In August 2014, our then regular podcast host Colin Waters travelled to Faslane, home of the UK’s nuclear deterrent, to talk to poet Gerry Loose. Loose’s collection fault line is a suite of poems inspired by the area, which is his backyard. The great natural beauty contrasts with the ugliness of the military base, inspiring Loose. He guides Colin around the area, sharing its history and his thoughts on the nature poetry’s radical past and present.

This edition of our Nothing But The Poem podcast, hosted as usual by Samuel Tongue, features two poems by Isabelle Baafi, from her 2025 Forward Prize winning debut collection Chaotic Good.

‘In this wise-hearted and deft debut, Baafi gets to the grain of family, inheritance, the grit of growing up and the grappling to become oneself.’ - Rachel Long

‘Isabelle Baafi’s Chaotic Good is a debut of amazing endurance. Its formal pressures create a kind of kaleidoscopic intensity that – with each turn of the chamber – brings newly beautiful and painful shapes into focus. - Will Harris

The two poems discussed in the podcast from Chaotic Good are The Cottage and Burst Me Into Song

Hugo Williams won the 1999 TS Eliot Prize for Billy’s Rain, a collection that captured a certain amount of journalistic interest for its unvarnished depiction of an affair. His collection, I Knew The Bride, was also been nominated for the TS Eliot Prize (as well as the Forward), although it’s subject matter is a little darker, taking in the death of his sister and his own kidney failure, which requires him to spend a significant amount of time every week on dialysis.

We were lucky to spend time with the poet in 2014 when he was up for the Edinburgh International Book Festival. He talks about the influence of popular music on his work, mortality, and what Hardy was doing with Shelley’s heart.