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  • Geraldine Monk on Gerard Manley Hopkins' poem 'The Leaden Echo and The Golden Echo' and her own poem 'Chattox Sings'

    Geraldine Monk on Gerard Manley Hopkins' poem 'The Leaden Echo and The Golden Echo' and her own poem 'Chattox Sings'
    2025/10/24

    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.
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    1 時間 20 分
  • Al McClimens on Simon Armitage's poem 'Evening' and his own poem 'Grand National'

    Al McClimens on Simon Armitage's poem 'Evening' and his own poem 'Grand National'
    2025/10/06

    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.
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    57 分
  • Matt Black on Edward Lear's poem 'The Owl and the Pussy-Cat' and his own poem 'The Owl and the Pussy-Cat and the Turtles of Fun'

    Matt Black on Edward Lear's poem 'The Owl and the Pussy-Cat' and his own poem 'The Owl and the Pussy-Cat and the Turtles of Fun'
    2025/01/20
    In this episode I talk to Matt Black about writing his own versions of 'The Owl and the Pussy-Cat' by Edward Lear. Matt reflects on when he first heard 'The Owl and the Pussy-Cat' as a child. He then goes on to talk in depth about the task of creating a homage to this 'iconic' piece of work. He discusses the intricacies of the poem - how it uses all sorts of different techniques to make it a memorable piece of work. He throws about the idea of what it means to be a nonsense poem. He reflects on the notion of using landscape as a safe space to explore possibly difficult themes. He talks a little bit about Lear's background and what possibly brought him to write this enigmatic poem. He then goes on to delve into his own prequel and sequel - grouped together as 'The Owl and the Pussy-Cat and the Turtles of Fun'. He talks about the triggering incident that led to him taking on such a task (an encounter with a stuffed owl in a museum's store). He reflects on how in the two different versions of 'The Owl and the Pussy-Cat' he has written the first narrative must lead up to the boat (of the original poem) but the second poem is 'un-moored' from the route-map of the classic work. He can explore all sorts of complicated themes - the break-up of a marriage, infidelity and so on, but still create it within the framework of a 'children's' poem. He reflects on the qualities of the poetic language itself and the references in the poem to Brid, other animals, and pop references too. Finally, he talks about performing the work in schools - a 'nonsense poem for a nonsense curriculum'. Matt Black lives in Leamington Spa. His most recent collection is Fishing Dentures Out of Mashed Potato (Upside Down, 2025) which includes poems on various themes, including getting older, looking after elderly parents, the joys of domesticity, lanyards, dogs and knees. This is a fund-raiser for Myton Hospices - £5 per copy - and he is currently available for entertaining readings from the book. Since being Derbyshire Poet Laureate (2011-2013), he has successfully completed over 25 commissions, with poems on 15 benches, 20 milestones, a large glass panel and in exhibitions and publications. Other recent works include a collection of poems about dogs, Sniffing Lamp-posts by Moonlight (2017), which became an Edinburgh Fringe show, and the tour of his play about floods in Cumbria, The Storm Officer. He is currently Lillington Poet Laureate, Chair of Cubbington and Lillington Environmental Action Now (CLEAN), and a very proud grand-dad. www.matt-black.co.uk Copies of The Owl and the Pussy-Cat and the Turtles of Fun can be purchased here. You can follow me on X - @cwjoneschris or on Bluesky - @cwjoneschris.bsky.social for more updates on future episodes. This is the last podcast of series two. Look out for updates about series three later in 2025. Thanks for listening! The Owl and the Pussy-Cat (the Prequel) The Owl and the Pussy-cat went for tea With a parakeet in the park. Owl said politely, “It doesn’t delight me, This hunting of mice after dark.” The Cat said “Life in the city is mean; We’re squibbling youth away. Let’s go to the sea. Let’s quit this mad scene.” So they cycled to Brid for the day, The day, The day, So they cycled to Brid for the day. On arrival in Brid, they met a great squid With a sailor who told them a tale Of a mermaid and man, who had met in Japan, And lived in the mouth of a whale. “I like it here,” said Owl on the pier, While the Cat, with a grin, went “Miao”. They stayed for a week. They played hide and seek, And the Owl jumped over a cow, A cow, A cow, And the Owl jumped over a cow. The waves, they were lapping, blue butterflies flapping, “O guys, you should stay for a while. We’ve striped candyflosses, and rides on the hosses. It’s wicked whatever your style.” Said Cat, “Life’s absurd. Let us sail, dear Bird, To the land where the Bong-tree gleams.” In his crocodile coat, Sailor lent them a boat, And said “Steer by the star of your dreams, Your dreams, Your dreams.” He said “Steer by the star of your dreams.” The Owl and the Pussy-Cat The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea In a beautiful pea green boat, They took some honey, and plenty of money, Wrapped up in a five pound note. The Owl looked up to the stars above, And sang to a small guitar, “O lovely Pussy! O Pussy my love, What a beautiful Pussy you are, You are, You are! What a beautiful Pussy you are!” Pussy said to the Owl, “You elegant fowl! How charmingly sweet you sing! O let us be married! too long we have tarried: But what shall we do for a ring?” They sailed away, for a year and a day, To the land where the Bong-tree grows And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood With a ring at the end of his nose, His nose, His nose, With a ring at the end of his nose. “Dear pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling Your ring?” Said the Piggy, “I will.” So they ...
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    1 時間 13 分
  • Vicky Morris on Hannah Lowe's poem 'Fist', Georgie Woodhead's poem 'When my Uncle Stood at the Top of the Office Block Roof’, and her own poem ‘Sea Road’

