The Two-Way Poetry podcast

The Two-Way Poetry Podcast

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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' 1:12:53

منذ 11 weeks1:12:53

1:12:53

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 took it away, and were married next day By the Turkey who lives on the hill. They dined on mince, and slices of quince, Which they ate with a runcible spoon; And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand, They danced by the light of the moon, The moon, The moon, They danced by the light of the moon. The Owl and the Pussy-Cat (the Sequel) The Owl and the Pussy-cat lived the dream For a year and a half at least. They built a chalet, and pranced in a ballet On the beach with the Jumbly Beast. Till Pussy-cat met the Turtles of Fun, Left Owl by the frumious foam, Who sat in the sun, cried “What have I done? O and why did I leave my sweet home, Sweet home, Sweet home? O and why did I leave my sweet home?” Now six months have gone, and Owl’s signing on; Cat lives with a turtle called Ted. In the Bong-tree bazaar, Owl strums his guitar, Singing “Pussy, my marriage is dead.” But Cat, in surprise, says “Owl, do be wise, For love is a runcible fruit.” In only two years, Owl turned all his tears To tunes with a dog on the flute, The flute, The flute, To tunes with a dog on the flute. The whiskery walrus and octopus chorus Heard songs, like the Dong’s, on the sand. “Your tunes are so beautiful, groovy and hootable!” Begged Walrus, “O please join our band.” Owl pondered and said, “Yes, but only if Ted Can play drums and the didgeridoo.” They made Number One, with the Turtles of Fun, Singing “Life is a crazy canoe, Canoe, Canoe,” Singing “Life is a crazy canoe.”…

The Two-Way Poetry Podcast

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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’ 1:15:17

منذ 13 weeks1:15:17

1:15:17

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 C hick (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.…

The Two-Way Poetry Podcast

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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 1:22:00

منذ 15 weeks1:22:00

1:22:00

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 E ely (Longbarrow Press, April 2024), Orasaigh (Broken Sleep Books, August 2024) and an edited anthology, Apocalyptic La ndscape (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 God I was born alive, not dead; human, not an animal; a boy, not a girl; English, not foreign; and Yorkshire, South Kirkby, the Wimpeys - RULE OK! - scoring his hat-tricks, wheelying his Chopper, 100% on the test, this Prospero of Osgoldcross, Ariel of Frickley Park: Kirkby rec Caliban, proud as Punch in his catalogue Falmers, boss-eyed, club-footed, man or fish, legged with fins for arms. The meanest, poorest and commonest sort, that serve for the profit of conjurors, and bleed on Dagon's altars. Beacons ring the changes. Bog-bull thumps the level. Lads rip the pegs on Whelpmore Fen. Commoner's muck.…

The Two-Way Poetry Podcast

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Abbi Flint on Elizabeth-Jane Burnett's poem 'Little Peach' and her own poem 'Cow Low Bowl (650 - 700 AD)' 1:14:13

منذ 17 weeks1:14:13

1:14:13

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…

The Two-Way Poetry Podcast

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David Swann on Tony Hoagland's poem 'The Neglected Art of Description' and his own poem 'The Last Day of Summer' 1:23:07

منذ 19 weeks1:23:07

1:23:07

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 my tea and forget this winter. Send us down the old books, containing the old worlds. You know the ones: jasmine, shawl, peach.…

The Two-Way Poetry Podcast

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Robert Hamberger on John Clare's poem 'The Field Mouse's Nest' and his own poem 'Herb Robert' 1:18:42

منذ 21 weeks1:18:42

1:18:42

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.…

The Two-Way Poetry Podcast

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David Harmer on Dylan Thomas's 'Poem in October' and his own poetry sequence 'White Peak Histories' 1:01:35

منذ 23 weeks1:01:35

1:01:35

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.…

The Two-Way Poetry Podcast

1
Katharine Towers on Elizabeth Bishop's poems 'Sandpiper' and 'Jerónimo's House' and her own poem 'Elizabeth Bishop's Sad Epitaph' 1:12:01

منذ 25 weeks1:12:01

1:12:01

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.…

The Two-Way Poetry Podcast

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Mark Pullinger on Shinkichi Takahashi's poem 'Sparrow in Winter' and his own work 'Magus' and 'Untitled' 1:01:25

