Explore every episode of the podcast The Poetry Exchange

Friends - it is our 100th episode!

We are so pleased to be here with you, sharing, listening, celebrating.

We have a very special conversation to mark the occasion: our very own Michael Shaeffer, host of The Poetry Exchange, talks about the poem that has been a friend to him - 'Having a Coke with You' by Frank O'Hara.

10 years...100 episodes...countless more poems, stories, converastions...and now Michael shares his story of connection with O'Hara's gorgeous poem.

We're thrilled and immensely grateful to Michael for sitting 'in the other chair' for this one, and sharing the story of his friendship so openly. You'll hear Michael in conversation with Roy McFarlane and Andrea Witzke Slot.

Our thanks to the Alfred A. Knopf and the Frank O'Hara estate for allowing us to share the poem with you, and to the South London Gallery for hosting the conversation.

Michael talks about his appearance in the re-staging of London Road at the National Theatre, which runs 7th - 21st June. Get your tickets while you can if you're in or around London during this time!

As Michael says in this episode, we will be taking a pause from the podcast for a while after this episode, having reached this extraordinary milestone. Michael will also be stepping back from hosting at this point, having co-hosted The Poetry Exchange with Fiona since the very beginning.

What an enormous journey it has been for Michael, for us all, and we are so grateful for all your friendship and support along the way.

The Poetry Exchange is continuing, and for now we will be focussing on some new collaborations that create live, intimate encounters between people and poems....something that has always been at the heart of The Poetry Exchange.

Keep in touch with us to find out more about as these new adventures as they unfold, including ways of being involved. You can sign up to our mailing list at www.thepoetryexchange.co.uk, follow us on Instagram @PoetryExch, or drop us a line any time on hello@thepoetryexchange.co.uk.

For now, thank you so much for being with us over the years...for all your love, support and companionship. Here's to living life filled with poems as friends.

Thank you for listening,

Michael, John and The Poetry Exchange Xx

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In this episode we talk with writer and academic Serena Trowbridge about the poem that's been a friend to her: 'A Shropshire Lad 31: On Wenlock Edge the wood's in trouble' by A.E. Housman.

This conversation was recorded in April 2022 at the Birmingham & Midland Institute. It is very special to listen back to this converation now, particularly to hear Fiona with all her usual passion and insights in conversation with Serena.

Dr Serena Trowbridge is a writer and academic specialising in Pre-Raphaelitism in art and literature. She is Reader in Victorian Literature at Birmingham City University.

Serena is Vice-President and Chair of the Pre-Raphaelite Society, and Senior Vice-President at the Birmingham & Midland Institute. You can find her thoughts on art and literature on Substack.

Huge thanks to Serena for joining us for this conversation and allowing us to share it with you.

We are so grateful to you all for listening and for all your continuous support of The Poetry Exchange. This is episode 99 and we are looking forward to sharing our special 100th episode with you soon.

With love,

Michael, John and The Poetry Exchange

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In this episode of The Poetry Exchange, poet Nick Makoha talks with us about the poem that has been a friend to him: 'White Egrets (I)' by Derek Walcott.

Nick actually joined us back in 2017 at Pushkin House, London, and we are delighted to be sharing this conversation with you now. It is very special to hear Fiona in this conversation, with all her usual warmth and brilliance.

Nick Makoha's latest collection 'The New Carthaginians' is published this month from Allen Lane - you can order/buy your copy here.

The event for 'On the Brink of Touch' by Fiona Bennett is on 26th February at The Bedford in Balham, London, and live streamed. We'd love for you to join us, and you can book your places here!

Dr Nick Makoha is a Ugandan poet. His new collection is The New Carthaginians published by Penguin UK. Winner of the 2021 Ivan Juritz Prize and the Poetry London Prize. In 2017, Nick’s debut collection, Kingdom of Gravity, was shortlisted for the Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection and was one of the Guardian’s best books of the year. He was the ICA 2023 Writer-in-Residence. He was the 2019 Writer-in-Residence for The Wordsworth Trust and Wasafiri. A Cave Canem Graduate Fellow and Complete Works alumnus. He won the 2015 Brunel African Poetry Prize and the 2016 Toi Derricotte & Cornelius Eady Prize for his pamphlet Resurrection Man. His play The Dark—produced by Fuel Theatre and directed by JMK award-winner Roy Alexander—was on a national tour in 2019. It was shortlisted for the 2019 Alfred Fagon Award and won the 2021 Columbia International Play Reading prize. His poems have appeared in the Cambridge Review, the New York Times, Poetry Review, Poetry Wales, Rialto, Poetry London, TriQuarterly Review, 5 Dials, Boston Review, Callaloo Birmingham Lit Journal and Wasafiri.

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White Egrets

By Derek Walcott

I

The chessmen are as rigid on their chessboard

as those life-sized terra-cotta warriors whose vows

to their emperor with bridle, shield and sword

were sworn by a chorus that has lost its voice;

no echo in that astonishing excavation.

Each soldier gave an oath, each gave his word

to die for his emperor, his clan, his nation,

to become a chess soldier, breathlessly erect

in shade or crossing sunlight, without hours –

from clay to clay and odourlessly strict.

If vows were visible they might see ours

as changeless chessmen in the changing light

on the lawn outside where bannered breakers toss

and palms gust with music that is time’s

above the chessmen’s silence. Motion brings loss.

A sable blackbird twitters in the limes.

From White Egrets by Derek Walcott, Faber & Faber 2010.

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In this episode, we are joined by acclaimed poet Tamar Yoseloff, who shares with us the poem that has been a friend to her: 'Morning' by Frank O'Hara.

The conversation, like the poem, is full of joy and delight, as well as sadness and loss. Tamar spoke with Michael and Andrea in early May 2024, and the conversation takes on a new light now, as we continue to hold Fiona so closely in our hearts.

Tamar Yoseloff has published seven collections, including The Formula for Night: New and Selected Poems (2015) and most recently, Belief Systems, which was a PBS Summer Recommendation in 2024. She’s also the author of Formerly, a chapbook incorporating photographs by Vici MacDonald (Hercules Editions, 2012) shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award. She was a lecturer on the Poetry School / Newcastle University MA in Writing Poetry and continues to teach independently. She received a Cholmondeley Award in 2023.

Tamar Yoseloff was one of Fiona's outstanding poetry mentors, having taught her on the MA in 2022, along with Glyn Maxwell. It is very fitting that Tammy is our guest this month, as we celebrate the arrival of Fiona's own collection of poetry: 'On the Brink of Touch', now available from Live Canon. Tamar Yoseloff and Glyn Maxwell, along with Helen Eastman of Live Canon, were all instrumental in ensuring Fiona's collection was published - something Fiona knew was going to happen, even if she didn't get to see her book its final form. 'On the Brink of Touch' is a work of great beauty and immense humanity, and it is extraordinary that we are all now able to hold it in our hands.

Michael also mentions the memorial we held recently to remember and celebrate Fiona, which you can view anytime here.

•••••••••

Morning

by Frank O'Hara

I’ve got to tell you

how I love you always

I think of it on grey

mornings with death

in my mouth the tea

is never hot enough

then and the cigarette

dry the maroon robe

chills me I need you

and look out the window

at the noiseless snow

At night on the dock

the buses glow like

clouds and I am lonely

thinking of flutes

I miss you always

when I go to the beach

the sand is wet with

tears that seem mine

although I never weep

and hold you in my

heart with a very real

humor you’d be proud of

the parking lot is

crowded and I stand

rattling my keys the car

is empty as a bicycle

what are you doing now

where did you eat your

lunch and were there

lots of anchovies it

is difficult to think

of you without me in

the sentence you depress

me when you are alone

Last night the stars

were numerous and today

snow is their calling

card I’ll not be cordial

there is nothing that

distracts me music is

only a crossword puzzle

do you know how it is

when you are the only

passenger if there is a

place further from me

I beg you do not go

From THE COLLECTED POEMS OF FRANK O'HARA © 1971 by Maureen Granville- Smith, renewed 1999 by Maureen O'Hara Granville-Smith and Donald Allen. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.

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Dear friends

We are mourning and missing our beloved Fiona, whilst also celebrating her extraordinary life and work, and everything she brought to all our lives. We continue to feel her with us in everything we do.

This month, we pay tribute to Fiona by re-relasing the conversation in which Fiona visits The Poetry Exchange for herself, talking about the poem that has been a friend to her: 'A Kite for Aibhín' by Seamus Heaney.

The conversation was originally recorded in France in 2017, and you can also find it as episode 23 of the podcast.

We are incredibly grateful for all the amazing messages of support, gratitude, loss and condolence we have received from so many of you around the world. Your words speak volumes about Fiona and the way she touched and changed your lives, whether you knew her in person or simply through listening to her voice each month. Michael reads a small selection of some of these messages at the beginning of the episode.

Please do continue to write to us with thoughts, feelings and memories of Fiona at hello@thepoetryexchange.co.uk.

Fiona's own collection of poetry - On the Brink of Touch - will be published later this month by Live Canon, and we will let you know more about that very soon. You will hear Fiona's reading of her poem 'Imprint' at the end of this episode.

Thank you so much for all your support, love and friendship,

Michael, John and The Poetry Exchange xx

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A Kite for Aibhín

by Seamus Heaney

After "L'Aquilone" by Giovanni Pascoli (1855-1912)

Air from another life and time and place,

Pale blue heavenly air is supporting

A white wing beating high against the breeze,

And yes, it is a kite! As when one afternoon

All of us there trooped out

Among the briar hedges and stripped thorn,

I take my stand again, halt opposite

Anahorish Hill to scan the blue,

Back in that field to launch our long-tailed comet.

And now it hovers, tugs, veers, dives askew,

Lifts itself, goes with the wind until

It rises to loud cheers from us below.

Rises, and my hand is like a spindle

Unspooling, the kite a thin-stemmed flower

Climbing and carrying, carrying farther, higher

The longing in the breast and planted feet

And gazing face and heart of the kite flier

Until string breaks and—separate, elate—

The kite takes off, itself alone, a windfall.

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Dearest friends,

We are so sorry to have to share the hardest news with you - something we could never imagine having to say...

Our beautiful friend and the founder, co-host and guiding light of The Poetry Exchange, Fiona Bennett, has died after a short illness.

We are so sorry this will come as a huge shock to you all.

It is hard to begin to express the enormous sense of loss, grief and endless love we are feeling for our most beloved Fiona. We know so many of you will be feeling this with us. FIona touched so many people's lives in such a profound way....whether through you listening in to her voice every month on the podcast, or through meeting and knowing Fiona in person.

As Michael puts it in the introduction to this episode: "Fiona was a real one off. She really was one of the very best."

This episode is a converastion Fiona really wanted us to share. It is an exchange with the wondrous David Lewsey about the poem that has been a friend to him: 'The World as Meditation' by Wallace Stevens. We recorded the conversation just a few months ago, and it is wonderful to hear David share all his passion for this poem and for poetry with Fiona and Michael.

We would love to hear from you with any messages, feelings and reflections about Fiona, and you can get in touch with us on hello@thepoetryexchange.co.uk. We are going to be taking some time to process and face the loss of our beautiful friend, and to think about ways of lifting up and honouring her extraordinary life and legacy.

For now, we are incredibly grateful for all your friendship, and we are sending so much love to you all.

Michael, John and The Poetry Exchange xx

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In this special episode, we share a recording of our live event at Norfolk and Norwich Festival in June 2024, celebrating our new anthology: Poems as Friends.

