Episodes

  • 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’
    Jan 6 2025
    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 hr and 15 mins
  • 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
    Dec 23 2024
    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. Here is the 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 God I was born alive, not dead; human, not an animal; a boy, not a girl; English, not foreign; and Yorkshire, South Kirkby, the ...
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    1 hr and 22 mins
  • 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)'
    Dec 9 2024

    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.

    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 hr and 14 mins
  • 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'
    Nov 25 2024
    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 hr and 23 mins
  • 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'
    Nov 11 2024

    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 hr and 19 mins
  • David Harmer on Dylan Thomas's 'Poem in October' and his own poetry sequence 'White Peak Histories'

    David Harmer on Dylan Thomas's 'Poem in October' and his own poetry sequence 'White Peak Histories'
    Oct 28 2024
    In this episode, I talk to the poet David Harmer about Dylan Thomas’s ‘Poem in October’ and his own sequence ‘White Peak Histories.’ In our conversation, David discusses his connections with Thomas. He explains why ‘Poem in October’ (and ‘late Thomas’) appeals to him in particular. He talks about the shape and feel of the poem, its aural qualities, its preoccupation with birds and the seasons. David follows Thomas from the shore and climbs high up, ending his journey looking out over the water. He goes on to reflect on what ‘the border’ could mean in the context of this poem. David then goes on to explore the background to his poetry sequence ‘White Peak Histories’. He thinks about the lines he can draw between his own work and Thomas’s effusive language, Thomas’s verbal ‘swagger’. He delves into the geography of the White Peak and how this feeds into its histories in terms of both leisure and labour. David Harmer lives in Doncaster and is best known as a children’s writer with publications from McMillans Children’s Books, Frances Lincoln and recently, Small Donkey Press. A lot of his work for the Grown Ups is published in magazines. He also performs with Ray Globe as The Glummer Twins, often at the Edinburgh Fringe. Here's a little window into David's writing for children (his book It's Behind You) from the Pan McMillan Site. And here's the details of David's most recent book from Small Donkey Press. We mention the poetry magazine Tears in the Fence during our conversation. You can find out more about this poetry journal here. We also mention W S Graham's poem 'The Thermal Stair' (for the painter Peter Lanyon) which you can listen to - and read - on the Poetry Archive. Owen Sheers discusses Dylan Thomas with Matthew Paris on the BBC Radio 4 programme Great Lives here. You can read Dylan Thomas's 'Poem in October' at this website. You can follow me on X - @cwjoneschris or on Bluesky - @cwjoneschris.bsky.social for more updates on future episodes. White Peak Histories Rhienster Rock Once Raenstor Crag, the haunt of ravens hræfn; harbingers of wisdom, of slaughter, guardians of the Duke’s old coach road that twists beneath this sudden rise of limestone where the Bradford narrows near Hollow Farm a slow drift, thick with sedge and celandine. The ravens are long-gone, no hoarse ghost cries over burial bones or carrion chatter, no close councils and conspiracies. Shifted into tricksters and thieves, they left their reef-knoll condemned as vermin, an abrupt unkindness bringing despair. Two shot in Youlgrave churchyard fetched eight pennies, four birds a shilling, held by their legs, their smashed skulls open. Trackways Half-lost, eroded like rumours whispered beneath the skin of maps the tracks of travellers, pack-horse carters, cattle drovers, cloth merchants, drifts of malt-horses lie abandoned under new-sprung roads, uprooted farms and tarmac. But here at Robin Hood’s Stride, the mock-beggar’s hall high above Bradford Dale, jumbled rocks protect the Portway, guide it past the Nine Stones Circle down to Broad Meadow Farm where Saxon ridges rise like waves to push the causeway straight over the river at Hollow Bridge then up Dark Lane. The path still beats below our footfall, it flowed before settlers on Castle Hill Ring brewed their iron or buried their dead in the heaped barrows and tumuli and when we walk it their voices clamour through the rain, eager to point out the way ahead. Portway flood, 1718 Winter unleashed a deluge of waters, the ford at Alport scoured out by river-force Bradford and Lathkill locked in a tumult of pell-mell, white-flecked land-soak. Monk’s Hall up to its haunches, inundated, thick ropes of stream-melt, cattle pushed up breakneck banking, dams burst foaming like the mouths of dead horses. A gang of carriers faced the flooded Portway. How to travel to the north of Old Town? How to cross this fury of water? They tried to push through. It hurled them away, ankles tumbled over their heads, mouths gaped, breath failed them, limbs flailing and snatching at quick grasps of rock, branches, horse-gear. Their bales and bundles, leather goods, baubles dragged to the mill-race, the broken wheel reluctant to offer any hand hold. Instead they drowned crying out for a bridge, found their souls sodden in Derbyshire rain-drench, unprotected by ravens. And as the waters had not yet dried from the earth no dry ground rose to cover the corpses.
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    1 hr and 2 mins
  • Katharine Towers on Elizabeth Bishop's poems 'Sandpiper' and 'Jerónimo's House' and her own poem 'Elizabeth Bishop's Sad Epitaph'

    Katharine Towers on Elizabeth Bishop's poems 'Sandpiper' and 'Jerónimo's House' and her own poem 'Elizabeth Bishop's Sad Epitaph'
    Oct 14 2024

    In this episode, poet Katharine Towers discusses Elizabeth Bishop’s poems ‘Sandpiper’ and ‘Jerónimo’s House’ and her own poem ‘Elizabeth Bishop’s Sad Epitaph.’