منذ 27 weeks1:01:25

1:01:25

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.…

The Two-Way Poetry Podcast

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Fay Musselwhite on David Jones's book-length poem In Parenthesis and her own sequence Memoir of a Working River 1:13:41

منذ 29 weeks1:13:41

1:13:41

In this episode, poet Fay Musselwhite discusses David Jones’s book-length poem In Parenthesis and her own sequence ‘Memoir of a Working River’ from her collection Contraflow . In the interview, we talk about how Fay came to Jones’s poem - a book that follows soldiers' long trajectory toward the Somme battlefield, but has so much more within it than the subject of war itself. For Fay, it’s ‘the fact that one’s part of the earth,’ and that Jones focuses on ‘class, land and nature’ that makes this such an inspiring and important work for her. We discuss the abundant details, images, hauntings contained in the work - and how war plays out like some violent codified ‘sport’ inflicted on these young men. Fay then goes on to explore the difficulties she encountered trying to write her ‘big river poem’ and how she found ways to embody the Rivelin as it runs through the western Sheffield by giving the river itself a voice and, for a while, the body of a young man. Fay explains why she wanted to make the river a human because she wanted to explore the world of those youthful Rivelin mill-workers. We reflect on the music of her poetry and how important it is to Fay’s project as a poet. The extract that Fay read’s from In Parenthesis covers pp. 165 - 168 from her copy of the book (Faber, 1978). There's a recording of an extract of the poem on the Poetry Archive website. It includes an introduction by David Jones himself, and actors playing the many voices in the work. It gives you a good sense of the polyphony in the poem. You can listen to the audio here . You can read more about, and buy a copy of Fay’s very fine collection Contraflow (Longbarrow Press, 2016) here . You can also follow me on X - @cwjoneschris or on Bluesky - @cwjoneschris.bsky.social for more updates on future episodes. From 'Memoir of a Working River’ 6 Woken by some beast’s nudge then stunned at the incredible stillness of sky, slips in to bathe where the mill-dam overflow cascades slithers out freshened, rises and shivers watches the mud where new droplets nuzzle. Donkeys trudge by, pressing on, faces low as if the cinder track hears their moan. Follows their swagger-loads sees motion onward driven by the momentum of raw and wrought iron. Wavers as they near the spark-shed shy of its screaming grind and gritty guffaws but the torture rack, humped on its back in full watery swing, pricks his learning’s gap. Keen to find why the wheel must turn braves the factory door steps in and into a gusting blur tastes its metal, feels particulates snag in sweat takes a moment to see where he is. In geometry against nature’s grace humans are caught in a web each slumped over oak, held by spindle and belt to a stone that spits hot grit. His feet itch. He swerves a man dragging iron rods and trying to make his free hand speak. On the river-run some images stick: flashes of crimson through blackened fur shreds on that donkey’s neck, the clench of combat riddled through men’s backs. Lying on a weir to rinse metal squeals from his hair on the air a tang enthrals the inner juices — he paces it downstream, tracks the prey to a tufted cove, a pail propped in rocks a man doubled over racked in rasp-spasms. When coughing releases its grip he sits near the man, asks how life is. Sunk in the chest, not quite sitting up, the man shares his snap and between pneumatic seizure tells how he offers blunt steel to grit till it’s flayed by resistance to its leanest edge how each day he enters the valley more of it enters him. The man says he’s seen eighteen summers a grinder for three, and nails in a voice hollow-loud what binds the wheel’s turn to that cheese and bread. Twice the man says — The mus’ave a name. Only once — Come wi’ me, if tha needs a crust .…

The Two-Way Poetry Podcast

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Lydia Allison on Tom Phillips' A Humument and on her own Metro Erasure Poems 1:02:47