Michael Shaeffer is joined by contributors to the anthology Roy McFarlane and Hannah Jane Walker, to read a selection of the poems found within its pages, alongside the stories of the readers who have known them as friends.

We are incredibly grateful to the Norfolk & Norwich Festival and the National Centre for Writing for hosting us for this very special event - part of the City of Literature programme - and for all their passion and support for our work with poems as friends. City of Literature is a Norfolk & Norwich Festival and National Centre for Writing presentation, programmed by the National Centre for Writing.

We hope you enjoy listening in!

Poems as Friends: The Poetry Exchange 10th Anniversary Anthology is available now from all good bookshops in the UK and online. It is co-authored by Fiona Bennett and Michael Shaeffer and published by Quercus Editions.

Hannah Jane Walker is an award-winning writer, performer and poet with a socially engaged practice. Her work deals with emotion, vulnerability and the human experience and has been praised for its humour, sincerity and poetic ambition. She published her first book Sensitive with Octopus Hachette and her poetry has been published by Nasty Little Press, Nine Arches Press and in anthologies with Penned in the Margins and Forest Fringe. Her plays are published by Oberon.

Roy McFarlane was born in Birmingham of Jamaican parentage and has spent most of his years living in Wolverhampton - and more recently in Brighton. He has held the role of Birmingham’s Poet Laureate, Birmingham & Midland Institute’s Poet in Residence, and is currently the UK Canal Poet Laureate. He has three collections published by Nine Arches Press: Beginning With Your Last Breath (2016); The Healing Next Time (2018), which was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award, and Living By Troubled Waters (2022). In 2023, Roy McFarlane was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

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In this episode of our podcast, acclaimed writer Nick Laird talks about the poem that has been a friend to him: 'The Envoy of Mr. Cogito' by Zbigniew Herbert, translated by Bogdana Carpenter.

Nick Laird was born in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. He writes poetry, fiction, screenplays, and criticism, and lives in London and New York. His poetry collections (from Faber and Faber) are: To a Fault (2005); On Purpose (2007); Go Giants (2015); Feel Free (2018).

We are so grateful to Nick for joining us for this utterly extrarordinary converastion, and to Oxford University Press Ltd for their permission to share Zbigniew Herbert's poem with you in this way.

You can find out more about our upcoming events with our anthology, Poems as Friends, on our website.

'The Envoy of Mr. Cogito' by Zbigniew Herbert, translated by Bogdana Carpenter, is read by Fiona Bennett.

*********

The Envoy of Mr. Cogito

by Zbigniew Herbert, translated by Bogdana Carpenter

Go where those others went to the dark boundary

for the golden fleece of nothingness your last prize

go upright among those who are on their knees

among those with their backs turned and those toppled in the dust

you were saved not in order to live

you have little time you must give testimony

be courageous when the mind deceives you be courageous

in the final account only this is important

and let your helpless Anger be like the sea

whenever you hear the voice of the insulted and beaten

let your sister Scorn not leave you

for the informers executioners cowards—they will win

they will go to your funeral and with relief will throw a lump of earth

the woodborer will write your smoothed-over biography

and do not forgive truly it is not in your power

to forgive in the name of those betrayed at dawn

beware however of unnecessary pride

keep looking at your clown’s face in the mirror

repeat: I was called—weren’t there better ones than I

beware of dryness of heart love the morning spring

the bird with an unknown name the winter oak

light on a wall the splendour of the sky

they don’t need your warm breath

they are there to say: no one will console you

be vigilant—when the light on the mountains gives the sign—arise and go

as long as blood turns in the breast your dark star

repeat old incantations of humanity fables and legends

because this is how you will attain the good you will not attain

repeat great words repeat them stubbornly

like those crossing the desert who perished in the sand

and they will reward you with what they have at hand

with the whip of laughter with murder on a garbage heap

go because only in this way will you be admitted to the company of cold skulls

to the company of your ancestors: Gilgamesh Hector Roland

the defenders of the kingdom without limit and the city of ashes

Be faithful Go

Zbigniew Herbert, 'The Envoy of Mr. Cogito' translated by Bogdana and John Carpenter, from Selected Poems of Zbigniew Herbert. Used by permission of Oxford University Press, Ltd.

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In this episode, our hearts are full as we are joined by the glorious poet Imtiaz Dharker, talking about the poem that has been a friend to her: 'Meeting Point' by Louis MacNeice.

We are also thrilled to say that this episode will be with you in the month that Poems as Friends - The Poetry Exchange 10th Anniversary Anthology is published - on 9th May 2024. We are hugely grateful to everyone who has contributed poems and stories to its pages, and to all of you for your support and love for The Poetry Exchange over the last 10 years.

Imtiaz Dharker is one of the leading and most widely respected poets of our age. "Reading her, one feels that were there to be a World Laureate, Imtiaz Dharker would be the only candidate." - Carol Ann Duffy. Imtiaz Dharker grew up a 'Muslim Calvinist' in a Lahori household in Glasgow, was adopted by India and married into Wales. She was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 2014. Her main themes are drawn from a life of transitions: childhood, exile, journeying, home, displacement, religious strife and terror, and latterly, grief.

On 23rd May 2024, Imtiaz's latest collection Shadow Reader is published by Bloodaxe Books. Shadow Reader is a radiant criss-cross of encounters, messages and Punjabi proverbs, shot through with the dark thread of an unwelcome prophecy.

We are so delighted to share this conversation with you in the month that Shadow Reader - and our anthology of Poems as Friends - join us in the world.

Imtiaz Dharker is in conversation with Fiona Bennett and Roy McFarlane.

*********

Meeting Point

by Louis MacNeice

Time was away and somewhere else,

There were two glasses and two chairs

And two people with the one pulse

(Somebody stopped the moving stairs):

Time was away and somewhere else.

And they were neither up nor down;

The stream’s music did not stop

Flowing through heather, limpid brown,

Although they sat in a coffee shop

And they were neither up nor down.

The bell was silent in the air

Holding its inverted poise—

Between the clang and clang a flower,

A brazen calyx of no noise:

The bell was silent in the air.

The camels crossed the miles of sand

That stretched around the cups and plates;

The desert was their own, they planned

To portion out the stars and dates:

The camels crossed the miles of sand.

Time was away and somewhere else.

The waiter did not come, the clock

Forgot them and the radio waltz

Came out like water from a rock:

Time was away and somewhere else.

Her fingers flicked away the ash

That bloomed again in tropic trees:

Not caring if the markets crash

When they had forests such as these,

Her fingers flicked away the ash.

God or whatever means the Good

Be praised that time can stop like this,

That what the heart has understood

Can verify in the body’s peace

God or whatever means the Good.

Time was away and she was here

And life no longer what it was,

The bell was silent in the air

And all the room one glow because

Time was away and she was here.

© 1967 by Louis MacNeice. Reproduced with permission of David Higham Associates, Ltd.

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In this episode of The Poetry Exchange, we talk with one of poetry's greatest leading lights, Malika Booker, about the poem that has been a friend to her: ‘The Domestic Science of Sunday Dinner’ by Lorna Goodison.

Malika Booker, currently based in Leeds, is a lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University, a British poet of Guyanese and Grenadian Parentage, and co-founder of Malika’s Poetry Kitchen (A writer’s collective). Her pamphlet Breadfruit, (flippedeye, 2007) received a Poetry Society recommendation and her poetry collection Pepper Seed (Peepal Tree Press, 2013) was shortlisted for the OCM Bocas prize and the Seamus Heaney Centre 2014 prize for first full collection. She is published with the Poets Sharon Olds and Warsan Shire in The Penguin Modern Poet Series 3: Your Family: Your Body (2017). A Cave Canem Fellow, and inaugural Poet in Residence at The Royal Shakespeare Company, Malika was awarded the Cholmondeley Award (2019) for outstanding contribution to poetry and elected a Royal Society of Literature Fellow (2022).

Malika has won the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem TWICE: in 2020 for 'The Little Miracles' (Magma, 2019), and most recently in 2023 for 'Libation', which you can hear her read in this episode.

'Libation' was first published in The Poetry Review (112:4).

‘The Domestic Science of Sunday Dinner’ by Lorna Goodison is published in Turn Thanks by Lorna Goodison, University of Illinois Press, 1999.

You can read the full text of ‘The Domestic Science of Sunday Dinner’ on our website.

This episode closes with a reading of the poem 'Su Casa' by Andrea Witzke Slot, published in her collection 'The Ministry of Flowers' (Valley Press, 2020).

P.S. don’t forget you can pre-order your copy of Poems as Friends – The Poetry Exchange 10th Anniversary Anthology – which is published by Quercus Editions on 9th May 2024.

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In this special episode, we honour the poetry legend that is Benjamin Zephaniah by sharing this conversation with poet Roy McFarlane, talking about 'Dis Poetry' and the hugely influential part Benjamin Zephaniah has played in Roy's life.

Roy McFarlane is a poet born in Birmingham of Jamaican parentage. He has held the roles of Birmingham’s Poet Laureate, Starbucks’ Poet in Residence and Birmingham & Midland Institute’s Poet in Residence. He has three collections published by Nine Arches Press: Beginning With Your Last Breath (2016); The Healing Next Time (2018), which was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award, and Living By Troubled Waters (2022). In 2023, Roy McFarlane was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Benjamin Obadiah Iqbal Zephaniah (15 April 1958 – 7 December 2023) was a British writer, dub poet, actor, musician and professor of poetry and creative writing. He was included in The Times’ list of Britain's top 50 post-war writers in 2008 and was probably the most televised poet of his generation in the UK. His down-to-earth mission to take poetry wherever he could – and especially to those who would not normally read it – led him to being known to millions as ‘The People’s Poet. Zephaniah was revolutionary in bringing his Jamaican voice, speech and heritage into poetry – both on the page and in performance – opening up doors for many poets to come. A lifelong activist, Zephaniah’s wrote about his lived experiences of incarceration and racism, and was a radical voice for freedom, equality and humanity around the world.  

The recording of 'Dis Poetry', performed by Benjamin Zephaniah, is taken from To Do Wid Me - a 2013 film portrait of Benjamin Zephaniah by Pamela Robertson-Pearce drawing on both live performances and informal interviews. The film and accompanying Selected Poems are available from Bloodaxe Books: https://www.bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/product/to-do-wid-me-dvd-book--1038.

Roy McFarlane's extraordinary poem 'In the city of a hundred tongues' is taken from his collection The Healing Next Time, published by Nine Arches Press in 2018.

Roy McFarlane is in conversation with Fiona Bennett and Michael Shaeffer.

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Dis Poetry

by Benjamin Zephaniah

Dis poetry is like a riddim dat drops

De tongue fires a riddim dat shoots like shots

Dis poetry is designed fe rantin

Dance hall style, big mouth chanting,

Dis poetry nar put yu to sleep

Preaching follow me

Like yu is blind sheep,

Dis poetry is not Party Political

Not designed fe dose who are critical.

Dis poetry is wid me when I gu to me bed

It gets into me dreadlocks

It lingers around me head

Dis poetry goes wid me as I pedal me bike

I've tried Shakespeare, respect due dere

But did is de stuff I like.

Read the full poem on our website.

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In this very special episode of The Poetry Exchange podcast, journalist, writer and editor Simon Crompton talks about the poem that has been a friend to him: 'The Thrush' by Edward Thomas.