    Vicky Morris on Hannah Lowe's poem 'Fist', Georgie Woodhead's poem 'When my Uncle Stood at the Top of the Office Block Roof’, and her own poem ‘Sea Road’
    2025/01/06
    In this episode, I talk to Vicky Morris about Hannah Lowe’s poem ‘Fist’, Georgie Woodhead’s poem ‘When my Uncle Stood at the Top of the Office Block Roof’ and her own poem ‘Sea Road’. Vicky begins the podcast by talking about how she first came across Hannah Lowe’s work and what appealed about to her about the poetry - the voice (plain style), the subject matter and control of the material. Vicky discusses what she learnt from Hannah after being mentored by the poet as an Arvon/Jerwood mentee. She delves into the ideas of utilising poems for ‘teaching’: why choose a particular piece to show to young poets who are learning the craft? Vicky talks about the ‘cinematic quality’ of the poem ‘Fist’, how it uses specific details to draw the reader in to the situation at hand. She focuses on Lowe's uses enjambment to create particular effects in the poem. Vicky talks about technique at length - and how the craft in this piece can be used to help students think about writing about their own lived experiences. Vicky then goes on to explore Georgie Woodhead’s poem ‘When my Uncle Stood at the Top of the Office Block Roof’ - how Georgie took Hannah’s piece as a a starting point for her own portrayal of a high-risk situation. She talks about Georgie’s adoption of metaphors as a means by which to illuminate the Uncle’s (and narrator’s) state of mind. Finally, Vicky reads and ‘unpacks' her own poem ‘Sea Road’. She examines the choices she made in the poem around the adoption of a ‘long line’ structure and the use of triplets, how she ramps up the tension through telling details. She spends some time talking about the ending and how she redrafted those final lines until she was happy with the conclusion. She goes on to discuss and illuminate other poems in her pamphlet collection, including the poem ‘Lesley’. You can find a version of Hannah Lowe’s poem ‘Fist’ here, on the Poetry Archive website (with Hannah reading the poem herself). You can also read the version eventually published in Chick (Bloodaxe Books, 2013) here, on the Poetry International website. You can read Georgie Woodhead’s poem ‘When my Uncle Stood at the Top of the Office Block Roof’ here. You can find out more about Georgie’s collection Takeaway (Smith/Doorstop, 2020) here. Vicky Morris is a British/Welsh poet, mentor, editor and creative educator from north Wales. Her debut pamphlet If All This Never Happened (Southword Editions, 2021) was a winner of the Munster Fool for Poetry International Chapbook Competition and shortlisted for Best Poetry Pamphlet in the Saboteur Awards 2021. Her poems have appeared widely in magazines and journals, including: The Rialto, Poetry Review, Mslexia, Poetry Wales and The North. Vicky has placed in various competitions including first in the Prole Laureate Competition 2019 and the Aurora Prize 2020. She was shortlisted for the Mairtin Crawford Award for Poetry 2022 and highly commended in the Liverpool Poetry Prize 2022. Vicky mentors poets at all stages and is the editor of seven anthologies of poetry and fiction by emerging young writers. For the last 14 years, she has built development opportunities for writers aged 14 to 30, founding Hive in 2016. Through Hive, she has mentored many emerging young poets who’ve received accolades such as the New Poets Prize and the Foyle Young Poets Award. Vicky received a Sarah Nulty Award in 2019 for her writer development work and was an Arvon/Jerwood mentee 19/20. www.vickymorris.co.uk You can also follow me on X - @cwjoneschris or on Bluesky - @cwjoneschris.bsky.social for more updates on future episodes. Sea Road (Summer of ’85) Remember the night you and Lorn walked back this way, past the jangling cluster of amusement arcades, the bingo caller’s muffled boom on the mic, the slot machine beeps and flashing lights, then the long quiet stretch of Sea Road. Remember the man who stopped his car, not once but twice, pretended to fiddle behind a torch-lit bonnet, and you saw his open fly, his hand offering up his cock like a fairground prize to two young girls in beach dresses. Lorn still chattering, heedless of the whisper in your ten-year-old throat, and you daren't look back or turn off the road. Then up ahead, you see a shape in the dark, that same car waiting, bonnet raised, headlights off, engine ticking, the dim glow of torchlight. But this time, he's upped his game. And now you are running, Lorn pulling you down this long, empty road, running like the dark is closing in behind you, like it's stroking the backs of your legs, running from the edge of something sharp and faceless, until you burst into the hall, gasping, out of breath. Mum shouting — What, what is it!? Both of you mute, moving along a road somewhere. The dark of a car boot, your mouths gagged shut.
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    1 時間 15 分
  • Steve Ely on Geoffrey Hill's Mercian Hymns and poems from his own sequence ‘The Battle of Brunanburh’ and his poem ‘Filth as thou art’ from his collection Eely