منذ 1 year1:02:47

1:02:47

In this episode, Lydia Allison reflects on Tom Phillips' 'treated' book A Humument and how it influenced her own Metro erasure poems. In the interview, Lydia talks about going to an event where Tom Phillips talked about his practice as an artist - and about A Humument in particular. She relates how the book came about and describes its various iterations - the different ‘river’ poems that Phillips came to write using the original text - an obscure Victorian novel entitled A Human Document by W.H. Mallock. Lydia discusses the overall ‘narrative’ of the book, and then focuses on two pages in particular: page 40 and page 305 (which you find and can click on below). Lydia then goes on to explain where, why and how she developed her own Metro Horoscope-page found poems. She talks about the rules that she follows in the making of these works, how she distributes them on social media, and what sort of reactions she has got from printing these versions. We then go on to explore a series of poems, looking in particular at how she uses punctuation and word choices to create her original pieces. Lydia Allison is a poet, writing facilitator, creative mentor, and tutor. She has been involved in a number of projects and collaborations, including Stevie Ronnie’s ‘A Diary of Windows and Small Things’, Doncaster Arts’ activity books for lockdown, and ‘Dancing with Words’, a project that paired poets and dancers. Her writing is often inspired by her working life, which spans from bridal consultancy to teaching overseas. She is interested in approaching writing in an experimental and playful way. This largely takes the form of blackout poems where she tries to unearth poems hidden in other interesting texts. She has appeared a number of times in print and online, including The Result Is What You See Today , Introduction X , Surfing the Twilight , Poetry Salzburg Review , PN Review , Feral , and Ink, Sweat & Tears . You can read more at lydiaallison.com , or follow her on twitter/X @lydiarallison The Tom Phillips poems that we focus on can be found here: Page 40 (slideshow): A Humument Page 40 (slideshow) Page 305 (Slideshow) A Humument Page 305 (slideshow) You can the book in its entirety here (Tom Phillips also reads one version of the book on the website): https://www.tomphillips.co.uk/humument I also mention Nicole Sealey in the podcast. You can find her poem "'Pages 1-4,' An Excerpt from The Ferguson Report: An Erasure'" here. Lydia Allison's Metro Erasure Poems grow trees start a home. begin now / It's time to help others, reorganising The what and when The Sun moved to mingle with your life and soul / come in for now, get your thoughts sizzling with romance be logical but very illogical . Be physical and creative and perfect , Gemini / Are other people you? the Moon could be . , time time spent beautiful…

The Two-Way Poetry Podcast

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Elizabeth Holloway on Sharon Olds' poem 'The Blue Dress' and her own poem 'Blue Dress' 1:09:59