This episode is dedicated to a dear friend of Simon and of The Poetry Exchange - the extraordinary Martin Heaney - who sadly died at the end of 2023. Martin has been a touchstone of The Poetry Exchange from the outset, bringing his deep passion for poetry and his belief in the central importance of friendship to our lives to our work over the years. We are eternally grateful to Martin for being such a beautiful, inspirational and joyful friend.

Simon Crompton is a journalist, writer, editor and communications consultant specialising in health and social affairs. He wrote for The Times for over 20 years, also working as the health editor of the newspaper’s Body&Soul section. He has edited many publications in the fields of health and social work and contributes regularly to the international Cancer World magazine. Throughout his career he has provided consultancy to a wide range of voluntary and statutory organisations working for patient and public welfare. Having written three non-fiction books, he is now focusing on writing fiction.

Martin Heaney's podcast is Chatty Guy Talks Cancer Care and Hope (you can hear Martin in conversation with Simon Crompton on one of the early episodes).

You can listen to Martin talk about the poem that's been a friend to him - The Lake Isle of Innisfree by W. B. Yeats - in this episode of The Poetry Exchange.

At the end of the episode, we share a recording of Martin reading 'Sometimes all it takes' by Gill McEvoy. We are very grateful to Gill for allowing us to share this beautiful poem. Gill McEvoy's Selected Poems is published by The Hedgehog Poetry Press in February 2024.

Thank you to Simon for such a beautiful converastion, to Martin for all the inspiration, and to all of you for listening.

*********

The Thrush

by Edward Thomas

When Winter's ahead,

What can you read in November

That you read in April

When Winter's dead?

I hear the thrush, and I see

Him alone at the end of the lane

Near the bare poplar's tip,

Singing continuously.

Is it more that you know

Than that, even as in April,

So in November,

Winter is gone that must go?

Or is all your lore

Not to call November November,

And April April,

And Winter Winter—no more?

But I know the months all,

And their sweet names, April,

May and June and October,

As you call and call

I must remember

What died into April

And consider what will be born

Of a fair November;

And April I love for what

It was born of, and November

For what it will die in,

What they are and what they are not,

While you love what is kind,

What you can sing in

And love and forget in

All that's ahead and behind.

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In this episode of The Poetry Exchange, we listen back to one of our previous conversations - with the extraordinary actor Andrew Scott, talking about the poem that's been a friend to him: 'Love (III)' by George Herbert.

As 2023 draws to a close, this is the poem and conversation we want to lift up for you all...

We are incredibly grateful to Andrew Scott for joining us back in 2018 to talk so openly and eloquently about this poem and the part it has played in his life.

Thank you for all your support and for sharing a love of poetry with us during 2023.

With love from Fiona, Michael and all of us at The Poetry Exchange

*********

Love (III)

by George Herbert

Love bade me welcome. Yet my soul drew back,

Guilty of dust and sin.

But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack

From my first entrance in,

Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning

If I lacked anything.

‘A guest,’ I answered, ‘worthy to be here.’

Love said, ‘You shall be he.’

‘I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear,

I cannot look on thee.’

Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,

‘Who made the eyes but I?’

‘Truth Lord; but I have marred them; let my shame

Go where it doth deserve.’

‘And know you not,’ says Love, ‘who bore the blame?’

‘My dear, then I will serve.’

‘You must sit down,’ says Love, ‘and taste my meat:’

So I did sit and eat.

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In this episode, poet, playwright, teacher and activist Jacqueline Saphra talks to us about the poem that has been a friend to her: 'Ceasefire' by Michael Longley.

We are so grateful to Jacqueline for joining us at this time, to talk about this beautiful poem and the part it has played in her life.

Jacqueline Saphra is a poet, playwright, teacher and activist. She is the author of nine plays, five chapbooks and five poetry collections. The Kitchen of Lovely Contraptions (flipped eye) was shortlisted for the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize and If I Lay on my Back I Saw Nothing But Naked Women (The Emma Press) won Best Collaborative Work at The Sabotage Awards. Recent collections from Nine Arches Press are All My Mad Mothers (shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize), Dad, Remember You are Dead and One Hundred Lockdown Sonnets. Jacqueline is a founder member of Poets for the Planet and teaches at The Poetry School. Her latest collection, Velvel's Violin (Nine Arches Press, 2023) is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation.

Jacqueline is in conversation with The Poetry Exchange hosts, Fiona Bennett and Michael Shaeffer.

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Ceasefire

by Michael Longley

I

Put in mind of his own father and moved to tears

Achilles took him by the hand and pushed the old king

Gently away, but Priam curled up at his feet and

Wept with him until their sadness filled the building.

II

Taking Hector’s corpse into his own hands Achilles

Made sure it was washed and, for the old king’s sake,

Laid out in uniform, ready for Priam to carry

Wrapped like a present home to Troy at daybreak.

III

When they had eaten together, it pleased them both

To stare at each other’s beauty as lovers might,

Achilles built like a god, Priam good-looking still

And full of conversation, who earlier had sighed:

IV

‘I get down on my knees and do what must be done

And kiss Achilles’ hand, the killer of my son.’

From 'Ghost Orchid' (Jonathan Cape, 1995), copyright © Michael Longley

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In this episode, poet, writer and doctor Gita Ralleigh talks to us about the poem that has been a friend to her: 'The Daughter' by Carmen Giménez.

We're so grateful to Gita for sharing such an intimate, beautiful conversation with us, and to Carmen Giménez and The University of Arizona Press for allowing us to bring the poem to you in this way.

Gita Ralleigh is a poet, writer and doctor born to Indian immigrant parents in London. She teaches creative writing to science undergraduates at Imperial College and has an MA in Creative Writing and an MSc in Medical Humanities. Her poetry books are A Terrible Thing (Bad Betty Press, 2020) and Siren (Broken Sleep Books, 2022). Her debut children’s novel The Destiny Of Minou Moonshine was published by Zephyr/Head of Zeus in July 2023. You can find her on Twitter as @storyvilled and on Instagram as @gita_ralleigh

'The Daughter' can be found in Carmen Giménez' collection Milk and Filth, published by University of Arizona Press, 2013. You can find out more about Carmen Giménez and her work at www.carmengimenez.net.

We are thrilled to announce our first anthology will be pubished by Quercus Editions on 9th May 2024!

Poems as Friends: The Poetry Exchange 10th Anniversary Anthology will bring together a beautiful selection of poems that readers have shared with us at The Poetry Exchange over the last 10 years. The poems will be presented alongside readers' stories of connection, revealing how the poems have acted as friends to them and have played a part in their lives. You can find out more about our our anthology and pre-order your copy here.

We are so grateful to all our listeners, followers and contributors for being part of The Poetry Exchange so far, and for celebrating and sharing poems as friends with us in so many beautiful ways.

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The Daughter

by Carmen Giménez

We said she was a negative image of me because of her lightness.

She's light and also passage, the glory in my cortex.

Daughter, where did you get all that goddess?

Her eyes are Neruda's two dark pools at twilight.

Sometimes she's a stranger in my home because I hadn't imagined her.

Who will her daughter be?

She and I are the gradual ebb of my mother's darkness.

I unfurl the ribbon of her life, and it's a smooth long hallway, doors flung open.

Her surface is a deflection is why.

Harm on her, harm on us all.

Inside her, my grit and timbre, my reckless.

'The Daughter' from Milk & Filth. Copyright © 2013 by Carmen Gimenez Smith. Reprinted by permission of University of Arizona Press.

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In this episode, poet and criminal barrister Tim Kiely talks about the poem that has been a friend to him: 'Timothy Winters' by Charles Causley.

READ A TRANSCRIPT OF THIS EPISODE.

We are so grateful to Tim for joining us and sharing his story of connection with Causely's powerful poem.

Tim Kiely is a criminal barrister and poet based in London. His work has appeared in 'South Bank Poetry', 'Under the Radar', 'Atrium', 'Ink, Sweat & Tears' and 'Magma'. He is the author of three poetry pamphlets, 'Hymn to the Smoke' (from Indigo Dreams), 'Plaque for the Unknown Socialist' (from Back Room Poetry) and 'No Other Life' (from Vole Books), all of which are available from timkielybooks.bigcartel.com. He can be followed @timkiely1 on Instagram and Twitter.

You can find 'Timothy Winters' in Charles Causley's 'Collected Poems' 1951-2000 (Picador, 2000).

Fiona and Michael mention this year's Forward Prizes for Poetry - find out more about all the shortlisted poets and the prize ceremony, taking place at Leeds Playhouse on 16th October 2023.

Is there a poem that has been a friend to YOU? Tell us about it and read some of the extraordinary nominations of poems as friends we have received so far... www.thepoetryexchange.co.uk/nominate.

Tim Kiely is in conversation with The Poetry Exchange team members Al Snell and Andrea Witzke Slot.

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Timothy Winters

by Charles Causley

Timothy Winters comes to school

With eyes as wide as a football-pool,

Ears like bombs and teeth like splinters:

A blitz of a boy is Timothy Winters.

His belly is white, his neck is dark,

And his hair is an exclamation-mark.

His clothes are enough to scare a crow

And through his britches the blue winds blow.

When teacher talks he won't hear a word

And he shoots down dead the arithmetic-bird,

He licks the pattern off his plate

And he's not even heard of the Welfare State.

Timothy Winters has bloody feet

And he lives in a house on Suez Street,

He sleeps in a sack on the kitchen floor

And they say there aren't boys like him anymore.

Old Man Winters likes his beer

And his missus ran off with a bombardier,

Grandma sits in the grate with a gin

And Timothy's dosed with an aspirin.

The welfare Worker lies awake

But the law's as tricky as a ten-foot snake,

So Timothy Winters drinks his cup

And slowly goes on growing up.

At Morning Prayers the Master helves

for children less fortunate than ourselves,

And the loudest response in the room is when

Timothy Winters roars "Amen!"

So come one angel, come on ten

Timothy Winters says "Amen

Amen amen amen amen."

Timothy Winters, Lord. Amen

From 'Collected Poems 1951-2000' (Picador, 2000), © Charles Causley 2000, used by permission of the author’s Estate.

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FOR TRANSCRIPT CLICK HERE.

In this episode, poet Michael Mark joins us to talk about the poem that has been a friend to him: 'Little Champion' by Tony Hoagland.

Michael Mark is the author of Visiting Her in Queens is More Enlightening than a Month in a Monastery in Tibet, which won the 2022 Rattle Chapbook prize. His poems have appeared in Best American Poetry, Copper Nickel, The New York Times, Pleiades, Ploughshares, Southern Review, The Sun, 32 Poems, and The Poetry Foundation's American Life in Poetry. His two books of stories are Toba and At the Hands of a Thief (Atheneum). michaeljmark.com 

We are hugely grateful to Michael for visiting The Poetry Exchange and talking so openly and eloquently about his connection with 'Little Champion.'

You can find 'Little Champion' in Tony Hogland's collection 'Application for Release from the Dream', published by Graywolf Press (2015). Many thanks to Grawywolf Press for their support.

Michael Mark is in conversation with The Poetry Exchange team members Andrea Witzke Slot and John Prebble.

The 'gift' reading of 'Little Champion' is by John Prebble.

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Little Champion

by Tony Hoagland

When I get hopeless about human life,

which quite frankly is far too difficult for me,

I like to remember that in the desert there is

a little butterfly that lives by drinking urine.

And when I have to take the bus to work on Saturday,

or spend an hour opening the mail,

deciding what to keep and what to throw away,

one piece at a time,

I think of the butterfly following its animal around

through the morning and the night,

fluttering, weaving sideways through

the cactus and the rocks.

