In each episode Chris Jones invites a poet to introduce a poem by an author who has influenced his, her or their own approach to writing. The poet discusses the importance of this work, and goes on to talk in depth about a poem they have written in response to this original piece.
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Matt Black on Edward Lear's poem 'The Owl and the Pussy-Cat' and his own poem 'The Owl and the Pussy-Cat and the Turtles of Fun'
Episode 20
Monday, January 20, 2025 • Duration 01:12:53
In this episode I talk to Matt Black about writing his own versions of 'The Owl and the Pussy-Cat' by Edward Lear.
Matt reflects on when he first heard 'The Owl and the Pussy-Cat' as a child. He then goes on to talk in depth about the task of creating a homage to this 'iconic' piece of work. He discusses the intricacies of the poem - how it uses all sorts of different techniques to make it a memorable piece of work. He throws about the idea of what it means to be a nonsense poem. He reflects on the notion of using landscape as a safe space to explore possibly difficult themes. He talks a little bit about Lear's background and what possibly brought him to write this enigmatic poem.
He then goes on to delve into his own prequel and sequel - grouped together as 'The Owl and the Pussy-Cat and the Turtles of Fun'. He talks about the triggering incident that led to him taking on such a task (an encounter with a stuffed owl in a museum's store). He reflects on how in the two different versions of 'The Owl and the Pussy-Cat' he has written the first narrative must lead up to the boat (of the original poem) but the second poem is 'un-moored' from the route-map of the classic work. He can explore all sorts of complicated themes - the break-up of a marriage, infidelity and so on, but still create it within the framework of a 'children's' poem. He reflects on the qualities of the poetic language itself and the references in the poem to Brid, other animals, and pop references too. Finally, he talks about performing the work in schools - a 'nonsense poem for a nonsense curriculum'.
Matt Black lives in Leamington Spa. His most recent collection is Fishing Dentures Out of Mashed Potato (Upside Down, 2025) which includes poems on various themes, including getting older, looking after elderly parents, the joys of domesticity, lanyards, dogs and knees. This is a fund-raiser for Myton Hospices - £5 per copy - and he is currently available for entertaining readings from the book. Since being Derbyshire Poet Laureate (2011-2013), he has successfully completed over 25 commissions, with poems on 15 benches, 20 milestones, a large glass panel and in exhibitions and publications. Other recent works include a collection of poems about dogs, Sniffing Lamp-posts by Moonlight (2017), which became an Edinburgh Fringe show, and the tour of his play about floods in Cumbria, The Storm Officer. He is currently Lillington Poet Laureate, Chair of Cubbington and Lillington Environmental Action Now (CLEAN), and a very proud grand-dad. www.matt-black.co.uk
Copies of The Owl and the Pussy-Cat and the Turtles of Fun can be purchased here.
You can follow me on X - @cwjoneschris or on Bluesky - @cwjoneschris.bsky.social for more updates on future episodes. This is the last podcast of series two. Look out for updates about series three later in 2025.
Thanks for listening!
The Owl and the Pussy-Cat (the Prequel)
The Owl and the Pussy-cat went for tea
With a parakeet in the park.
Owl said politely, “It doesn’t delight me,
This hunting of mice after dark.”
The Cat said “Life in the city is mean;
We’re squibbling youth away.
Let’s go to the sea. Let’s quit this mad scene.”
So they cycled to Brid for the day,
The day,
The day,
So they cycled to Brid for the day.
On arrival in Brid, they met a great squid
With a sailor who told them a tale
Of a mermaid and man, who had met in Japan,
And lived in the mouth of a whale.
“I like it here,” said Owl on the pier,
While the Cat, with a grin, went “Miao”.
They stayed for a week. They played hide and seek,
And the Owl jumped over a cow,
A cow,
A cow,
And the Owl jumped over a cow.
The waves, they were lapping, blue butterflies flapping,
“O guys, you should stay for a while.
We’ve striped candyflosses, and rides on the hosses.