منذ 1 year1:09:59

1:09:59

In this episode, I talk to the poet Elizabeth Holloway about how Sharon Olds’ poem 'The Blue Dress’ influenced the writing of her own poem ‘Blue Dress’. Liz talks about the impact Sharon Olds had on her when her first British collection - The Sign of Saturn - was published (in 1991). She talks about the idea of confessional poetry, and how closely we can connect the author with the narrator of the poem. She talks about Sharon Olds’ own version of free verse and how technically skilful she is in terms how she uses uses run-on lines and punctuation to carry the narrative along. Liz also reflects on the different versions of Olds’ persona that are represented in the poem. She talks about the idea of ‘safety’ and disguise in this work, and goes on to discuss the figure of Electra in relation to Olds’ poem too. Liz talks about how aware she was of Olds’ poem when she was writing her own piece ‘Blue Dress’. She describes the free verse form she has taken on, then explores the similarities and differences between her poem and Olds’ piece. Liz talks about the use of blue in other mother-daughter relationships she has written about, then considers the tone of the poem - how both doubt and anxiety play a big part in the making of this work. She goes on to examine the ‘prosy’ quality of her poetry and where she allows herself to tune into more heightened language. She talks about touch and feel, and getting back in touch with someone special who has been missing from the narrator’s own life in the context of Falling Mother . Dr Elizabeth Holloway (formerly Elizabeth Barrett) is an award-winning poet whose work has been published extensively in journals and anthologies. She is the author of four full-length collections of poetry. Her first book Walking on Tiptoe (Staple, 1998) focuses, in part, on the diagnosis of her son as autistic. Elizabeth received an Arts Council of England New Writers’ award to support the completion of her follow-up collection, The Bat Detector (Wrecking Ball Press, 2005), which continues to explore the experience of parenting an autistic child. In the collection, Elizabeth uses the metaphor of detecting bats to understand the process of communicating with a non-verbal child. The collection led to a collaboration with the violist Robin Ireland who composed original music for a sequence of the poems. Subsequent collections include Walking on Tiptoe and Other Poems (Bluechrome Press, 2007) and A Dart of Green and Blue (Arc Publications, 2010). In 2018, Elizabeth received a Northern Writers award to support work on her future collection, Falling Mother . Liz Holloway read Sharon Old’s poem ‘The Blue Dress’ from her collection The Sign of Saturn: Poems 1980 - 1987 (Secker and Warburg, 1991) . A version of the poem can be read here: https://www.wisdomportal.com/PoetryAnthology/SharonOlds-Anthology.html. Blue Dress The call comes out of the blue. How else? There is only the blue. It is what we have lived with. Afterwards, I am dazed by the day. I replay the phone ringing twice — the way I picked up the second time remembering she used to do this. “It's alright Mum, it’s me calling”. She names a date and place, the hours she could be there. She knows it might sound crazy. Too far away. Afterwards, I wonder if she heard the hesitation in my voice. I want to get something for her. Perhaps because I don't believe I am enough. Maybe to make up for birthdays I’ve missed. Or just to have something, whether true or a lie. Something she can't deny is a gift from her mother. Something she can hide from her father if he asks. I would need to pick out something not too expensive she could say she bought for herself. Something un-extraordinary. A plain gift giving nothing away. Something to wear perhaps. I choose Oasis, the airy boutique with a glass lobby and mirrory gallery at the top of a silver river of stairs. Thin men in hoodies and tall girls with eyeliner and ponytails peer over a chrome rail. I flatten myself against the side like a nun, try to be invisible. I braved this place for her. Beyond the lobby, random rails of fluid clothes. Denim. Sweats. Coats with fur-edged hoods. I don't know who she’s become. It’s foolish. Impossible. As I turn to go, a rack of spare clothes — one-offs, small sizes, shop returns — and suddenly a bolt of blue in my eye like shot silk from Shandong. I run it through my fingers. The grain catches. I trace the scalloped neck to the waist, test the lay of its deep V over an inset panel, across the breasts. I push my hands inside, try to gauge the space for her ribs. In the LED light it turns purple indigo delphinium iris.…

The Two-Way Poetry Podcast

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Angelina D'Roza on Seamus Heaney's The Cure at Troy (translated from Sophocles) and her own poem 'Correspondences: The Credence of Birds' 59:20