    Steve Ely on Geoffrey Hill's Mercian Hymns and poems from his own sequence ‘The Battle of Brunanburh’ and his poem ‘Filth as thou art’ from his collection Eely
    2024/12/23
    In this episode, I talk to Steve Ely about Geoffrey Hill’s collection Mercian Hymns and a number of poems from his sequence ‘The Battle of Brunanburh’ and the poem ‘Filth as thou art’ from his most recent collection Eely. Steve talks about the importance of Hill's work as an 'outlier' poet in the Modernist tradition. He focuses on the form that Mercian Hymns takes - the 'versets' that he himself adopted in his first published book Englaland. He examines three poems in depth - the first and third pieces (that set the tone of the work), and the penultimate poem in the sequence. He draws out various moments when the history of Offa 'bleeds into' the biography of Hill as it is represented in the sequence. Steve digs deep into the word choices that Hill makes, and the allusive qualities of the text. He then discusses at length the historical background to his poem 'The Battle of Brunanburh'. He explores the notion that this battle took place in South Yorkshire - and goes on to talk about the various sources that commented on this pivotal moment in history. He reflects on three poems in particular in the sequence - poems I, II and XII. He describes how he used Mercian Hymns as a template for his own practice of melding historical timelines together. He discusses notions of class and masculinity through the framework of this historical overview. Finally he focuses on the 'dramatic' design of his latest collection Eely - how the book fits together over the course of nearly two-hundred pages. He goes on to think about the evolution of 'Filth as thou art', touching on the history of the Fens in doing so. He explores the trajectory of the work - how one idea or reference leads to another thought or image, culminating in his own manifestation as the 'staggeringly-gifted child' which is a nod back to Hill's representation of himself in Mercian Hymns. He ends the conversation by discussing jeans brands from the 1970s - and in particular the desire of owning a pair Falmers. You can find various printings of Mercian Hymns out there. I first read the sequence in Geoffrey Hill's Collected Poems, published by Penguin Books in 1985. Steve Ely is a poet, novelist, biographer and teacher of creative writing. He has written several books or pamphlets of poetry, most recently Eely (Longbarrow Press, April 2024), Orasaigh (Broken Sleep Books, August 2024) and an edited anthology, Apocalyptic Landscape (Valley Press, October 2024) . He’s currently working on a critical work, Ted Hughes’s Expressionism, a novel entitled The Quoz, and an infinitely expanding, limitless poetic sequence, Terra Incognito. 'The Battle of Brunanburh' can be found in Steve Ely's second book of poetry Englaland (Smokestack Books, 2015). 'Filth as thou art' features in the final section of Steve's book Eely (Longbarrow Press, 2024) - known as Eelysium - which you can read more about here. You can also follow me on X - @cwjoneschris or on Bluesky - @cwjoneschris.bsky.social for more updates on future episodes. Here Steve's poem: Filth as thou art The life-or death prerogative power of Ivan Karamazov's Master of Game, wolfhounds loosed at the slipped boys scut, hauled down in the snow and torn in the jaws of his ululating mother; gold-rush garimpeiros, lopping the heads of the Haxi Yanomami, something about a stolen hammock, their cleansing from the commons; shish kebab paedos, pimping and raping unlooked-after AirMax scrubbers - panga wielding paki ninnies, watermelon smiles. Brit White Chief getting out of hand with his tax-payer funded Brit White Bird. Well, asked Ivan. What does he deserve? Boris stopped spaffing and thought for a sec. To be shot, he muttered. But already his mind was somewhere else hunt ball interns, indigenous schoolies on cigs and free dinners, wearing Joop and 9 carat Yanomami lip-plates, the stringbulb flat above Booze n News, choc klet starfish dripping with garlic mayo - we're having a gang bang, we're having a ball, Rita, Sue and PetSu too, Leeds Tiffs with Sav and Jayne MacDonald: inner sense doubtful - at that age, from that estate, at that time in the morning, with the eel fishers baiting their creels in the boatyard, eights sweeping the river from Kulmhof to the Wash, Spinnefix spinning his little white house, the black band of Florian Geyer. Shot in the beams of the Rothermere staff car, which he smashed as he fled, a hole in his head, to the lays of Ness Ziona defacing the fly-leaf Brer Rabbit's a Rascal, 1974: thank ...
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    1 時間 22 分
  • Abbi Flint on Elizabeth-Jane Burnett's poem 'Little Peach' and her own poem 'Cow Low Bowl (650 - 700 AD)'