It’s wicked whatever your style.”
Said Cat, “Life’s absurd. Let us sail, dear Bird,
To the land where the Bong-tree gleams.”
In his crocodile coat, Sailor lent them a boat,
And said “Steer by the star of your dreams,
Your dreams,
Your dreams.”
He said “Steer by the star of your dreams.”
The Owl and the Pussy-Cat
The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea green boat,
They took some honey, and plenty of money,
Wrapped up in a five pound note.
The Owl looked up to the stars above,
And sang to a small guitar,
“O lovely Pussy! O Pussy my love,
What a beautiful Pussy you are,
You are,
You are!
What a beautiful Pussy you are!”
Pussy said to the Owl, “You elegant fowl!
How charmingly sweet you sing!
O let us be married! too long we have tarried:
But what shall we do for a ring?”
They sailed away, for a year and a day,
To the land where the Bong-tree grows
And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood
With a ring at the end of his nose,
His nose,
His nose,
With a ring at the end of his nose.
“Dear pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling
Your ring?” Said the Piggy, “I will.”
So they took it away, and were married next day
By the Turkey who lives on the hill.
They dined on mince, and slices of quince,
Which they ate with a runcible spoon;
And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
They danced by the light of the moon,
The moon,
The moon,
They danced by the light of the moon.
The Owl and the Pussy-Cat (the Sequel)
The Owl and the Pussy-cat lived the dream
For a year and a half at least.
They built a chalet, and pranced in a ballet
On the beach with the Jumbly Beast.
Till Pussy-cat met the Turtles of Fun,
Left Owl by the frumious foam,
Who sat in the sun, cried “What have I done?
O and why did I leave my sweet home,
Sweet home,
Sweet home?
O and why did I leave my sweet home?”
Now six months have gone, and Owl’s signing on;
Cat lives with a turtle called Ted.
In the Bong-tree bazaar, Owl strums his guitar,
Singing “Pussy, my marriage is dead.”
But Cat, in surprise, says “Owl, do be wise,
For love is a runcible fruit.”
In only two years, Owl turned all his tears
To tunes with a dog on the flute,
The flute,
The flute,
To tunes with a dog on the flute.
The whiskery walrus and octopus chorus
Heard songs, like the Dong’s, on the sand.
“Your tunes are so beautiful, groovy and hootable!”
Begged Walrus, “O please join our band.”
Owl pondered and said, “Yes, but only if Ted
Can play drums and the didgeridoo.”
They made Number One, with the Turtles of Fun,
Singing “Life is a crazy canoe,
Canoe,
Canoe,”
Singing “Life is a crazy canoe.”
Vicky Morris on Hannah Lowe's poem 'Fist', Georgie Woodhead's poem 'When my Uncle Stood at the Top of the Office Block Roof’, and her own poem ‘Sea Road’
Episode 19
Monday, January 6, 2025 • Duration 01:15:17
In this episode, I talk to Vicky Morris about Hannah Lowe’s poem ‘Fist’, Georgie Woodhead’s poem ‘When my Uncle Stood at the Top of the Office Block Roof’ and her own poem ‘Sea Road’.
Vicky begins the podcast by talking about how she first came across Hannah Lowe’s work and what appealed about to her about the poetry - the voice (plain style), the subject matter and control of the material. Vicky discusses what she learnt from Hannah after being mentored by the poet as an Arvon/Jerwood mentee. She delves into the ideas of utilising poems for ‘teaching’: why choose a particular piece to show to young poets who are learning the craft?
Vicky talks about the ‘cinematic quality’ of the poem ‘Fist’, how it uses specific details to draw the reader in to the situation at hand. She focuses on Lowe's uses enjambment to create particular effects in the poem. Vicky talks about technique at length - and how the craft in this piece can be used to help students think about writing about their own lived experiences.