منذ 1 year59:20

59:20

In this episode, I talk to the poet Angelina D’Roza about how an extract from Seamus Heaney’s The Cure at Troy, a verse translation of Sophocles' play Philoctetes , influenced the writing of her own poem ‘Correspondences: The Credence of Birds’. Angelina talks about how Seamus Heaney’s stage directions from The Cure at Troy grabbed her attention, the ‘right thing at the right time.’ She goes on to discuss how she uses this text (and other corresponding texts) as a way in to explore a subject like colonialism, but it’s as much the delight in language at the beginning of the play, apparent in Heaney’s translation, that drew her in. She talks about how she negotiates appropriation of other writer's work in her poetry. Angelina then goes on to expand on all the different influences, alongside Heaney’s stage notes, including the inciting incident from Damon Albarn’s opera Dr Dee , and a poem by Jane Kenyon (on ‘the presence of an absence’) , that worked their way in to her own piece. Angelina develops at length her own processes as a writer, how she draws on exemplary texts from a wide range of sources, a patchwork approach, as a way of an introduction to her own poem ‘Correspondences: The Credence of Birds’. She talks about the play-like quality of this poem, and where it geographically references in the Peak District. She discusses how she doesn’t want to explain all the levels of ambiguity in the poem - to keep those spaces open for herself and the reader. Angelina reflects on bird-lore, and on notions of time before finishing the conversation by discussing how lyrics and songs have influenced her own approach to writing poems. You hear Angelina read an extract from The Cure at Troy , Seamus Heaney’s translation of Sophocles Philoctetes (Faber, 2018). Angelina D'Roza lives in Sheffield. She was a writing mentor with the Koestler Trust and writer in residence at Bank Street Arts, collaborating with artists, writers, photographers. Most recently her work appears in Blackbox Manifold and Shearsman Press. Her debut collection Envies the Birds was published by Longbarrow Press in 2016. The Blue Hour is Angelina's new collection and was released by Longbarrow at the end of 2023. Correspondences: The Credence of Birds A gritstone edge. Boulders higgledy-piggledy with sprouts of purple heather. No sun to speak of but light diffuse and silver, an evenness to it. Maybe rain, if there’s the wherewithal. Or a sort of shimmer to the flattened grass, as though rain has been. An absence left. A man in a red anorak, a bouldering mat folded on his back, walks quickly right to left. If Heaney’s chorus of boulder-still birds beginning to stretch from under their shawls can be made as lovely as he wrote it, do it. Pheasants, falcons. A spray of meadow pipits darting out from their hair and hands. Chip-chip- chip-chip. A woman climbs the rocks toward a platform stage-right, with the silhouette of an ancient fort just about suggested. The birdsong continues – ek-ek-ek-ek – but she is alone. Perhaps she addresses herself. Or perhaps, someone else. Someone absent. No questions, but the fractals in the bracken, their green mathematics transposed as music, the closing cadence that resolves the song. She: I might believe that a kingfisher strung up on silk can predict the weather, or that placing the semen of a pigeon on someone’s shirt can make that person love you. You think it’s wild, but you believe time runs as the crow flies. Take the roses replanted to my new house, those roses that know a home before this, my young son, the woman I was, its stems grown long and winding through the pale fuchsia, the fuchsia with its pale pink memory of a previous owner. The latitude of these two recollections mapped in space, in gradients, and tangled into a grammar of now, or here, the woman I am. I would send you their late bloom like a temple tumbling into the sea to keep in your wallet with the present tense and the half built, a botanical representation of time, the ongoing of what’s gone inscribed in the ground underfoot. Chorus: sip-sip-sip-sip A cage in the side of a boulder opens. A Japanese tit flies out and across the water. A stone arch at the back of the stage, where the river runs down to the orchestra pit. Hanging from the stone, an iron hook and a small bell. The bird rings the bell and collects a folded piece of paper that could be your fortune from the hook, flies into the gods. Let it go. She: I would send you John Cale’s “Big White Cloud”. After all is said and done / everything is just like it began . But time flows one way, whatever leaves it gathers in its talons, and to predict is to look back, to believe that autumn will cause the trees to redden. Bergson says that what we express is the dead leaves floating on the surface of the water, the various and fugitive reduced to the same handful of words, as though love isn’t changed by having loved. I don’t know what this means for us. Perhaps, that’s the point. The reds and golds were always there, it’s only that we see them now. Everything’s clear, everything’s bright. To leave this unspoken way of being unspoken, and so unchanged by language that can only approximate how it feels, to dream in birdsong, the water trickling down from the moors. The chorus boulders huddle against the cold – chee-chee-chee-chee – Light fades to black – ek-ek-ek-ek…

The Two-Way Poetry Podcast

1
Matt Clegg on ’Back Home Again Chant’ by T’ao Ch’ien (translated by David Hinton) and his own poem ’Tzu-Jan as Performance Outcome’ 53:47