    Abbi Flint on Elizabeth-Jane Burnett's poem 'Little Peach' and her own poem 'Cow Low Bowl (650 - 700 AD)'
    2024/12/09

    In this episode, I talk to Abbi Flint about Elizabeth-Jane Burnett’s poem ‘Little Peach’ and her own poem ‘Cow Low Bowl (650 - 700 AD)’.

    Abbi talks about the connections between her work as an archaeologist and her creative processes as a poet. She explores the idea of fragments - whether they be finds or fragmentary and non-linear details - as a way in to thinking about associations between her various practices. She talks about the creative skills that Burnett displays in her fashioning of a poetic voice that can embody other-than-human elements. She then goes on to discuss at length Elizabeth-Jane Burnett’s project that evolved into her collection Twelve Words for Moss, and how ‘Little Peach’ fits into the overall design of the book. Abbi highlights the sensory qualities and playfulness of the language in Burnett’s poem, the wonder. Abbi also mentions Clare Shaw's peat bog poems as a way of understanding Burnett's work too. Abbi then goes on to explore the sound and sense of her own poem ‘Cow Low Bowl’ (650 - 700 AD)'. She draws on her development as a writer, pinpointing the Continuing Bonds project (see below) as a starting point for drawing together archeology and poetry. She then goes on to talk about how she gained creative inspiration from the Thomas Bateman antiquarian collection held at Western Park Museum in Sheffield in another cross-disciplinary project she was involved in. She talks about the layered approach she makes in 'Cow Low Bowl' - bringing together different texts and images to create this work. She draws on the tactile quality of the bowl as a way into thinking about the object. She talks about writing into the space that 'we will never know', and the archeological imagination. She goes on to discuss the possibility of a first complete collection of creative work, and what texts might be included in the book.

    Abbi Flint is a researcher and poet, who works across archaeology, history and the environmental humanities. Her poems have been published in a range of online and print journals, including Under the Radar, Spelt, Atrium, Reliquiae, Popshot Quarterly, The Ekphrastic Review, Ink, Sweat and Tears, and Interpreters House.

    Abbi mentions two projects, led by Professor Melanie Giles (University of Manchester), that she contributed poems to Vestiges and Peat: Past, Present and Future. The webpage for Vestiges contains a link to a recording of Abbi reading Cow Low Bowl, and a link to the pdf of the full Vestiges anthology.

    More about the Continuing Bonds project, led by Professor Karina Croucher (University of Bradford), here: https://continuingbonds.live/teaching-materials/

    The MossWorlds Project, led by Dr Anke Bernau, Dr Ingrid Hanson and Dr Aurora Fredriksen (University of Manchester), has a website here: https://mossworlds.co.uk/about-mossworlds/

    The science poetry/art journal Consilience can be found here: https://www.consilience-journal.com/about

    Abbi mentions a portrait of Thomas Bateman and his son sitting alongside the Cow Low Bowl. You can find a version of the image here.