Vicky then goes on to explore Georgie Woodhead’s poem ‘When my Uncle Stood at the Top of the Office Block Roof’ - how Georgie took Hannah’s piece as a a starting point for her own portrayal of a high-risk situation. She talks about Georgie’s adoption of metaphors as a means by which to illuminate the Uncle’s (and narrator’s) state of mind.
Finally, Vicky reads and ‘unpacks' her own poem ‘Sea Road’. She examines the choices she made in the poem around the adoption of a ‘long line’ structure and the use of triplets, how she ramps up the tension through telling details. She spends some time talking about the ending and how she redrafted those final lines until she was happy with the conclusion. She goes on to discuss and illuminate other poems in her pamphlet collection, including the poem ‘Lesley’.
You can find a version of Hannah Lowe’s poem ‘Fist’ here, on the Poetry Archive website (with Hannah reading the poem herself). You can also read the version eventually published in Chick (Bloodaxe Books, 2013) , on the Poetry International website.
Lydia Allison on Tom Phillips' A Humument and on her own Metro Erasure Poems
Episode 10
Tuesday, February 20, 2024 • Duration 01:02:47
In this episode, Lydia Allison reflects on Tom Phillips' 'treated' book A Humument and how it influenced her own Metro erasure poems.
In the interview, Lydia talks about going to an event where Tom Phillips talked about his practice as an artist - and about A Humument in particular. She relates how the book came about and describes its various iterations - the different ‘river’ poems that Phillips came to write using the original text - an obscure Victorian novel entitled A Human Document by W.H. Mallock. Lydia discusses the overall ‘narrative’ of the book, and then focuses on two pages in particular: page 40 and page 305 (which you find and can click on below).
Lydia then goes on to explain where, why and how she developed her own Metro Horoscope-page found poems. She talks about the rules that she follows in the making of these works, how she distributes them on social media, and what sort of reactions she has got from printing these versions. We then go on to explore a series of poems, looking in particular at how she uses punctuation and word choices to create her original pieces.
Lydia Allison is a poet, writing facilitator, creative mentor, and tutor. She has been involved in a number of projects and collaborations, including Stevie Ronnie’s ‘A Diary of Windows and Small Things’, Doncaster Arts’ activity books for lockdown, and ‘Dancing with Words’, a project that paired poets and dancers. Her writing is often inspired by her working life, which spans from bridal consultancy to teaching overseas.
She is interested in approaching writing in an experimental and playful way. This largely takes the form of blackout poems where she tries to unearth poems hidden in other interesting texts.
She has appeared a number of times in print and online, including The Result Is What You See Today, Introduction X, Surfing the Twilight, Poetry Salzburg Review, PN Review, Feral, and Ink, Sweat & Tears. You can read more at lydiaallison.com, or follow her on twitter/X @lydiarallison
Elizabeth Holloway on Sharon Olds' poem 'The Blue Dress' and her own poem 'Blue Dress'
Episode 9
Monday, February 5, 2024 • Duration 01:09:59
In this episode, I talk to the poet Elizabeth Holloway about how Sharon Olds’ poem 'The Blue Dress’ influenced the writing of her own poem ‘Blue Dress’.
Liz talks about the impact Sharon Olds had on her when her first British collection - The Sign of Saturn - was published (in 1991). She talks about the idea of confessional poetry, and how closely we can connect the author with the narrator of the poem. She talks about Sharon Olds’ own version of free verse and how technically skilful she is in terms how she uses uses run-on lines and punctuation to carry the narrative along. Liz also reflects on the different versions of Olds’ persona that are represented in the poem. She talks about the idea of ‘safety’ and disguise in this work, and goes on to discuss the figure of Electra in relation to Olds’ poem too.
Liz talks about how aware she was of Olds’ poem when she was writing her own piece ‘Blue Dress’. She describes the free verse form she has taken on, then explores the similarities and differences between her poem and Olds’ piece. Liz talks about the use of blue in other mother-daughter relationships she has written about, then considers the tone of the poem - how both doubt and anxiety play a big part in the making of this work. She goes on to examine the ‘prosy’ quality of her poetry and where she allows herself to tune into more heightened language. She talks about touch and feel, and getting back in touch with someone special who has been missing from the narrator’s own life in the context of Falling Mother.