منذ 1 year53:47

53:47

In this episode, I talk to the poet Matt Clegg about how ‘Back Home Again Chant’ by T'ao Ch'ien influenced the writing of his own poem ‘'Tzu-Jan as Perfomance Outcome.’ Matt talks about how Chinese poetry has come to increasingly influence his approach to writing over the past ten years. He talks about T’ao Ch’ien’s style - how it conceals depths beneath its apparently simple surface. He talks about different notions of the idea of the body (and body politic), about the choices T’ao Ch’ien made in this regard - turning away from power and influence to live a more 'stripped-down' life - and how these decisions can speak to our own materialistic, consumer culture. Matt goes on to discuss tone in T’ao Ch'ien’s piece - and about coming to this work as a piece of translation. Matt then goes on to talk about his own poem in the light of saying what Tzu-Jan means in relation to Taoism. Matt talks about ‘walking out’ of the city - about different ideas around ‘productivity’, about drifting, moving between the inner world and outer world. He reflects on walking as an 'anonymous' person - and what this state of being allows him access to as an alert observer. He finishes by discussing his latest collaborative writing project. Matt read and discussed 'Back Home Again Chant' by T'ao Ch'ien from The Selected Poems of T'ao Ch'ien Translated by David Hinton (Copper Canyon Press, 2000). Matt Clegg teaches creative writing at the University of Derby. His books include Cazique, The Navigators, & West North East , all published by Longbarrow Press. His current project is Have You always Been Here , a haibun sequence inspired by Kobayashi Issa’s The Spring of My Life . Have You Always Been Here will combine haiku & prose poetry by Matt, and illustrations by P.R. Ruby. It explores the impact of Covid lockdowns on the contemplative life; on what we observe & how it affects us; how we care; & how we try [or fail] to take responsibility. Tzu-Jan as Performance Outcome Into every account mail is pinging: ‘we will secure our long-term future by competing on more fronts.’ Let’s find a glade where a thought might grow. On Penistone Road, fans have assembled a totem pole shrine out of teddy-bears, Wednesday shirts, and ever-wilting bouquets. They are taped to a long redundant road sign, as if to re-construct a universal grammar. Dear Performance Review, this is what I’d really aspire to. From Beeley Wood Road, someone has flung a single ballet shoe over the river. It curls, like a comma for the mind. A captain of industry exhales his strawberry vape and dreams of shedding half his body fat in a fixable world without depression. His factory remains a nut-free zone. Permit me to fast-forward half a mile, as I climb the hard yards towards Birley Edge. One acre of slope is bitumen black and seeded with beer cans. An emerald fly dances Morse on the hot-pan of a broken slate, but heather knits in from all sides, its purples blossoming bees. Elsewhere, narcissists and lamplighters are blagging their way into the goonlight, but here, just under the Birley Stone, someone has evoked their late mother in flowers of violet and mildest blue. I’d love to stop, but have business in the leafways of Wharncliffe Woods. I find a tree, violently uprooted in some long blown-out gale. The crater where it once clutched earth is a pool fermenting mud-water wine. Reflected light minnows back and forth, close-reading each crevice in the exposed roots. Elsewhere, there are directives to create future-facing partnerships, but I want only to collaborate with pipits that flirt in and out of bracken tips, all day. Here I sit reading Ta’ Chien to the trees, knowing little more of strategy than this. Fresh crops of data are being harvested, and bright careerists kneel to the metrics, but here, aphids have printed their green bodies between the lines of ‘Back Home Again Chant’. A golden Labrador lags far behind its master, and snuffle-blesses my open book.…

