In this episode, I talk to Geraldine Monk about Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem ‘The Leaden Echo and The Golden Echo’ and her own poem ‘Chattox Sings’ from her collection Interregnum (1993).

We begin by discussing poets who could have been chosen by Geraldine as exemplars - Gertrude Stein, Harold Munro and Dylan Thomas. We then focus on Gerard Manley Hopkins - how he spent his time at Stonyhurst College, in the shadow of Pendle Hill (with its Pendle witches association). We reflect on Hopkins’ life as a Jesuit Priest. We discuss Catholicism and poetry which leads us to exploring the poem ‘The Leaden Echo and The Golden Echo’.

Geraldine then goes talk about how she developed the work that went into Interregnum - the collection that focuses on the history of the Pendle witches. We discuss how she built up on section of the book through ‘harvesting’ lines from Hopkins’ poems and putting them into the mouths of the women who were put on trial. We talk at length about ‘Chattox Sings’ and a couple of other poems that lift phrases from Hopkins oeuvre - including his poem 'The Blessed Virgin compared to the Air we Breathe.'

You can read ‘The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo’ on this website here.

CHATTOX SINGS What we have lighthanded left will have waked and have waxed and have walked with the wind. This side, that side hurling while we slumbered. Oh then, weary then why should we tread? O why are we so haggard at the heart, so care-coiled, care-killed, is there no frowning of these wrinkles ranked wrinkles deep. Down? No waving off these most mournful messengers still messengers sad and stealing (Hush there) - only not within seeing of the sun. Resign them, sign them, seal them, send them, motion them with breath. Whatever’s prized and passes of us, everything that’s fresh and fast flying of us, seems to us sweet of us, and swiftly away with, done away with, undone. So beginning, be beginning to despair. O there’s none, no no there’s none: with sighs soaring, soaring sighs deliver. Them: Beauty-in-the-ghost.

Geraldine Monk was first published in the 1970’s. Since then her poetry has appeared in countless magazines and anthologies and her major collections include Interregnum from Creation Books, Escafeld Hangings, West House Books, Ghost & Other Sonnets, Salt Publishing. They Who Saw the Deep, was published in the USA by Parlor Press. In 2012 she edited Cusp: Recollections of Poetry in Transition from Shearsman Books.

Together with her late husband, the poet and artist Alan Halsey and the musician Martin Archer she was a founding member of the Sheffield antichoir Juxtavoices for which she wrote many pieces most notably Midsummer Mummeries. She is an affiliated poet at the Centre for Poetry & Poetics, The University of Sheffield.

You can follow me on Bluesky - @cwjoneschris.bsky.social for more updates on future episodes. You can find out more about my own writing through my website - chris-jones.org.uk - or on my Substack Swift Diaries.

The end music was composed and played by William Jones.