, a jousting wit and not a little righteous fury." Reflecting in The Guardian on an interview with Pennie, Alex Clark wrote, "It is telling that poyums annaw features pieces entitled You're Capitalising on Your Trauma and Your Poetry Is Shit. But it is also clear that Pennie remains determined to root out stigma and shame and face them down". Writing in the Sunday Times, critic Graeme Richardson called the poems, mainly written in anapestic tetrameter "execrable" and Pennie, "the worst poet to have emerged from Scotland since William McGonagall". Richardson also called attention to close similarities between Pennie's poem "'Good Girl', about the Russian dog Laika" and "the excellent poem 'Laika' by Sarah Doyle, published in 2019, and easily found online". In a review in The Scotsman, Joyce McMillan called Richardson's perspective "narrow" and argued that "Pennie’s poems are undoubtedly designed more for performance than to languish prettily on the page, and that may limit their appeal for some. To those who are happy to enter Pennie’s world of rhythm and rhyme, though, they offer a hugely entertaining and intelligent young woman’s perspective on the world we currently inhabit." Regarding the similarities of the two poets' Laika poems, McMillan wrote "It is true that two lines of Pennie's poem Good Girl, including the final one, echo the same thoughts as Doyle's." But also pointed to differences in the two poems' form and style, as well as noting that "Both poems also take their place in a large existing international literature of Laika poems, many of which seem to share thoughts and imagery."

Pennie's first book, Poyums, won the Discover Award at the 2025 British Book Awards, and was shortlisted for the Booksellers Association Books Are My Bag Readers' Awards (poetry category). In 2025, the Chartered Institute of Librarians and Information Professionals (Scotland) recognised Pennie's "inspiring and passionate work to defend and promote the Scots language" by presenting her with the inaugural Presidential Award. Pennie was selected by the then President, Dr David McMenemy for the Award, who stated "Len [is] a brilliant champion of public benefit, preservation of knowledge and intellectual freedom, three of the key pillars of our profession’s ethical values."