And when I have to meet all Tuesday afternoon

with the committee to discuss new bylaws,

or listen to the dinner guest explain his recipe for German beer,

or hear the scholar tell, again,

about her campaign to destroy, once and for all,

the cult of heteronormativity,

I think of that tough little champion

with orange and black markings on its wings,

resting in the shade beneath a ledge of rock

while its animal sleeps nearby;

and I see how the droplets hang and gleam among

the thorns and drab green leaves of desert plants

and how the butterfly alights and drinks from them

deeply, with a stillness of utter concentration.

Published in The Sun Magazine, November 2014 and in the collection, 'Application for Release from the Dream' (Graywolf Press, 2015).

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FOR TRANSCRIPT CLICK HERE.

In this episode of The Poetry Exchange, we are thrilled to be joined by the poetry tour-de-force that is Salena Godden, to hear about the poem that has been a friend to her: 'You Don't Know What Love' Is by Kim Addonizio.

Salena spoke with Fiona Bennett and Michael Shaeffer about this elusive, gorgeous poem and the part it has played in her life.

Salena Godden FRSL is an award-winning author, poet and broadcaster of Jamaican-mixed heritage. Her debut novel Mrs Death Misses Death won the Indie Book Award for Fiction and the People’s Book Prize, and was shortlisted for the British Book Awards and the Gordon Burn Prize. Film and TV rights for Mrs Death Misses Death have been optioned by Idris Elba’s production company Green Door Pictures.

A hardback edition of Pessimism is for Lightweights - 30 Pieces of Courage and Resistance was published by Rough Trade Books in February 2023. She is currently working on a memoir and a poetry collection which are both due for publication in May 2024, plus an eagerly anticipated second novel set in the Mrs Death Misses Death universe due for publication in spring 2025.

Salena's essay Shade was published in groundbreaking anthology The Good Immigrant (Unbound 2016). Godden has had several volumes of poetry published including Under The Pier (Nasty Little Press 2011) Fishing in the Aftermath: Poems 1994-2014 (Burning Eye Books 2014), plus also a childhood memoir, Springfield Road (Unbound 2014).

After hearing this episode, you will also want to seek out and read as much as you can of Kim Addonizio's work.

*********

You Don't Know What Love Is

by Kim Addonizio

You don't know what love is

but you know how to raise it in me

like a dead girl winched up from a river. How to

wash off the sludge, the stench of our past.

How to start clean. This love even sits up

and blinks; amazed, she takes a few shaky steps.

Any day now she'll try to eat solid food. She'll want

to get into a fast car, one low to the ground, and drive

to some cinderblock shithole in the desert

where she can drink and get sick and then

dance in nothing but her underwear. You know

where she's headed, you know she'll wake up

with an ache she can't locate and no money

and a terrible thirst. So to hell

with your warm hands sliding inside my shirt

and your tongue down my throat

like an oxygen tube. Cover me

in black plastic. Let the mourners through.

From 'What Is This Thing Called Love' by Kim Addonizio (2005, W.W. Norton & Co.)

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In this episode, poet, radio host and editor Lois P. Jones talks about the poem that has been a friend to her: 'What Survives' by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by A. Poulin Jr.

Lois P. Jones is a luminous poet, radio host and editor, living in California. She won the 2023 Alpine Fellowship which this year takes place in Fjällnäs, Sweden. She was a finalist in the annual Mslexia Poetry Competition judged by Helen Mort and will be published in Spring 2023. In 2022 her work was a finalist for both the Best Spiritual Literature Award in Poetry from Orison Books and the Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest. Lois' first collection, 'Night Ladder' was published by Glass Lyre Press in 2017 and was a finalist for the Julie Suk Award and the Lascaux Poetry Prize for a poetry collection. Since 2007, has hosted KPFK’s Poets Café, co-produced the Moonday Poetry Series and acted as poetry editor for Pushcart and Utne prize-winning Kyoto Journal.

'What Survives' was published in The Complete French Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by A. Poulin, Jr, by Graywolf Press in 2002.

Lois P. Jones is in conversation with The Poetry Exchange hosts Fiona Bennett and Michael Shaeffer.

The 'gift' reading of 'What Survives' is by Fiona and Michael.

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What Survives

by Rainer Maria Rilke

translated by A. Poulin, Jr.

Who says that all must vanish?

Who knows, perhaps the flight

of the bird you wound remains,

and perhaps flowers survive

our caresses, in their ground.

It isn't the gesture that lasts,

but it dresses you again in gold

armor--from breast to knees—

and the battle was so pure

may an Angel wear it after you.

From The Complete French Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by A. Poulin, Jr. (Graywolf Press, 2002).

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In this latest episode, writer Rosie Garland talks to us about the poem that has been a friend to her: 'My Dark Horses' by Jodie Hollander.

Writer and singer with post-punk band The March Violets, Rosie Garland has a passion for language nurtured by public libraries. Her poetry collection ‘What Girls do the Dark’ (Nine Arches Press) was shortlisted for the Polari Prize 2021, & her novel The Night Brother was described by The Times as “a delight...with shades of Angela Carter.” Val McDermid has named her one of the UK’s most compelling LGBT writers. http://www.rosiegarland.com

Jodie Hollander, originally from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was raised in a family of classical musicians. She studied poetry in England, and her poems have appeared in journals such as The Poetry Review, The Yale Review and The Dark Horse. Her debut full-length collection, My Dark Horses, was published with Liverpool University Press (Pavilion Poetry) in 2017. Her second collection, Nocturne, was published with Liverpool & Oxford University Press in the spring of 2023. https://www.jodiehollander.com

Rosie Garland is in conversation with The Poetry Exchange team members Sally Anglesea and John Prebble.

In the introduction, Fiona also mentions Glyn Maxwell's extraordinary new collection, 'The Big Calls', which was published by Live Canon in March 2023.

We hope you enjoy being with all the poems featured in this episode!

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My Dark Horses

by Jodie Hollander

If only I were more like my dark horses,

I wouldn’t have to worry all the time

that I was running too little and resting too much.

I’d spend my hours grazing in the sunlight,

taking long naps in the vast pastures.

And when it was time to move along I’d know;

I’d spend some time with all those that I’d loved,

then disappear into a gathering of trees.

If only I were more like my dark horses,

I wouldn’t be so frightened of the storms;

instead, when the clouds began to gather and fill

I’d make my way calmly to the shed,

and stand close to all the other horses.

Together, we’d let the rain fall round us,

knowing as darkness passes overhead

that above all, this is the time to be still.

From 'My Dark Horses' by Jodie Hollander, Liverpool University Press, 2017.

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In this latest episode of The Poetry Exchange, we revisit our conversation with the extraordinary poet & artist Rachel Eliza Griffiths about the poem that has been a friend to her: 'Remember' by Joy Harjo.

This beautiful and transformative conversation was originally released in 2020 and has been a friend to many of our listeners so far. We felt it was one to bring into the light all over again!

We are hugely grateful to Rachel Eliza Griffiths for sharing her profound story of connection with Joy Harjo's life-filled poem, and to Joy Harjo and her publisher W.W. Norton & Co. for giving us their blessing to share it with you in this way.

Rachel Eliza Griffiths is an American poet, novelist, photographer and visual artist, who is the author of five published collections of poems. In her recent book, Seeing the Body (2020), she "pairs poetry with photography, exploring memory, Black womanhood, the American landscape, and rebirth." (Sarah Herrington, Los Angeles Review of Books). Seeing the Body was the winner of the 2021 Hurston/Wright Foundation Legacy Award in Poetry, the winner of the 2021 Paterson Poetry Prize, and nominated for a 2020 NAACP Image award. Rachel Eliza's debut novel, Promise, was published by Penguin Random House in July 2023.

Joy Harjo is an internationally renowned performer and writer of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. She served three terms as the 23rd Poet Laureate of the United States from 2019-2022 and is the author of ten books of poetry, including the highly acclaimed, Weaving Sundown in a Scarlet Light: Fifty Poems for Fifty Years. Her many honors include the National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, the Academy of American Poets Wallace Stevens Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. You can find out more about Joy Harjo's work at: www.joyharjo.com.

Two poems by John Clare also feature in this episode: 'All Nature has a Feeling' and 'A Spring Morning'.

*********

Remember

by Joy Harjo

Remember the sky that you were born under,

know each of the star's stories.

Remember the moon, know who she is.

Remember the sun's birth at dawn, that is the

strongest point of time. Remember sundown

and the giving away to night.

Remember your birth, how your mother struggled

to give you form and breath. You are evidence of

her life, and her mother's, and hers.

Remember your father. He is your life, also.

Remember the earth whose skin you are:

red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth

brown earth, we are earth.

Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their

tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,

listen to them. They are alive poems.

Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the

origin of this universe.

Remember you are all people and all people

are you.

Remember you are this universe and this

universe is you.

Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.

Remember language comes from this.

Remember the dance language is, that life is.

Remember.

'Remember' reproduced from She Had Some Horses: Poems by Joy Harjo (c) 2008 by Joy Harjo. Used with permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.

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In this latest episode of The Poetry Exchange, we revisit our conversation about 'Poem (Lana Turner Has Collapsed)' by Frank O'Hara - A Friend to Harry Jelly.

This gorgeous conversation was originally released in 2016 and has been a friend to many of our listeners so far. We felt it was one to lift up and enjoy all over again!

We are hugely grateful to Harry for sharing his story of connection with Frank O'Hara's wonderful poem, and to the John Rylands Library for hosting this conversation back in 2016.

This is the second of a trio of episodes revisiting previously released conversations - specially chosen and introduced by Fiona and Michael.

*********

Poem (Lana Turner Has Collapsed)

by Frank O'Hara

Lana Turner has collapsed!

I was trotting along and suddenly

it started raining and snowing

and you said it was hailing

but hailing hits you on the head

hard so it was really snowing and

raining and I was in such a hurry

to meet you but the traffic

was acting exactly like the sky

and suddenly I see a headline

LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED!

there is no snow in Hollywood

there is no rain in California

I have been to lots of parties

and acted perfectly disgraceful

but I never actually collapsed

oh Lana Turner we love you get up

’Poem (Lana Turner Has Collapsed)' by Frank O'Hara from 'Lunch Poems: Pocket Poets Number 19'. (City Lights Publishers 2014).

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In this latest episode of The Poetry Exchange, we revisit our conversation about 'The force that through the green fuse drives the flower' by Dylan Thomas - A Friend to Angela.

This extraordinary and beautiful conversation was originally released in 2019 and has been a friend to many of our listeners so far. We felt it was one to lift up and revisit again in this moment.

We are hugely grateful to Angela for sharing her story of connection with Dylan Thomas's poem, and to Manchester Central Library for hosting this conversation.

This is the first of a trio of episodes revisiting previously released conversations - specially chosen and introduced by Fiona and Michael.

You will also hear Fiona and Michael read from and discuss Kae Tempest's soul-reaching and truth-speaking book On Connection, as well as the poem 'Tall Nettles' by Edward Thomas.

*********

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower

by Dylan Thomas

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower

Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees

Is my destroyer.

And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose

My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

The force that drives the water through the rocks

Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams

Turns mine to wax.

And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins

How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.

The hand that whirls the water in the pool

Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind

Hauls my shroud sail.

And I am dumb to tell the hanging man

How of my clay is made the hangman’s lime.

The lips of time leech to the fountain head;

Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood

Shall calm her sores.