    Elizabeth-Jane Burnett's poem, 'Little Peach', was published in the Willowherb Review and also in her book Twelve Words for Moss. You can hear her read 'Little Peach' here.

    You can also follow me on X - @cwjoneschris or on Bluesky - @cwjoneschris.bsky.social for more updates on future episodes.

    Cowl Low Bowl (650-700 AD)

    Low bowl, sky bowl dish that ran away with the moon underground, understone puddled mud above thirsty old bones that took the sky to bed in cloth and ash, iron and brass Sure bowl, palm bowl cupped by a hand that tipped sky to cold lips cold as a tod-fox tooth blue as a calm sea, tender as tilted hips that swallowed the moon

    Whole bowl, restless bowl holds the horizon between soil and where air fell to dust this blue is a window between death and another death brought to light by the spade
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    1 時間 14 分
  • David Swann on Tony Hoagland's poem 'The Neglected Art of Description' and his own poem 'The Last Day of Summer'

    David Swann on Tony Hoagland's poem 'The Neglected Art of Description' and his own poem 'The Last Day of Summer'
    2024/11/25
    In this episode, I spend time with Dave Swann (on his, and his wife, Ange's allotment) as we reflect on Tony Hoagland's poem 'The Neglected Art of Description' and his own poem 'The Last Day of Summer'. In the podcast, Dave talks about meeting Tony Hoagland at a poetry reading in London. He discusses how he got over balancing his work life and writing life by going on writing courses. He mentions how, on one of these residencies, he met the poet Mimi Khalvati who introduced him to the idea of schwa vowels, and how this made him view his poetry in a different light. He talks about the importance of description, professional noticing, and daydreaming. He then goes on to discuss Tony Hoagland's 'plate spinning', the technical 'tight-rope act' he enacts from poem to poem. He talks at length about 'The Neglected Art of Description', how it hovers around those different points of describing detail through 'sleights of hand' and rhetorical flourishes (and Zen Buddhism). How it can only go so far. He goes on a detour - focusing for a while on the descriptive power of Mark Doty's poem 'Two Ruined Boats'. He then goes on to explore his own poem 'The Last Day of Summer' and the choices of language he made in this piece. What is poetry supposed to do in the world? He talks about sleights of hand in his own poetry, how and why he focuses on the film Paths of Glory, and on the case of a political prisoner (Reyhaneh Jabbari) being executed for her own beliefs. He talks at length about the technical decisions that he makes in the poem. He explores the idea of being 'bombarded' by news and information, and how as individuals (and writers) we have to negotiate this stream of words in our lives. How do we sift out the words that are important to us? He discusses the importance of poetry in people's lives too. Finally, he explores the different (prose and poetry) collections he is currently writing for publication - including his allotment poems. Tony Hoagland's poem 'The Neglected Art of Description' can be found in Application for the Release from the Dream (Bloodaxe, 2015). Dave also reads from 'Two Ruined Boats' from Mark Doty's collection Atlantis (Cape, 1996). Dave also mentions in the podcast Hoagland's book Real Sofistikashun: Essays on Poetry and Craft (Graywolf Press, 2006). David Swann began his writing life as a reporter for the local newspaper in Accrington. After working in nightclubs, warehouses, and magazines in Amsterdam, he became the writer in residence in a prison. A book based on those experiences, The Privilege of Rain (Waterloo Press, 2009) was shortlisted for The Ted Hughes Award. Dave's stories and poems have been widely published and won many awards, including eleven successes at the Bridport Prize and two in The National Poetry Competition. His novella Season of Bright Sorrow (also available from Ad Hoc Fiction), won the 2021 Bath Novella-in-Flash Competition. David's own poem, 'The Last Day of Summer', comes from his last published poetry collection, Gratitude on the Coast of Death (Waterloo Press, 2017). You can follow me on X - @cwjoneschris or on Bluesky - @cwjoneschris.bsky.social for more updates on future episodes. The Last Day of Summer If the clock-radio wasn't chanting its old lament I'd spend the summer's finale under our duvet but the year's last light is falling, and, here, it's all war, famine, Ebola. And Iran has hanged Reyhaneh Jabbari. There's a better place than this, but I can't find it anywhere in our house, so I carry my tea into the yard and listen while a neighbour's child calls to her vanished cat. 'Gucci!' she cries, on the brink of tears. 'Gucci, where are you, dear?' The mallow's crazy bloom has dimmed now and the sunflowers have lost interest in the sky. I follow their hunched gaze to where indestructible snails lumber like tanks over the paving stones, and think of that moment in Paths of Glory when cockroaches scuttle through a cell. Tomorrow, when's he dead, those things will continue to live, the condemned man tells his jailers, unable to imagine the world bearing his absence. Around me: a citadel of living spiders. They have strung their cables over our tiny lawn. The grass has gone on growing and these cobwebs are thicker than I've known. Global warming? Upstairs, the clock-radio drones while a child's voice rises through its scales. 'Gucci,' she sings. 'Come home now, Gucci!' Our words have travelled vast distances, that's what I tell the kids I teach. They have come to us on journeys and their bags are full of secrets. Rose, for instance. Or musk. Or path. Or assassin. These words are from Farsi, words from the land that has hanged Reyhaneh Jabbari. For two months she was held alone, beyond reach of lawyers and family, and she went to her death still protecting the name of the man who saved her from rape by the government agent. These are not the words of a poem and that is not the name of a cat. Let me sit here with ...
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    1 時間 23 分
  • Robert Hamberger on John Clare's poem 'The Field Mouse's Nest' and his own poem 'Herb Robert'