Dr Elizabeth Holloway (formerly Elizabeth Barrett) is an award-winning poet whose work has been published extensively in journals and anthologies. She is the author of four full-length collections of poetry. Her first book Walking on Tiptoe (Staple, 1998) focuses, in part, on the diagnosis of her son as autistic. Elizabeth received an Arts Council of England New Writers’ award to support the completion of her follow-up collection, The Bat Detector (Wrecking Ball Press, 2005), which continues to explore the experience of parenting an autistic child. In the collection, Elizabeth uses the metaphor of detecting bats to understand the process of communicating with a non-verbal child. The collection led to a collaboration with the violist Robin Ireland who composed original music for a sequence of the poems. Subsequent collections include Walking on Tiptoe and Other Poems (Bluechrome Press, 2007) and (Arc Publications, 2010). In 2018, Elizabeth received a Northern Writers award to support work on her future collection, Falling Mother.
Angelina D'Roza on Seamus Heaney's The Cure at Troy (translated from Sophocles) and her own poem 'Correspondences: The Credence of Birds'
Episode 8
Monday, January 22, 2024 • Duration 59:20
In this episode, I talk to the poet Angelina D’Roza about how an extract from Seamus Heaney’s The Cure at Troy, a verse translation of Sophocles' play Philoctetes, influenced the writing of her own poem ‘Correspondences: The Credence of Birds’.
Angelina talks about how Seamus Heaney’s stage directions from The Cure at Troy grabbed her attention, the ‘right thing at the right time.’ She goes on to discuss how she uses this text (and other corresponding texts) as a way in to explore a subject like colonialism, but it’s as much the delight in language at the beginning of the play, apparent in Heaney’s translation, that drew her in. She talks about how she negotiates appropriation of other writer's work in her poetry. Angelina then goes on to expand on all the different influences, alongside Heaney’s stage notes, including the inciting incident from Damon Albarn’s opera Dr Dee, and a poem by Jane Kenyon (on ‘the presence of an absence’) , that worked their way in to her own piece. Angelina develops at length her own processes as a writer, how she draws on exemplary texts from a wide range of sources, a patchwork approach, as a way of an introduction to her own poem ‘Correspondences: The Credence of Birds’. She talks about the play-like quality of this poem, and where it geographically references in the Peak District. She discusses how she doesn’t want to explain all the levels of ambiguity in the poem - to keep those spaces open for herself and the reader. Angelina reflects on bird-lore, and on notions of time before finishing the conversation by discussing how lyrics and songs have influenced her own approach to writing poems.
You hear Angelina read an extract from The Cure at Troy, Seamus Heaney’s translation of Sophocles Philoctetes (Faber, 2018).
Angelina D'Roza lives in Sheffield. She was a writing mentor with the Koestler Trust and writer in residence at Bank Street Arts, collaborating with artists, writers, photographers. Most recently her work appears in Blackbox Manifold and Shearsman Press. Her debut collection Envies the Birds was published by Longbarrow Press in 2016. The Blue Hour is Angelina's new collection and was released by Longbarrow at the end of 2023.
Matt Clegg on ’Back Home Again Chant’ by T’ao Ch’ien (translated by David Hinton) and his own poem ’Tzu-Jan as Performance Outcome’
Episode 7
Monday, January 8, 2024 • Duration 53:47
In this episode, I talk to the poet Matt Clegg about how ‘Back Home Again Chant’ by T'ao Ch'ien influenced the writing of his own poem ‘'Tzu-Jan as Perfomance Outcome.’
Matt talks about how Chinese poetry has come to increasingly influence his approach to writing over the past ten years. He talks about T’ao Ch’ien’s style - how it conceals depths beneath its apparently simple surface. He talks about different notions of the idea of the body (and body politic), about the choices T’ao Ch’ien made in this regard - turning away from power and influence to live a more 'stripped-down' life - and how these decisions can speak to our own materialistic, consumer culture. Matt goes on to discuss tone in T’ao Ch'ien’s piece - and about coming to this work as a piece of translation.
