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.

In this episode, I talk to Al McClimens about Simon Armitage’s poem ‘Evening’ and his own poem ‘Grand National’.

We discuss ideas of place and time in Armitage's 'views' of Marsden, the village where he grew up, and how these ideas are represented in his work. We focus on the formal designs of both Simon Armitage's and Al's pieces. I ask Al about the two different versions of his poem that he is weighing up here. We talk about horses and the 'form' and how things can balance so precipitously upon an edge between success and failure. How can poetry articulate these kinds of two-way moments? Al goes on to outline his journey toward writing poetry after a career as a lecturer in Health and Social Sciences. Evening

You're twelve. Thirteen at most. 
 You’re leaving the house by the back door. 
There's still time. You've promised 
not to be long, not to go far. One day you’ll learn the names of the trees. 
You fork left under the ridge, 
pick up the bridleway between two streams. 
Here is Wool Clough. Here is Royd Edge. The peak still lit by sun. But 
evening. Evening overtakes you up the slope. 
Dusk walks its fingers up the knuckles of your spine. 
Turn on your heel. Back home your child sleeps in her bed, too big for a cot. 
Your wife makes and mends under the light. 
You’re sorry. You thought 
it was early. How did it get so late?

This poem is reproduced from Simon Armitage's collection Magnet Field: The Marsden Poems (Faber, 2020).

Grand National (original version)

I backed a horse at five to one –
it came home at ten past.
 We had a ball tho, it was fun
 but it could never last. The money flew, the good times rolled, 
the future opened wide.
 We thought that we were solid gold
 and jumped on for the ride.

Wot larx, such thrills, our names in lights
 the fizzing, shiny things…
the bubble popped and from what heights
 we lost those fragile wings. And now the screens are up, the vet
 is walking down the track.
 Is it too late, is there time yet
 to get our money back? Achilles drags the corpse away,
 parades it round the walls.
 All’s fair in love and war, they say.
 Troy crumbles and then falls.

Other poems mentioned (and read) in this podcast include Robin Robertson's poem 'About Time', from his collection The Wrecking Light (Picador, 2010). W H Auden's 'The Fall of Rome' is also briefly discussed - a piece you read here.

Al McClimens was born and brought up in Bellshill some time after Matt Busby and just before Teenage Fanclub. He escaped by studying for his first degree at Edinburgh University where he ‘majored’ in sex, drugs and rock’n’roll. During a lull in his study he signed up for the poetry society. Well, duh. He peaked when he was chosen as the warm-up act for new rising star Liz Lochhead. When asked about her co-performer’s act Ms Lochhead later said, Who…?

He later moved to Sheffield in the same year as the miners’ strike where, after a few years, he attended a WEA evening class run by Liz Cashdan who pointed him at the various open mics available in the city. It was also around this time that his university work meant he was getting papers in journals and the two strands, the published academic and the gradually getting more stuff published poet began to coalesce with his enrolment onto the SHU MA Creative Writing degree. Well, we all know how that one ended.

So there it is, the trajectory to international stardom or how a youth from Bellshill became one of the best poets in his own house. Or make that second best if Denise is visiting. You couldn’t make it up. Except I just did. And some of it was true…

Al Mclimens books include Keats on the Moon which was published by Mews Press in 2017, and The Other Infidelities which came out in 2021, which you can purchase from Pindrop Press here.

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.