And I am dumb to tell a weather’s wind

How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.

And I am dumb to tell the lover’s tomb

How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.

Poem © Dylan Thomas. Used by permission of David Higham Associates.

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In this episode of The Poetry Exchange, poet Rowena Knight talks with us about the poem that has been a friend to her: 'Grief' by Matthew Dickman.

Rowena visited us in Durham and is in conversation with Andrea Witzke Slot and Michael Shaeffer. We are hugely grateful to her for sharing her story of connection with Matthew Dickman's poem.

Rowena Knight’s poetry is influenced by her identity as a queer feminist and her childhood in New Zealand. Her poems have appeared in various publications, including Butcher’s Dog, Magma, The Rialto, and The Emma Press Anthology of Love. She was shortlisted for the 2018 Bridport Prize and commended in the 2019 Winchester Poetry Prize. Her first pamphlet, All the Footprints I Left Were Red, was published with Valley Press in 2016. You can find Rowena on Twitter @purple_feminist and Instagram @purple_feminist_

You can discover more of Matthew Dickman's stunning, reverberating poetry at www.matthewdickmanpoetry.com. 'Grief' can be found in the collection 'Mayakovsky's Revolver' from W.W. Norton & Company, 2012.

The reading of 'Grief' is by Andrea Witzke Slot.

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Grief

by Matthew Dickman

When grief comes to you as a purple gorilla

you must count yourself lucky.

You must offer her what’s left

of your dinner, the book you were trying to finish

you must put aside

and make her a place to sit at the foot of your bed,

her eyes moving from the clock

to the television and back again.

I am not afraid. She has been here before

and now I can recognize her gait

as she approaches the house.

Some nights, when I know she’s coming,

I unlock the door, lie down on my back,

and count her steps

from the street to the porch.

Tonight she brings a pencil and a ream of paper,

tells me to write down

everyone I have ever known,

and we separate them between the living and the dead

so she can pick each name at random.

I play her favorite Willie Nelson album

because she misses Texas

but I don’t ask why.

She hums a little,

the way my brother does when he gardens.

We sit for an hour

while she tells me how unreasonable I’ve been,

crying in the check-out line,

refusing to eat, refusing to shower,

all the smoking and all the drinking.

Eventually she puts one of her heavy

purple arms around me, leans

her head against mine,

and all of a sudden things are feeling romantic.

So I tell her,

things are feeling romantic.

She pulls another name, this time

from the dead,

and turns to me in that way that parents do

so you feel embarrassed or ashamed of something.

Romantic? She says,

reading the name out loud, slowly

so I am aware of each syllable, each vowel

wrapping around the bones like new muscle,

the sound of that person’s body

and how reckless it is,

how careless that his name is in one pile and not the other.

Copyright: Matthew Dickman. 'Grief' by Matthew Dickman, from 'Mayakovsky's Revolver', W.W. Norton & Company, 2012.

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In this episode, poet Ella Frears talks about the poem that has been a friend to her: The The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot.

Ella Frears is a poet and artist based in London. Her debut collection, Shine, Darling, (Offord Road Books, 2020) was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and was shortlisted for both the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, and the T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry. Her latest pamphlet I AM THE MOTHER CAT written as part of her residency at John Hansard Gallery is out with Rough Trade Books (2021). Ella was recently named Poet in Residence for the Dartington Trust’s grade II listed Gardens, selected by Alice Oswald. She is a trustee and editor for Magma Poetry and has been Poet in Residence for the National Trust, Tate Britain, The John Hansard Gallery, K6 Gallery, SPUD (the Observatory), conservation organisation Back from the Brink, and was poet in residence at Royal Holloway University physics department, writing about the Cassini Space Mission. https://ellafrears.com

Ella is in conversation with The Poetry Exchange hosts Fiona Bennett and Michael Shaeffer.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is read by Michael Shaeffer.

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In our latest episode, acclaimed poet, playwright and librettist Glyn Maxwell talks about the poem that has been a friend to him: 'Acquainted with the Night' by Robert Frost.

Glyn is in conversation with Fiona Bennett and Michael Shaeffer.

Glyn Maxwell's volumes of poetry include The Breakage, Hide Now, Pluto, and How The Hell Are You, all of which were shortlisted for either the Forward or T. S. Eliot Prizes, and The Nerve, which won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. His latest collection is The Big Calls, published in 2023 by Live Canon.

On Poetry, a guidebook for the general reader, was published by Oberon in 2012. The Spectator called it ‘a modern classic’ and The Guardian’s Adam Newey described it as ‘the best book about poetry I’ve ever read.’ Drinks With Dead Poets, which is both an expansion of On Poetry and a novel in itself, was published by Oberon in September 2016.

Many of Maxwell’s plays have been staged in London and New York, including Liberty at Shakespeare’s Globe, and at the Almeida, Arcola, RADA and Southwark Playhouse.

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Acquainted with the Night

by Robert Frost

I have been one acquainted with the night.

I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.

I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.

I have passed by the watchman on his beat

And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet

When far away an interrupted cry

Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;

And further still at an unearthly height,

One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.

I have been one acquainted with the night.

Robert Frost, "Acquainted with the Night" from The Poetry of Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery Lathem. Copyright © 1964, 1970 by Leslie Frost Ballantine. Copyright 1936, 1942 © 1956 by Robert Frost. Copyright 1923, 1928, © 1969 by Henry Holt and Co.

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In this episode of our podcast, Alex Pritchard-Jones talks about the poem that has been a friend to him: Poem in October by Dylan Thomas.

Alex spoke with us online during a day of Exchanges at the Birmingham and Midland Institute. He is in conversation with Fiona Bennett and Roy McFarlane.

Poem in October is read by Roy McFarlane.

*********

Poem In October

by Dylan Thomas

It was my thirtieth year to heaven

Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood

And the mussel pooled and the heron

Priested shore

The morning beckon

With water praying and call of seagull and rook

And the knock of sailing boats on the net webbed wall

Myself to set foot

That second

In the still sleeping town and set forth.

My birthday began with the water-

Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name

Above the farms and the white horses

And I rose

In rainy autumn

And walked abroad in a shower of all my days.

High tide and the heron dived when I took the road

Over the border

And the gates

Of the town closed as the town awoke.

A springful of larks in a rolling

Cloud and the roadside bushes brimming with whistling

Blackbirds and the sun of October

Summery

On the hill's shoulder,

Here were fond climates and sweet singers suddenly

Come in the morning where I wandered and listened

To the rain wringing

Wind blow cold

In the wood faraway under me.

Pale rain over the dwindling harbour

And over the sea wet church the size of a snail

With its horns through mist and the castle

Brown as owls

But all the gardens

Of spring and summer were blooming in the tall tales

Beyond the border and under the lark full cloud.

There could I marvel

My birthday

Away but the weather turned around.

It turned away from the blithe country

And down the other air and the blue altered sky

Streamed again a wonder of summer

With apples

Pears and red currants

And I saw in the turning so clearly a child's

Forgotten mornings when he walked with his mother

Through the parables

Of sun light

And the legends of the green chapels

And the twice told fields of infancy

That his tears burned my cheeks and his heart moved in mine.

These were the woods the river and sea

Where a boy

In the listening

Summertime of the dead whispered the truth of his joy

To the trees and the stones and the fish in the tide.

And the mystery

Sang alive

Still in the water and singingbirds.

And there could I marvel my birthday

Away but the weather turned around. And the true

Joy of the long dead child sang burning

In the sun.

It was my thirtieth

Year to heaven stood there then in the summer noon

Though the town below lay leaved with October blood.

O may my heart's truth

Still be sung

On this high hill in a year's turning.

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In this special, feature-length episode, we bring you our live event at SkyLines Festival of Poetry & Spoken Word in Coventry, which took place in July 2022.

Renowned poets Roz Goddard and Rishi Dastidar are in converation with hosts Michael Shaeffer and Roy McFarlane about the poems that have been friends to them, alongside live readings from The Poetry Exchange archive.

Roz talks about 'Pulmonary Tuberculosis' by Katherine Mansfield; Rishi talks about 'Lousy with unfuckedness, I dream' by Amy Key.

We are hugely greatful to Roz and Rishi for joining us for this event and for sharing the poems that have been friends to them so openly and beautifully. Our thanks also to the Belgrade Theatre and SkyLines Festival team, especially Jane Commane for inviting us to be part of the programme and Jason Sylvester and Debbie Harlow for their support on the day.

Thank you to Amy Key for allowing us to share her brilliant poem - you can find it in Amy's collection 'Isn't Forever' from Bloodaxe Books.

Roy also reads 'A Short Story of Falling' by Alice Oswald. Many thanks to Alice Oswald and United Agents for granting us permission to share the poem in this capacity. 'A Short Story of Falling' can be found in the collection 'Falling Awake' (W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2016.

*********

Pulmonary Tuberculosis

by Katherine Mansfield

The man in the room next to mine has the same complaint as I. When I

wake in the night I hear him turning. And then he coughs. And I cough. And after a silence I cough. And he coughs again. This goes on for a long time. Until I feel we are like two roosters calling to each other at false dawn. From far-away hidden farms.

Lousy with unfuckedness, I dream

by Amy Key

each night I count ghostlets of how my body was

wanted / behind with deadheading / rose hips have

come / behind with actions that count only / when

the timing is right / I took out a contract / it was

imprudent in value / behind with asepsis / hello

microbes of my body / we sleep together / hello

cats / I make my bed daily / of the three types of

hair on the sheets / only one is human / I count the

bedrooms / I never had sex in / but there were cars

/ wild woods / blackfly has got to all the

nasturtiums / you cannot dig up a grapevine / and

expect shelter to come / I am touched by your letter

/ writes a friend / you prevaricate desire / says

message / all this fucking / with no hands on me

Copyright Amy Key. From 'Isn't Forever' by Amy Key (Bloodaxe Books, 2018).

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In this episode, poet Sue Brown talks with us about the poem that has been a friend to her - 'Truth' by Jean 'Binta' Breeze.

​

Sue joined The Poetry Exchange at the Birmingham & Midland Institute and is in conversation with Fiona Bennett and Roy McFarlane.

Sue Brown writes from the heart and the soul. Her words pull from the dialect of her local community, from the long toned melodic speech of preachers and Maya Angelou, from mantras and incantations, from jazz. In her poetry, a lifetime in the making, she is a fighter and a lover, by turns rising up against the oppression that has dominated her peoples’ history, and rising skywards on the warm air of her compassion and her capacity for love. These poems move with a beat that speaks to hearts everywhere. They pulse with life, feeling like they could either be spoken or sung. Feel their rhythm. Feel their profound sensibility. And as Roy McFarlane says in his exuberant introduction to this book – ‘Let Rhythm Chant take a hold of you.’

'Truth' is taken from Jean Binta Breeze's 'Third World Girl - Selected Poems', published by Bloodaxe Books.

*********

Truth

by Jean 'Binta' Breeze

some years after

when the laughter came again

she grew her hair in locks around her head

and lived

simply

without even a bed but she

she had stories that woman

she had stories to tell

and children who listened well

and she

she hid nothing

made no excuses for self

just let

truth give her voice to the wind

and she would sing sometimes sing and

ask a little more time

for memory to swell their heads

the children gathered around her

the more they asked

the more words she was sent

words that crossed all ages

served no laws

words that questioned all they had been taught

so they put her away

one day

she must be mad

the adults say

corrupting young minds

it's obvious depraved

she grew silent then

her laughter grew thin

then left with the wind

but the children grew up and remembered

one woman who didn't lie

one woman who didn't hide

now they count the hypocrites among them

From 'Third World Girl, Selected Poems', 2011, Bloodaxe Books. Reproduced with kind permission of the publisher.