Matt then goes on to talk about his own poem in the light of saying what Tzu-Jan means in relation to Taoism. Matt talks about ‘walking out’ of the city - about different ideas around ‘productivity’, about drifting, moving between the inner world and outer world. He reflects on walking as an 'anonymous' person - and what this state of being allows him access to as an alert observer. He finishes by discussing his latest collaborative writing project.
Matt read and discussed 'Back Home Again Chant' by T'ao Ch'ien from The Selected Poems of T'ao Ch'ien Translated by David Hinton (Copper Canyon Press, 2000).
Matt Clegg teaches creative writing at the University of Derby. His books include Cazique, The Navigators, & West North East, all published by Longbarrow Press. His current project is Have You always Been Here, a haibun sequence inspired by Kobayashi Issa’s The Spring of My Life. Have You Always Been Here will combine haiku & prose poetry by Matt, and illustrations by P.R. Ruby. It explores the impact of Covid lockdowns on the contemplative life; on what we observe & how it affects us; how we care; & how we try [or fail] to take responsibility.
Pete Green on Louis MacNeice’s Autumn Journal and on their own poem Sheffield Almanac
Episode 6
Monday, December 25, 2023 • Duration 01:05:09
In this episode, Pete Green reads and discusses Chapter Eight from Louis MacNeice’s book-length poem Autumn Journal and how it played a part in the writing of their own long poem Sheffield Almanac.
In the programme, Pete talks about their own long relationship with MacNeice’s poem, how it ‘works’ as a poem, stitching together contemporary ‘pinch points’ of late 1930s history and the author's own autobiography. In a wide-ranging (roaming) conversation Pete talks about how the form of MacNeice’s poem influenced their own approach to Sheffield Almanac. They also explore how MacNiece brings together high and low culture to discuss notions of privilege, politics, and the state of the nation. Pete goes on to reflect on the first and second editions of Sheffield Almanac, and how their own work as a song writer has informed their own poetry writing skills. Pete talks about conflating the personal and political in Sheffield Almanac, and 'the predicament of the city of Sheffield' that is interrogated in this extended lyrical narrative.
The edition that Pete reads from here is Autumn Journal (Faber, 2012).
Pete Green is a song writer, musician, and poet. They have published two pamphlets with Longbarrow Press - Sheffield Almanac (first edition, 2017 and second edition, 2022), and Hemisphere (2021). Pete’s first full-length came out with Salt in 2022, entitled The Meanwhile Sites.
from Chapter One of Sheffield Almanac (second edition, Longbarrow 2022):
And we were timeless
As the empty afternoons when we would settle
In for desultory shifts at the Fellow & Firkin
Unprepared to take one more step
Toward the millennium’s unmapped plains
Without a pint of cloudy ale and a doorstep
Sandwich loaded with fat chips.
Some seminar on Woolf and Joyce just finished,
We might stay put, we might loose happenstance
With suburban wanderlust undiminished —
Let the current bus us to Cotteridge or West Bromwich,
Let the bondage of deadlines unravel
Free in time and space, at least within the bounds
Of an off-peak pass from West Midlands Travel.
Suede supplanting Blur, Blair succeeding Smith:
Tumbleweed days. None of us paused to cherish
Carefreedom since we never knew — or just
Suppressed the knowledge — that it could perish
While the ink dried on our dissertations.
Weeks were some abundant currency one borrows
At deceptive interest rates, pays back
At breakneck terms, in repossessed tomorrows
And when the time came to consolidate
Sheffield was our redemption, our second
Bite at adulthood’s sour cherry;
And when it’s done, when the tallies are reckoned
And we feel the slowing of the birthdays zipping
Past like the exit signs for junction
33, will we have come this far
Only for the settled life itself to seal our dysfunction
Rather than those years of frenzied chasing?