    Robert Hamberger on John Clare's poem 'The Field Mouse's Nest' and his own poem 'Herb Robert'
    2024/11/11

    In this episode, I talk to Robert Hamberger about John Clare’s poem 'The Field Mouse’s Nest' and his own poem 'Herb Robert'.

    In our conversation, Robert talks about how his art teacher introduced to him to the works of Sylvia Plath and John Clare (among others). He discusses the 'everyday' language he uses in his poetry and how (through this 'political act') he doesn’t want to exclude his readers. He goes on to explore the idea of the sonnet - how can you find your voice inside the given ‘rules’ of the fourteen-line poem - the rhyme scheme, the weight of tradition: ‘a lovely challenge’. Robert then elaborates on Clare’s background - his prodigious output of poetry (even when he was incarcerated) and from this reflects on how important it is to separate writing from publishing (to see them as two separate activities). Robert then discusses 'The Field Mouse's Nest'. He explores punctuated and unpunctuated versions of this sonnet, and Clare's use of dialect, reading from Seamus Heaney's essay ‘John Clare’s Prog’. He touches on the idea of Clare as an ecopoet.

    He then goes on to illuminate the evolution of his memoir A Length of Road: Finding Myself in the Footsteps of John Clare from 1995 onward - and how the poem 'Herb Robert' fits into the larger scheme of the book. He talks about 'Herb Robert' as a queer poem, and from this insight, shows how the relationship between himself and Clare - and his understanding of himself developed as he drafted and redrafted the work. He then goes on to talk at length about the hold the sonnet has had on him over his writing life, and how this poem, in particular, fitted in as one of his 'form-testing' poems.

    You can read John Clare's Northborough Sonnets (mentioned in the podcast) in this edition from Carcanet Press. Seamus Heaney's essay on John Clare comes from his collection of essays The Redress of Poetry (Faber, 2002). Here is a version of 'The Field Mouse's Nest' from the Poetry Archive (with 'cesspools' instead of 'sexpools' in the final line).

    Robert Hamberger has been shortlisted and highly commended for Forward prizes, appearing in the Forward Book of Poetry 2020. He won The London Magazine Poetry Prize 2023 and has been awarded a Hawthornden Fellowship. His poetry has featured as the Guardian Poem of the Week and in British, American, Irish and Japanese anthologies. He has published six poetry pamphlets and four full-length collections. Blue Wallpaper (Waterloo Press) was shortlisted for the 2020 Polari Prize. His prose memoir with poems A Length of Road: finding myself in the footsteps of John Clare was published by John Murray in 2021. His fifth collection Nude Against A Rock from Waterloo Press was published in October 2024.

    You can find Robert Hamberger's website here.

    You can follow me on X - @cwjoneschris or on Bluesky - @cwjoneschris.bsky.social for more updates on future episodes.

    Herb Robert

    What flavour of man is this, whose tips unpeel into flowers? His arrows blossom. Five petals top each blood-line that dips and lifts through the breeze. I've seen him hide by the creaky bridge where lattice-water dabbles a trout's tail while bubbles rise. His leaves mimic ferns, his colour campion. How can he be less than he is? He lives his name. Two bulbs branch from every stem, until I catch him taking over the wood-side. A hundred buds swarm their messages on the air. If I eat his breath will it heal me? Stroke him across my temples quietly, quietly.
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    1 時間 19 分