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In this episode, Maryam talks with us about the poem that has been a friend to her – 'Love Song for Words' by Nazik al-Mala'ika, translated from the Arabic by Rebecca Carol Johnson.

Nazik al-Mala'ika was born in Baghdad, before moving to Kuwait in 1970. When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, they moved to Cairo, where she would live for the rest of her life. She was the author of several books of poetry, including The Nights Lover (1945), The Cholera (1947), Bottom of the Wave (1957) and The sea changes its color (1977). Al-Mala'ika is known as the first Arabic poet to use free verse. She died in 2007 at the age of 83.

Rebecca C. Johnson is a scholar of comparative literature with a specialization in modern Arabic literature and literary culture. Her research focuses on literary exchanges between Arabic and European languages in the 19th & 20th centuries, the history and theory of the novel, and studies of transnational literary circulation and translation. Stranger Fictions: A History of the Novel in Arabic Translation, 1835-1913 was published by Cornell University Press in 2021.

Many thanks to Words Without Borders, who originally published this translation of the Love Song For Words.

Maryam is in conversation with Al Snell & Andrea Witzke-Slot.

*********

Love Song for Words

Why do we fear words

when they have been rose-palmed hands,

fragrant, passing gently over our cheeks,

and glasses of heartening wine

sipped, one summer, by thirsty lips?

Why do we fear words

when among them are words like unseen bells,

whose echo announces in our troubled lives

the coming of a period of enchanted dawn,

drenched in love, and life?

So why do we fear words?

We took pleasure in silence.

We became still, fearing the secret might part our lips.

We thought that in words laid an unseen ghoul,

crouching, hidden by the letters from the ear of time.

We shackled the thirsty letters,

we forbade them to spread the night for us

as a cushion, dripping with music, dreams,

and warm cups.

Why do we fear words?

Among them are words of smooth sweetness

whose letters have drawn the warmth of hope from two lips,

and others that, rejoicing in pleasure

have waded through momentary joy with two drunk eyes.

Words, poetry, tenderly

turned to caress our cheeks, sounds

that, asleep in their echo, lies a rich color, a rustling,

a secret ardor, a hidden longing.

Why do we fear words?

If their thorns have once wounded us,

then they have also wrapped their arms around our necks

and shed their sweet scent upon our desires.

If their letters have pierced us

and their face turned callously from us

Then they have also left us with an oud in our hands

And tomorrow they will shower us with life.

So pour us two full glasses of words!

Tomorrow we will build ourselves a dream-nest of words,

high, with ivy trailing from its letters.

We will nourish its buds with poetry

and water its flowers with words.

We will build a balcony for the timid rose

with pillars made of words,

and a cool hall flooded with deep shade,

guarded by words.

Our life we have dedicated as a prayer

To whom will we pray . . . but to words?

© Nazik al-Mala’ika. Translation © 2003 by Rebecca C. Johnson.

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In this episode, India & Samira talk with us about the poem that has been a friend to them – 'On Marriage' from 'The Prophet' by Kahlil Gibran.

India & Samira joined The Poetry Exchange online, via video call, for one of our Lockdown Exchanges.

They are in conversation with Poetry Exchange hosts, Fiona Bennett and Michael Shaeffer.

**********

On Marriage

By Kahlil Gibran

Then Almitra spoke again and said, And

what of Marriage, master?

    And he answered saying:

    You were born together, and together you

shall be forevermore.

    You shall be together when the white

wings of death scatter your days.

    Ay, you shall be together even in the

silent memory of God.

    But let there be spaces in your togetherness,

    And let the winds of the heavens dance

between you.

    Love one another, but make not a bond

of love:

    Let it rather be a moving sea between

the shores of your souls.

    Fill each other’s cup but drink not from

one cup.

    Give one another of your bread but eat

not from the same loaf.

    Sing and dance together and be joyous,

but let each one of you be alone,

    Even as the strings of a lute are alone

though they quiver with the same music.

    Give your hearts, but not into each

other’s keeping.

    For only the hand of Life can contain

your hearts.

    And stand together yet not too near

together:

    For the pillars of the temple stand apart,

    And the oak tree and the cypress grow

not in each other’s shadow.

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In this episode, Michael Cooke talks with us about the poem that has been a friend to him – 'Fisherman' by Dennis Scott.

​

Michael joined The Poetry Exchange online for one of our Lockdown Exchanges. We are hugely grateful to Michael for spending this time with us and sharing such a beautiful poem and converastion.

Michael Cooke is in conversation with Fiona Bennett and John Prebble.

The 'gift' reading of 'Fisherman' is by John Prebble.

*****

Fisherman

by Dennis Scott

The scales like metal flint his feet,

their empty eyes like me.

How gray their colours in the heat!

Cool as the oily sea.

With gentle hand he slits the heart,

and the flesh as white as milk

and the ribboned entrails fall apart

like the fall of coiling silk.

Some day I too shall fish, and find

on stranger shores than these

the ribs and muscles of my blind

self, rainbowed from the seas.

From 'Uncle Time' by Dennis Scott, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1973.

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In our latest episode, Sue Lawther-Brown talks with us about the poem that has been a friend to her: The Lake Isle of Innisfree by William Butler Yeats.

We are hugely grateful to Sue for bringing this beautiful poem to us and sharing such a rich and moving conversation.

Sue joined us at the National Centre for Writing in Norwich and we are very grateful to the team there for hosting us so warmly.

You can discover previous conversations about this poem with different guests on episodes 9 and 26 of our podcast.

Michael's play is Tom Fool at Orange Tree Theatre, London.

Paul Henry's forthcoming collection 'As If To Sing' is from Seren Books:

The 'gift' reading of The Lake Isle of Innisfree is by Fiona Bennett.

*********

The Lake Isle Of Innisfree

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,

And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;

Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,

And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,

Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;

There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,

And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;

While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,

I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

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In this episode, poet Casey Bailey talks with us about the poem that has been a friend to him – 'The Way Home' by Liz Berry.

​

Casey joined The Poetry Exchange at the Birmingham & Midland Institute and is in conversation with Poetry Exchange team members, Fiona Bennett and Roy McFarlane.

Casey Bailey is a writer, performer and educator, born and raised in Nechells, Birmingham, UK. Casey is the Birmingham Poet Laureate 2020 - 2022 and the Greater Birmingham Future Face of Arts and Culture 2020.

Casey’s second full poetry collection Please Do Not Touch was published by Burning Eye in 2021. Casey’s debut play ‘GrimeBoy’ was commissioned by the Birmingham Rep in 2020. He was commissioned by the BBC to write ‘The Ballad of The Peaky Blinders’ in 2019. In 2020 the poem was internationally recognised, winning a Webby Award. Casey has performed his poetry nationally, and internationally.

Casey was named as one of ‘Birmingham Live’s’, Birmingham ’30 under 30’ of 2018, Casey is a Fellow of the University of Worcester and in 2021 was awarded an honorary doctorate by Newman University.

www.caseybailey.co.uk

The 'gift' reading of 'The Way Home' is by Roy McFarlane.

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In this episode, Gill Gregory talks with us about the poem that has been a friend to her – 'On the Departure Platform' by Thomas Hardy.

Gill joined The Poetry Exchange at the National Centre for Writing in Norwich. We are hugely grateful to the National Centre for Writing for hosting us so warmly, and to all the readers who visited us there.

Andrea is in conversation with The Poetry Exchange hosts, Fiona Bennett and Michael Shaeffer.

The 'gift' reading of 'On the Departure Platform' is by Michael Shaeffer.

*********

On the Departure Platform

by Thomas Hardy

We kissed at the barrier; and passing through

She left me, and moment by moment got

Smaller and smaller, until to my view

               She was but a spot;

A wee white spot of muslin fluff

That down the diminishing platform bore

Through hustling crowds of gentle and rough

              To the carriage door.

Under the lamplight’s fitful glowers,

Behind dark groups from far and near,

Whose interests were apart from ours,

                She would disappear,

Then show again, till I ceased to see

That flexible form, that nebulous white;

And she who was more than my life to me

                Had vanished quite.

We have penned new plans since that fair fond day,

And in season she will appear again—

Perhaps in the same soft white array—

                But never as then !

—‘And why, young man, must eternally fly

A joy you’ll repeat, if you love her well ?’

—O friend, nought happens twice thus ; why,

                I cannot tell!

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In this episode, Andrea Holland talks with us about the poem that has been a friend to her – 'Song of Myself' by Walt Whitman.

​

Andrea Holland is a poet and lecturer in Creative Writing. As winner of the Norfolk Commission for Poetry her collection 'Broadcasting' was published in 2013 (Gatehouse Press). The collection focuses on the forced requisition of several Norfolk villages for D-Day training in 1942, and the subsequent dislocation of villagers and community. Her pamphlet, 'Borrowed' (Smith/Doorstop, 2007) was first-stage winner of the Poetry Business Competition 2006. Her writing has appeared in journals such as Mslexia, The North, Rialto, Smith's Knoll, and in Slanted: 12 Poems for Christmas (IST, 2014).

Andrea joined us at the National Centre for Writing in Norwich. We are hugely grateful to the National Centre for Writing for hosting us so warmly, and to all the readers who visited us there.

Andrea is in conversation with The Poetry Exchange hosts, Fiona Bennett and Michael Shaeffer.

The 'gift' reading of 'Song of Myself' is by Michael Shaeffer.

*********

From 'Song of Myself'

Walt Whitman

I believe in you my soul, the other I am must not abase itself to you,

And you must not be abased to the other.

Loaf with me on the grass, loose the stop from your throat,

Not words, not music or rhyme I want, not custom or lecture, not even the best,

Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice.

I mind how once we lay such a transparent summer morning,

How you settled your head athwart my hips, and gently turned over upon me,

And parted the shirt from my bosom bone, and plunged your tongue to my bare-stripped heart,

And reached till you felt my beard, and reached till you held my feet.

Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass all the argument of the earth,

And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own,

And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own,

And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women my sisters and lovers,

And that a kelson of the creation is love,

And limitless are leaves stiff or drooping in the fields,

And brown ants in the little wells beneath them,

And mossy scabs of the worm fence, heaped stones, elder, mullein and pokeweed.

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In this episode, poet Gregory Leadbetter talks with us about the poem that has been a friend to him – 'Kubla Khan' by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

​

Gregory joined The Poetry Exchange at the Birmingham & Midland Institute - one of our first in-person exchanges since the pandemic.

He is in conversation with Poetry Exchange team members, Fiona Bennett and Roy McFarlane.

Gregory Leadbetter is a poet and critic. He is the author of two poetry collections, Maskwork (2020) and The Fetch (2016), both with Nine Arches Press, as well as the pamphlet The Body in the Well (HappenStance Press, 2007), and (with photographs by Phil Thomson) Balanuve (Broken Sleep, 2021). His book Coleridge and the Daemonic Imagination (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) won the University English Book Prize 2012.

The 'gift' reading of Kubla Khan is by Roy McFarlane.

*********

Kubla Khan

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Or, a vision in a dream. A Fragment.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure-dome decree:

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground

With walls and towers were girdled round;

And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,

Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;

And here were forests ancient as the hills,

Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted

Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!