We thought those threadbare rented rooms, curtained
With frost and damp, would be the time the
Low tide turned amid the hurt and
Searching. What if they prove instead the
High water mark? These kids have 4G, streaming media, wi-fi,
Colossal debt, jobs pre-empted by machines;
We had payphones, typewriters, a dust-strewn, scratchy hi-fi,
Student grants and jobs that worked us like machines
And all of us austerity, austerity and ISIS,
Seas that go on rising through each summit,
Refugees, and leaders somehow baffled by a crisis
Every bugger else could spot a mile off
Just as, this time last year, we watched the occupation
Of Central Office while they pricetagged hope and knowledge,
Surprised by the moral pluck and spunk of a generation
Dismissed as dismal materialist go-getters. Equally
Wrong-footed, the coppers made a kettle,
Flung kids from wheelchair seats, performed the miracle
Of raising a new cohort to its feet and on its mettle
To pick up where we left the poll tax off.
This time, beyond London’s hall of mirrors, every region
Saw insurgent youth again
And round Coles Corner marched a stoked-up legion
Of sophomores and schoolkids side by side. We know any
Booming cogwheels will surely crunch and seize up
Should we live to see recovery, we know the rest:
Clegg and the Tories put the fees up —
But now we know the nature of autumn’s bonus hope:
Despite the cost of learning going treble,
The spirit that radiates as halls of residence revive
Is the spirit not of the entrepreneur but the rebel.
Let’s go again:
Psychology, Landscape Architecture,
Biotechnology, East Asian Studies:
An occupied theatre hosts a free lecture —
From barricades to trending topics
I followed the movement online while tending
The baby: one feed for the jaded, one
Feed for the pure. While we’re expending
Reproductive energies, a revolution’s spent
And look now: winter extends a brittle hand, calling
Last orders on the year
But I’ll be the obstinate last drinker, stalling
For time while autumn’s tables are wiped down;
I’ll be the flâneur in the park, passing
Dead leaves and regrets from hand to hand
While squirrels hunker below the slow massing
Of polar air at the season’s borders. I’ll see you on the
Other side. Perhaps they’re right, perhaps the interweaving
Of our threads into our children will be our
Making after all, and soon we’ll be retrieving
Optimism from these lengthened nights as our
Adopted city draws new breath this morning
Like this oblique first light along the streets of Crookes
With those unloaded bags of socks and books adorning
Freshman lawns. Let them be young
And daft, let fortune attend their drunken
Stumbling into roads. Let the kids be alright.
The shine will dull on this clutch of conkers, their shrunken
Drying bulk brittle like ageing bone, as blown
And brushed from grates go the last of the old year’s embers
And the season’s first curls of chimney smoke
Stroke the underside of the first chilly sky, while September’s
Evenings graduate from the grey of slate to the black of carbon.
Let the nights not draw in quite yet nor the kids grow sober —
Autumn’s advance and the slants of the Earth
Shade on these vestiges of warmth into October,
Shade on, prolong, the welcome of this shifted city,
Let its embrace still widen. Now’s no moment for this prudent
Stock-taking, bean-counting, the accountant’s wary eye.
Let this place take in the refugee, the student,
The one and all who reinvent, renew, regenerate.
Underfoot the leaves accrue like debts for tuition,
Degenerate to mulch: this is the dying season
Yet these guests now unpacking lives make scant imposition
But loan this city life, new blood, new reason.
James Caruth on Anne Stevenson’s ”North Sea off Carnoustie” and his own poem ”Coast Road, North Antrim”
Episode 5
Monday, December 11, 2023 • Duration 41:12
In this episode, James Caruth discusses Anne Stevenson's ‘North Sea off Carnoustie’ and how reading this work influenced the writing of his own poem ‘Coast Road, North Antrim’.