    In the interview, Katharine explains how she went from being a prose writer to a poet in part from reading Elizabeth Bishop’s poems. She examines the qualities of Bishop’s writing through an extended reading of ‘Sandpiper’, focusing in particular on line lengths, repetitions and rhymes. Katharine highlights the three things that Bishop strived for in her work — accuracy, spontaneity and mystery which she goes on to reflect on in both 'Sandpiper' and 'Jerónimo's House'. With regards to ‘Jeronimo’s House’, Katharine delves into her own interest in solitude when looking at this piece. She considers the idea that Jerónimo’s house is a ‘love nest’: unpicking this notion through various ways of reading this phrase. She explores the idea that Bishop (or her subjects) are often looking for a refuge or somewhere to hide away.

    Katharine then goes on to illuminate her own poem ‘Elizabeth Bishop’s Sad Epitaph’. She talks about how she was inspired by Bishop’s comment to Robert Lowell about being the loneliest person who ever lived. Katharine sees this work as being a part of a sequence of first-person poems in the voice of various 'alone' women - and the ways in which aloneness was important to them. She reflects on the poem’s slant, the language of the work, the perspective (and possible feelings) of the narrator.

    There are various editions of Elizabeth Bishop’s Collected Poems - the one I have is Complete Poems (Chatto, 1991). You can read ‘Sandpiper’ here.

    As well as the Bishop poems highlighted we also touch on ‘The Moose’, ‘The End of March’, ‘The Bight’ and ‘The Fish’ in our conversation.

    Katharine Towers has published three collections with Picador, most recently Oak which was a Poetry Book of the Month in The Guardian. The Floating Man (2010) won the Seamus Heaney Centre Prize and The Remedies (2016) was shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize and was a Poetry Book of the Month in The Observer. A fourth collection is forthcoming from Picador in 2026. A pamphlet 'let him bring a shrubbe' exploring the life and work of the twentieth-century English composer Gerald Finzi was published by The Maker’s Press in 2023. In 2019 HappenStance Press published another pamphlet The Violin Forest.

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

    'Elizabeth Bishop’s Sad Epitaph' by Katharine Towers In my fairy palace I am as lonely as I could wish. The ivy has grown up and over, and cosily inside there’s just little me reading or sitting. I could be on the moon or I could be in a Hans Christian Andersen story or I could be a girl getting over a love affair. The first room has two beds, so one will always be empty. The second room has two chairs, so I can see where I will sit tomorrow. The third room has two notebooks, so there will always be blank pages. At night I listen to flamenco on the radio. As I snap my fingers and click my heels I feel tremendously Spanish, or I feel a sultry empty weary joy. Covering the windows are the ivy’s mathematical hands. Daylight pokes through when it can, making of the worn-out floorboards a map of bright dots.

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    1 hr and 12 mins
  • Mark Pullinger on Shinkichi Takahashi's poem 'Sparrow in Winter' and his own work 'Magus' and 'Untitled'

    Mark Pullinger on Shinkichi Takahashi's poem 'Sparrow in Winter' and his own work 'Magus' and 'Untitled'
    Sep 30 2024

    In this episode, poet Mark Pullinger discusses Shinkichi Takahashi’s poem ‘Sparrow in Winter’ (translated by Lucien Stryk) and two of Mark’s poems: ‘Magus' and ‘Untitled’. In the interview, we talk about Mark’s introduction to Zen poetry - and Zen haiku in particular - through his discovery of Shinkichi Takahashi’s work. We examine the multifaceted qualities of Takahashi’s poem ‘Sparrow in Winter’, which adopts simple language to create nuanced and complex associations around consciousness, the void, how the narrator and sparrow ‘mesh' with each other. We then go on to explore Mark’s approaches to writing through focusing on ‘Magus’ and ‘Untitled’. Mark talks in some depth - drawing on the specifics of these two pieces - about how his poetry has evolved over the past decade since the publication of his thesis.

    You can find Takahashi’s poem ‘Sparrow in Winter’ in his collection Triumph of the Sparrow: Zen Poems by Shinkichi Takahashi - translated by Lucien Stryk (Grove Press, 1986). I picked up a digital copy of the book.

    Mark Pullinger lives in the Dearne Valley, walking distance to RSPB Old Moor and its satellite sites, where he walks with his wife daily. The philosophy outlined in this interview was conceived for his PhD thesis, The Speaking World, available on Loughborough University’s Institutional Repository. He has recently completed a poetry collection on Kafka and the natural world, making a style shift from his thesis, but still expressing the same worldview. The Speaking World is available at https://repository.lboro.ac.uk/articles/thesis/The_speaking_world

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

    Sparrow in Winter by Shinkichi Takahashi translated by Lucien Stryk Breastdown fluttering in the breeze, The sparrow’s full of air holes. Let the winds of winter blow, Let them crack a wing, two, The sparrow doesn’t care. The air streams through him, free, easy, Scattering feathers, bending legs. He hops calmly, from branch to empty branch In an absolutely spaceless world. I’d catch, skewer, broil you, But my every shot misses: you’re impossible. All at once there’s the sound Of breaking glass, and houses begin To crumple. Rising quickly, An atomic submarine nudges past your belly.

    Untitled by Mark Pullinger Polar bear smells life kills spreading through her her cubs extending skies earth’s breath expanding sun’s reign

    Magus by Mark Pullinger In a distant desert a lone speck crosses the horizon mumbling, “the desert has dignity moving through it”. Sand drifts across humps, clinging, rolling on.

    Heat, like breath, rises, waves reaching skies. Camel’s eyes large distant suns.

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    1 hr and 1 min