A savage place! as holy and enchanted

As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted

By woman wailing for her demon-lover!

And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,

As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,

A mighty fountain momently was forced:

Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst

Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,

Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail:

And mid these dancing rocks at once and ever

It flung up momently the sacred river.

Five miles meandering with a mazy motion

Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,

Then reached the caverns measureless to man,

And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean;

And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far

Ancestral voices prophesying war!

The shadow of the dome of pleasure

Floated midway on the waves;

Where was heard the mingled measure

From the fountain and the caves.

It was a miracle of rare device,

A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimer

In a vision once I saw:

It was an Abyssinian maid

And on her dulcimer she played,

Singing of Mount Abora.

Could I revive within me

Her symphony and song,

To such a deep delight ’twould win me,

That with music loud and long,

I would build that dome in air,

That sunny dome! those caves of ice!

And all who heard should see them there,

And all should cry, Beware! Beware!

His flashing eyes, his floating hair!

Weave a circle round him thrice,

And close your eyes with holy dread

For he on honey-dew hath fed,

And drunk the milk of Paradise.

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In this episode, Pete Stones talks with us about the poem that has been a friend to him – 'Old Mary' by Gwendolyn Brooks.

​

Pete joined The Poetry Exchange at the Birmingham & Midland Institute - one of our first in-person exchanges since the pandemic.

He is in conversation with Poetry Exchange team members, Fiona Bennett and John Prebble.

'Old Mary' is read by Pete Stones and Fiona Bennett.

*********

Old Mary

by Gwendolyn Brooks

My last defense

Is the present tense.

It little hurts me now to know

I shall not go

Cathedral-hunting in Spain

Nor cherrying in Michigan or Maine.

Reproduced by consent of Brooks Permissions.

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In this episode, Dr Maria Augusta Arruda talks with us about the poem that has been a friend to her – 'Eve Remembering' by Toni Morrison.

​

Maria joined The Poetry Exchange online for one of our Lockdown Exchanges. She is in conversation with Poetry Exchange team members, Fiona Bennett and Michael Shaeffer.

The 'gift' reading of 'Eve Remembering' is by Fiona Bennett.

*****

Eve Remembering

by Toni Morrison

1

I tore from a limb fruit that had lost its green.

My hands were warmed by the heat of an apple

Fire red and humming.

I bit sweet power to the core.

How can I say what it was like?

The taste! The taste undid my eyes

And led me far from the gardens planted for a child

To wildernesses deeper than any master’s call.

2

Now these cool hands guide what they once caressed;

Lips forget what they have kissed.

My eyes now pool their light

Better the summit to see.

3

I would do it all over again:

Be the harbor and set the sail,

Loose the breeze and harness the gale,

Cherish the harvest of what I have been.

Better the summit to scale.

Better the summit to be.

From Five Poems (Rainmaker Editions, 2002) by Toni Morrison with silhouettes by Kara Walker. Used with permission from The Believer Magazine.

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In this episode, Ana Sampson talks with us about the poem that has been a friend to her – 'The Republic of Motherhood' by Liz Berry.

Ana Sampson is a highly accomplished poetry editor. She has edited 8 poetry anthologies including 'Night Feeds and Morning Songs: Honest, fierce and beautiful poems about motherhood', as well as 'She is Fierce' and 'She Will Soar' - two bold and brilliant anthologies of women's verse throughout history. Ana's books have sold over 240,000 copies and she writes and speaks often about books and poetry in the media. She has also spoken about the hidden history of women’s writing at bookshops, festivals, libraries, schools and literary events. www.anasampson.co.uk

We are hugely grateful to Liz Berry and Chatto & Windus for allowing us to share Liz's extraordinary poem in this way. You can buy Liz's entire pamphlet - The Republic of Motherhood - here:

www.poetrybooks.co.uk/products/republic-of-motherhood-liz-berry

Ana is in conversation with Poetry Exchange team members, Andrea Witzke Slot and John Prebble.

The 'gift' reading of 'The Republic of Motherhood' is by Andrea Witzke Slot.

*********

The Republic of Motherhood

by Liz Berry

I crossed the border into the Republic of Motherhood

and found it a queendom, a wild queendom.

I handed over my clothes and took its uniform,

its dressing gown and undergarments, a cardigan

soft as a creature, smelling of birth and milk,

and I lay down in Motherhood’s bed, the bed I had made

but could not sleep in, for I was called at once to work

in the factory of Motherhood. The owl shift,

the graveyard shift. Feedingcleaninglovingfeeding.

I walked home, heartsore, through pale streets,

the coins of Motherhood singing in my pockets.

Then I soaked my spindled bones

in the chill municipal baths of Motherhood,

watching strands of my hair float from my fingers.

Each day I pushed my pram through freeze and blossom

down the wide boulevards of Motherhood

where poplars bent their branches to stroke my brow.

I stood with my sisters in the queues of Motherhood—

the weighing clinic, the supermarket—waiting

for Motherhood’s bureaucracies to open their doors.

As required, I stood beneath the flag of Motherhood

and opened my mouth although I did not know the anthem.

When darkness fell I pushed my pram home again,

and by lamplight wrote urgent letters of complaint

to the Department of Motherhood but received no response.

I grew sick and was healed in the hospitals of Motherhood

with their long-closed isolation wards

and narrow beds watched over by a fat moon.

The doctors were slender and efficient

and when I was well they gave me my pram again

so I could stare at the daffodils in the parks of Motherhood

while winds pierced my breasts like silver arrows.

In snowfall, I haunted Motherhood’s cemeteries,

the sweet fallen beneath my feet—

Our Lady of the Birth Trauma, Our Lady of Psychosis.

I wanted to speak to them, tell them I understood,

but the words came out scrambled, so I knelt instead

and prayed in the chapel of Motherhood, prayed

for that whole wild fucking queendom,

its sorrow, its unbearable skinless beauty,

and all the souls that were in it. I prayed and prayed

until my voice was a nightcry

and sunlight pixelated my face like a kaleidoscope.

© Liz Berry. From 'The Republic of Motherhood' by Liz Berry (Chatto & Windus 2018).

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In this episode, Jessica talks with us about the poem that has been a friend to her – 'From Blossoms' by Li-Young Lee.

​

Jessica joined The Poetry Exchange online, via video call, for one of our Lockdown Exchanges.

Jessica works as an Audio Producer with Listening Books, an audiobook lending charity for those that find their illness, mental health, physical or learning disability affects their ability to read the printed word or hold a book.

Jessica is in conversation with Poetry Exchange team members, Fiona Bennett and Michael Shaeffer.

The 'gift' reading of 'From Blossoms' is by Michael Shaeffer.

*****

From Blossoms

by Li-Young Lee

From blossoms comes

this brown paper bag of peaches

we bought from the boy

at the bend in the road where we turned toward

signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,

from sweet fellowship in the bins,

comes nectar at the roadside, succulent

peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,

comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,

to carry within us an orchard, to eat

not only the skin, but the shade,

not only the sugar, but the days, to hold

the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into

the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live

as if death were nowhere

in the background; from joy

to joy to joy, from wing to wing,

from blossom to blossom to

impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

Li-Young Lee, “From Blossoms” from Rose. Copyright © 1986 by Li-Young Lee. Reprinted with the permission of BOA Editions Ltd.

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In this special, feature-length episode, pioneering broadcaster, writer and host of On Being, Krista Tippett talks about the poem that has been a friend to her: ‘Good Lord The Light’ by Christian Wiman.

Krista Tippett has created a singular space for reflection and conversation in American and global public life. She founded and leads the On Being Project — a groundbreaking media and public life initiative pursuing “deep thinking and moral imagination, social courage and joy to renew inner life, outer life, and life together.” As the creator and host of the Peabody Award-winning On Being radio show, heard on over 400 public radio stations across the US, Tippett takes up the great animating questions of human life: What does it mean to be human, how we do want to live, and who will we be to each other?

In 2014, President Obama awarded Krista the National Humanities Medal at the White House for “thoughtfully delving into the mysteries of human existence. On the air and in print, Ms. Tippett avoids easy answers, embracing complexity and inviting people of every background to join her conversation about faith, ethics, and moral wisdom.”

Krista is also the author of three books at the intersection of spiritual inquiry, social healing, science, and the arts: Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living; Einstein’s God: Conversations about Science and the Human Spirit and Speaking of Faith, a memoir of religion in our time.

Krista is in conversation with The Poetry Exchange hosts Fiona Bennett and Michael Shaeffer.

‘Good Lord The Light’ can be found in poet Christian Wiman’s latest collection – ‘Survival is a Style’, from Farrar, Straus and Geroux.

You can listen to Krista’s extraordinary range of life-expanding conversations through the On Being podcast – which can be found wherever you get your podcasts and at www.onbeing.org.

The 'gift' reading of 'Good Lord The Light' is by Michael Shaeffer.

*********

GOOD LORD THE LIGHT

by Christian Wiman

Good morning misery,

goodbye belief,

good Lord the light

cutting across the lake

so long gone

to ice —

There is an under, always,

through which things still move, breathe,

and have their being,

quick coals and crimsons

no one need see

to see.

Good night knowledge,

goodbye beyond,

good God the winter

one must wander

one’s own soul

to be.

From 'Survival is a Style' - Farrar, Straus and Giroux (February 2020)

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In this episode, Lewi talks with us about the poem that has been a friend to him – 'The Horses' by Ted Hughes.

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Lewi joined The Poetry Exchange online as part of Manchester Literature Festival 2020.

Lewi is in conversation with Poetry Exchange team members, Fiona Bennett and Michael Shaeffer.

The 'gift' reading of 'The Horses' is by Fiona Bennett.

*****

The Horses

By Ted Hughes

I climbed through woods in the hour-before-dawn dark.

Evil air, a frost-making stillness,

Not a leaf, not a bird-

A world cast in frost. I came out above the wood

Where my breath left tortuous statues in the iron light.

But the valleys were draining the darkness

Till the moorline blackening dregs of the brightening grey

Halved the sky ahead. And I saw the horses:

Huge in the dense grey ten together

Megalith-still. They breathed, making no move,

With draped manes and tilted hind-hooves,

Making no sound.

I passed: not one snorted or jerked its head.

Grey silent fragments

Of a grey still world.

I listened in emptiness on the moor-ridge.

The curlews tear turned its edge on the silence.

Slowly detail leafed from the darkness. Then the sun

Orange, red, red erupted

Silently, and splitting to its core tore and flung cloud,

Shook the gulf open, showed blue,

And the big planets hanging

I turned

Stumbling in a fever of a dream, down towards

The dark woods, from the kindling tops,

And came the horses.

There, still they stood,

But now steaming, and glistening under the flow of light,

Their draped stone manes, their tilted hind-hooves

Stirring under a thaw while all around them

The frost showed its fires. But still they made no sound.

Not one snorted or stamped,

Their hung heads patient as the horizons,

High over valleys, in the red levelling rays

In din of the crowded streets, going among the years, the faces,

May I still meet my memory in so lonely a place

Between the streams and the red clouds, hearing curlews,

Hearing the horizons endure.

New Selected Poems by Ted Hughes. Faber & Faber; Main edition (6 Mar. 1995)

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In this episode, Fehmida talks with us about the poem that has been a friend to her – 'Still I Rise' by Maya Angelou.

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Fehmida joined The Poetry Exchange online, via video call, for one of our Lockdown Exchanges, as part of Manchester Literature Festival 2020.