The Two-Way Poetry Podcast

1
Pete Green on Louis MacNeice’s Autumn Journal and on their own poem Sheffield Almanac 1:05:09

منذ 1 year1:05:09

1:05:09

In this episode, Pete Green reads and discusses Chapter Eight from Louis MacNeice’s book-length poem Autumn Journal and how it played a part in the writing of their own long poem Sheffield Almanac . In the programme, Pete talks about their own long relationship with MacNeice’s poem, how it ‘works’ as a poem, stitching together contemporary ‘pinch points’ of late 1930s history and the author's own autobiography. In a wide-ranging (roaming) conversation Pete talks about how the form of MacNeice’s poem influenced their own approach to Sheffield Almanac . They also explore how MacNiece brings together high and low culture to discuss notions of privilege, politics, and the state of the nation. Pete goes on to reflect on the first and second editions of Sheffield Almanac, and how their own work as a song writer has informed their own poetry writing skills. Pete talks about conflating the personal and political in Sheffield Almanac , and 'the predicament of the city of Sheffield' that is interrogated in this extended lyrical narrative. The edition that Pete reads from here is Autumn Journal (Faber, 2012). Pete Green is a song writer, musician, and poet. They have published two pamphlets with Longbarrow Press - Sheffield Almanac (first edition, 2017 and second edition, 2022), and Hemisphere (2021). Pete’s first full-length came out with Salt in 2022, entitled The Meanwhile Sites . from Chapter One of Sheffield Almanac (second edition, Longbarrow 2022): And we were timeless As the empty afternoons when we would settle In for desultory shifts at the Fellow & Firkin Unprepared to take one more step Toward the millennium’s unmapped plains Without a pint of cloudy ale and a doorstep Sandwich loaded with fat chips. Some seminar on Woolf and Joyce just finished, We might stay put, we might loose happenstance With suburban wanderlust undiminished — Let the current bus us to Cotteridge or West Bromwich, Let the bondage of deadlines unravel Free in time and space, at least within the bounds Of an off-peak pass from West Midlands Travel. Suede supplanting Blur, Blair succeeding Smith: Tumbleweed days. None of us paused to cherish Carefreedom since we never knew — or just Suppressed the knowledge — that it could perish While the ink dried on our dissertations. Weeks were some abundant currency one borrows At deceptive interest rates, pays back At breakneck terms, in repossessed tomorrows And when the time came to consolidate Sheffield was our redemption, our second Bite at adulthood’s sour cherry; And when it’s done, when the tallies are reckoned And we feel the slowing of the birthdays zipping Past like the exit signs for junction 33, will we have come this far Only for the settled life itself to seal our dysfunction Rather than those years of frenzied chasing? We thought those threadbare rented rooms, curtained With frost and damp, would be the time the Low tide turned amid the hurt and Searching. What if they prove instead the High water mark? These kids have 4G, streaming media, wi-fi, Colossal debt, jobs pre-empted by machines; We had payphones, typewriters, a dust-strewn, scratchy hi-fi, Student grants and jobs that worked us like machines And all of us austerity, austerity and ISIS, Seas that go on rising through each summit, Refugees, and leaders somehow baffled by a crisis Every bugger else could spot a mile off Just as, this time last year, we watched the occupation Of Central Office while they pricetagged hope and knowledge, Surprised by the moral pluck and spunk of a generation Dismissed as dismal materialist go-getters. Equally Wrong-footed, the coppers made a kettle, Flung kids from wheelchair seats, performed the miracle Of raising a new cohort to its feet and on its mettle To pick up where we left the poll tax off. This time, beyond London’s hall of mirrors, every region Saw insurgent youth again And round Coles Corner marched a stoked-up legion Of sophomores and schoolkids side by side. We know any Booming cogwheels will surely crunch and seize up Should we live to see recovery, we know the rest: Clegg and the Tories put the fees up — But now we know the nature of autumn’s bonus hope: Despite the cost of learning going treble, The spirit that radiates as halls of residence revive Is the spirit not of the entrepreneur but the rebel. Let’s go again: Psychology, Landscape Architecture, Biotechnology, East Asian Studies: An occupied theatre hosts a free lecture — From barricades to trending topics I followed the movement online while tending The baby: one feed for the jaded, one Feed for the pure. While we’re expending Reproductive energies, a revolution’s spent And look now: winter extends a brittle hand, calling Last orders on the year But I’ll be the obstinate last drinker, stalling For time while autumn’s tables are wiped down; I’ll be the flâneur in the park, passing Dead leaves and regrets from hand to hand While squirrels hunker below the slow massing Of polar air at the season’s borders. I’ll see you on the Other side. Perhaps they’re right, perhaps the interweaving Of our threads into our children will be our Making after all, and soon we’ll be retrieving Optimism from these lengthened nights as our Adopted city draws new breath this morning Like this oblique first light along the streets of Crookes With those unloaded bags of socks and books adorning Freshman lawns. Let them be young And daft, let fortune attend their drunken Stumbling into roads. Let the kids be alright. The shine will dull on this clutch of conkers, their shrunken Drying bulk brittle like ageing bone, as blown And brushed from grates go the last of the old year’s embers And the season’s first curls of chimney smoke Stroke the underside of the first chilly sky, while September’s Evenings graduate from the grey of slate to the black of carbon. Let the nights not draw in quite yet nor the kids grow sober — Autumn’s advance and the slants of the Earth Shade on these vestiges of warmth into October, Shade on, prolong, the welcome of this shifted city, Let its embrace still widen. Now’s no moment for this prudent Stock-taking, bean-counting, the accountant’s wary eye. Let this place take in the refugee, the student, The one and all who reinvent, renew, regenerate. Underfoot the leaves accrue like debts for tuition, Degenerate to mulch: this is the dying season Yet these guests now unpacking lives make scant imposition But loan this city life, new blood, new reason.…

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