You can also find out more about our wonderful guest, Fehmida, and the work she pioneers for women and those who are under-represented in publishing here:

www.fehmidamaster.com

www.masterhousepublishing.com

Fehmida is in conversation with Poetry Exchange team members, Fiona Bennett and Michael Shaeffer.

*****

You may write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies,

You may trod me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?

Why are you beset with gloom?

’Cause I walk like I've got oil wells

Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,

With the certainty of tides,

Just like hopes springing high,

Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?

Bowed head and lowered eyes?

Shoulders falling down like teardrops,

Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?

Don't you take it awful hard

’Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines

Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,

You may cut me with your eyes,

You may kill me with your hatefulness,

But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?

Does it come as a surprise

That I dance like I've got diamonds

At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame

I rise

Up from a past that’s rooted in pain

I rise

I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,

Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise

Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear

I rise

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,

I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

I rise

I rise

I rise.

Maya Angelou, "Still I Rise" from And Still I Rise: A Book of Poems. Copyright © 1978 by Maya Angelou. Used by permission of Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.

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In this episode, Tom talks with us about the poem that has been a friend to him – 'Aubade' by Philip Larkin.

Tom visited The Poetry Exchange in February 2020 for what turned out to be our last live event of the year before the first Covid-19 lockdown. He joined us at beautiful Manchester Central Library and is in conversation with Poetry Exchange team members, Fiona Bennett and Al Snell.

The 'gift' reading of 'Aubade' is by Al Snell.

*****

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.  

Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.  

In time the curtain-edges will grow light.  

Till then I see what’s really always there:  

Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,  

Making all thought impossible but how  

And where and when I shall myself die.  

Arid interrogation: yet the dread

Of dying, and being dead,

Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.

The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse  

—The good not done, the love not given, time  

Torn off unused—nor wretchedly because  

An only life can take so long to climb

Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;  

But at the total emptiness for ever,

The sure extinction that we travel to

And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,  

Not to be anywhere,

And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.

This is a special way of being afraid

No trick dispels. Religion used to try,

That vast moth-eaten musical brocade

Created to pretend we never die,

And specious stuff that says No rational being

Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing

That this is what we fear—no sight, no sound,  

No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,  

Nothing to love or link with,

The anaesthetic from which none come round.

And so it stays just on the edge of vision,  

A small unfocused blur, a standing chill  

That slows each impulse down to indecision.  

Most things may never happen: this one will,  

And realisation of it rages out

In furnace-fear when we are caught without  

People or drink. Courage is no good:

It means not scaring others. Being brave  

Lets no one off the grave.

Death is no different whined at than withstood.

Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.  

It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,  

Have always known, know that we can’t escape,  

Yet can’t accept. One side will have to go.

Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring  

In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring

Intricate rented world begins to rouse.

The sky is white as clay, with no sun.

Work has to be done.

Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

Philip Larkin, "Aubade" from Collected Poems. Copyright © Estate of Philip Larkin. Reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber, Ltd.

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In this episode, Jenny talks with us about the poem that has been a friend to her – 'Mushrooms' by Sylvia Plath.

Jenny joined The Poetry Exchange online and is in conversation with Poetry Exchange team members, Fiona Bennett and John Prebble.

Fiona reads the gift reading of 'Mushrooms'.

*****

Mushrooms

by Sylvia Plath

Overnight, very

Whitely, discreetly,

Very quietly

Our toes, our noses

Take hold on the loam,

Acquire the air.

Nobody sees us,

Stops us, betrays us;

The small grains make room.

Soft fists insist on

Heaving the needles,

The leafy bedding,

Even the paving.

Our hammers, our rams,

Earless and eyeless,

Perfectly voiceless,

Widen the crannies,

Shoulder through holes. We

Diet on water,

On crumbs of shadow,

Bland-mannered, asking

Little or nothing.

So many of us!

So many of us!

We are shelves, we are

Tables, we are meek,

We are edible,

Nudgers and shovers

In spite of ourselves.

Our kind multiplies:

We shall by morning

Inherit the earth.

Our foot’s in the door.

From Collected Poems (1981) by Sylvia Plath, published by Faber and Faber Ltd.

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In this episode, poet, theologian and podcast host Pádraig Ó Tuama talks with us about the poem that has been a friend to him – 'Cuimhne An Uisce' / 'A Recovered Memory of Water' by Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, translated by Paul Muldoon.

Pádraig Ó Tuama is a poet and theologian from Ireland whose poetry and prose has been published widely across Ireland, the US and the UK. He presents Poetry Unbound with On Being, a hugely successful podcast where he explores a single poem. Short and unhurried; contemplative and energizing, this podcast had more than a million downloads of its first season.

www.padraigotuama.com

onbeing.org/series/poetry-unbound

​

Pádraig joined The Poetry Exchange online and is in conversation with Poetry Exchange team members, Fiona Bennett and Michael Shaeffer.

​

Many thanks to Gallery Press for granting us permission to share the poem in this capacity. Do visit them for more inspiration here:

www.gallerypress.com

Fiona reads the gift reading of 'A Recovered Memory of Water'.

*****

Cuimhne An Uisce / A Recovered Memory of Water

by Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, translated by Paul Muldoon

Sometimes when the mermaid’s daughter

is in the bathroom

cleaning her teeth with a thick brush

and baking soda

she has the sense the room is filling

with water.

It starts at her feet and ankles

and slides further and further up

over her thighs and hips and waist.

In no time

it’s up to her oxters.

She bends down into it to pick up

handtowels and washcloths and all such things

as are sodden with it.

They all look like seaweed—

like those long strands of kelp that used to be called

‘mermaid-hair’ or ‘foxtail.’

Just as suddenly the water recedes

and in no time

the room’s completely dry again.

A terrible sense of stress

is part and parcel of these emotions.

At the end of the day she has nothing else

to compare it to.

She doesn’t have the vocabulary for any of it.

At her weekly therapy session

she has more than enough to be going on with

just to describe this strange phenomenon

and to express it properly

to the psychiatrist.

She doesn’t have the terminology

or any of the points of reference

or any word at all that would give the slightest suggestion

as to what water might be.

‘A transparent liquid,’ she says, doing as best she can.

‘Right,’ says the therapist, ‘keep going.’

He coaxes and cajoles her towards word-making.

She has another run at it.

‘A thin flow,’ she calls it,

casting about gingerly in the midst of the words.

‘A shiny film. Dripping stuff. Something wet.’

From 'The Fifty Minute Mermaid', Gallery Press, 2007.

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In this episode, Charlie talks with us about the poem that has been a friend to him – 'A Short Story of Falling' by Alice Oswald.

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Charlie joined The Poetry Exchange online, via video call, for one of our 'Lockdown Exchanges' and is in conversation with Poetry Exchange team members, Fiona Bennett Alistair Snell.

​

Many thanks to Alice Oswald and United Agents for granting us permission to share the poem in this capacity. Find out more about Alice and her work here: www.unitedagents.co.uk/alice-oswald

Al reads the gift reading of 'A Short Story of Falling'.

*****

A Short Story of Falling

It is the story of the falling rain

to turn into a leaf and fall again

it is the secret of a summer shower

to steal the light and hide it in a flower

and every flower a tiny tributary

that from the ground flows green and momentary

is one of water's wishes and this tale

hangs in a seed-head smaller than my thumbnail

if only I a passerby could pass

as clear as water through a plume of grass

to find the sunlight hidden at the tip

turning to seed a kind of lifting rain drip

then I might know like water how to balance

the weight of hope against the light of patience

water which is so raw so earthy-strong

and lurks in cast-iron tanks and leaks along

drawn under gravity towards my tongue

to cool and fill the pipe-work of this song

which is the story of the falling rain

that rises to the light and falls again

Reprinted by permission of Alice Oswald and United Agents

Source: Falling Awake (W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2016)

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In this episode, world-renowned actor, Brian Cox CBE talks with us about two poems that have been friends to him – 'Ae Fond Kiss' by Robert Burns and 'I am' by John Clare.

Brian joined The Poetry Exchange online, from his home, over the course of lockdown in 2020. He is a Scottish actor who works in film, television and theatre, and as a multiple award-winner, has gained huge respect in the industry for the many captivating roles he has undertaken. He us perhaps most recently known for starring in HBO's hugely popular and critically acclaimed television series, 'Succession'.

Michael reads the gift reading of 'I Am'.

*****

Ae Fond Kiss

by Robert Burns

Ae fond kiss, and then we sever;

Ae fareweel, and then forever!

Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee,

Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee.

Who shall say that Fortune grieves him,

While the star of hope she leaves him?

Me, nae cheerfu' twinkle lights me;

Dark despair around benights me.

I'll ne'er blame my partial fancy,

Naething could resist my Nancy;

But to see her was to love her;

Love but her, and love forever.

Had we never lov'd sae kindly,

Had we never lov'd sae blindly,

Never met—or never parted—

We had ne'er been broken-hearted.

Fare thee weel, thou first and fairest!

Fare thee weel, thou best and dearest!

Thine be ilka joy and treasure,

Peace. enjoyment, love, and pleasure!

Ae fond kiss, and then we sever;

Ae fareweel, alas, forever!

Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee,

Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee!

*****

I Am

by John Clare

I am—yet what I am none cares or knows;

My friends forsake me like a memory lost:

I am the self-consumer of my woes—

They rise and vanish in oblivious host,

Like shadows in love’s frenzied stifled throes

And yet I am, and live—like vapours tossed

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,

Into the living sea of waking dreams,

Where there is neither sense of life or joys,

But the vast shipwreck of my life’s esteems;

Even the dearest that I loved the best

Are strange—nay, rather, stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man hath never trod

A place where woman never smiled or wept

There to abide with my Creator, God,

And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept,

Untroubling and untroubled where I lie

The grass below—above the vaulted sky.

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In this episode, Forward Prize-winning poet Vahni Capildeo talks with us about the poem that has been a friend to them – 'Spring and Fall' by Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Vahni joined The Poetry Exchange online, from their family home in Trinidad, as part of City of Literature - a week of conversations, reflections and connections presented by the National Centre for Writing and Norfolk & Norwich Festival.

​

www.nnfestival.org.uk

www.nationalcentreforwriting.org.uk

Vahni Capildeo is a Trinidadian Scottish writer inspired by other voices, ranging from live Caribbean connexions and an Indian diaspora background to the landscapes where Capildeo travels and lives. Their poetry includes Measures of Expatriation, awarded the Forward Prize for Best Collection in 2016, and Venus as a Bear, published in 2018.

You can discover more about and purchase Vahni Capildeo's work at the Carcanet website (Vahni's publisher).

Michael Shaeffer reads the gift reading of Spring and Fall.

You will also hear Fiona mention some new publications by members of our creative team:

Andrea Witzke Slot's 'The Ministry of Flowers' is published by Valley Press.

Victoria Field's 'A Speech of Birds' is published by Francis Boutle.

Sarah Salway's 'Let's Dance' is published by Coast to Coast, Spring 2021 and 'Not Sorry', a collection of flash fiction, is published by Valley Press Spring/Summer 2021.

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Spring and Fall

by Gerard Manley Hopkins

to a young child

Márgarét, áre you gríeving

Over Goldengrove unleaving?

Leáves like the things of man, you

With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?

Ah! ás the heart grows older

It will come to such sights colder

By and by, nor spare a sigh

Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;

And yet you wíll weep and know why.

Now no matter, child, the name:

Sórrow’s spríngs áre the same.

Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed

What heart heard of, ghost guessed:

It ís the blight man was born for,

It is Margaret you mourn for.

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