In the interview, James discusses the importance of workshopping and writing days. He reflects on ideas of the north in both his and Anne Stevenson’s poetry. He also talks about the significance of landscape and the elements in terms of how it affects the world view of individuals in a community. James goes onto discuss ‘North Sea off Carnoustie’ as a touchstone poem. He explores different ideas of viewpoint or 'stance' by reflecting on his own poem ‘Coast Road, North Antrim.' He reflects on why his early poems were about leaving, and now why he writes about returning to his homeland.
James Caruth was born in Belfast but has lived in Sheffield for the last 33 years.
His first collection A Stone’s Throw was published by Staple in 2007.
Dark Peak a long sequence appeared from Longbarrow in 2008 followed by Marking The Lambs in 2010 and The Death of Narrative 2014 both published by Smith Doorstop.
His poems have appeared in a number of anthologies including The Footing (Longbarrow Press 2013), The Sheffield Anthology (2012); Cast – The Poetry Business Book of New Contemporary Poets (2014) and One For The Road (2017).
His last pamphlet Narrow Water was published by Poetry Salzburg in 2017
A full-length collection Speechless at Inch (Smith Doorstop, 2021) was shortlisted for The Derek Walcott Poetry Prize.
‘Coast Road, North Antrim’ comes from Speechless at Inch.
Coast Road, North Antrim
It holds a narrow course
between abrupt hills and the sea,
where a cold sheen off the water
tells us this is the north,
Pam Thompson on James Schuyler’s ’Hymn to Life’ and her own poem ’An Afternoon’
Season 1 · Episode 4
Monday, November 27, 2023 • Duration 49:55
In this episode, Pam Thompson discusses James Schuyler’s ‘Hymn to Life’ and how reading this work influenced the writing of her own poem ‘An Afternoon’.
In the interview, Pam talks about how Schuyler’s life affected what he focused on in his work, and his approach to writing ‘of-the-moment’ poems. She talks about his influences, his interest in diaries, his peripatetic life; how all of this comes through in ‘Hymn to Life’. Pam then goes on to describe how she came to write her own piece ‘An Afternoon’ after workshopping in Sheffield and online. She reflects on why she wrote a first second and second person version of the poem. She talks about the afterlife of the painter Edith Spiller.
Pam has written a blog piece on James Schuyler's poem 'Hymn to Life' for Antony Wilson's website Lifesaving Poems which you can find here 'The Pure Pleasure of / Simply Looking...'
Pam Thompson is a writer, educator and reviewer based in Leicester. She has been widely published in magazines including Butcher’s Dog, Finished Creatures, The North, The Rialto, Magma and Mslexia. Pam has been Highly Commended for the Forward Prize and has won the Magma and the Poetry Business competitions and gained second and third prizes respectively in the Ledbury and Poets and Players competitions. Her works include include The Japan Quiz (Redbeck Press, 2009) and Show Date and Time (Smith|Doorstop, 2006). Pam’s collection, Strange Fashion, was published by Pindrop Press in 2017. Pam has a PhD in Creative Writing from De Montfort University and is a Committee Member for Word!, a spoken-word night at Attenborough Arts Centre in Leicester. She is a Hawthornden Fellow.
Suzannah Evans on James Tate’s ’Making the Best of the Holidays’ and her own poem ’A Course in Miracles’
Episode 3
Monday, November 13, 2023 • Duration 49:06
In this episode, poet Suzannah Evans discusses James Tate’s ‘Making the Best of the Holidays’ and how reading this work influenced the writing of her own poem ‘A Course in Miracles’.
In the interview, Suzannah reflects on the use of form, tone, humour, and the notion of objectionable or challenging narrators as she unpicks James Tate’s piece ‘Making the Best of the Holidays’. She goes on to discuss her own work ‘A Course in Miracles’, in relation to ideas of faith, encountering different kinds of spiritual or transcendental experiences, and absorbing the sustenance that is on offer.
Suzannah Evans is the author of two collections of poetry, Near Future and Space Baby, both published by Nine Arches Press. Her first pamphlet Confusion Species was a winner in the 2012 Poetry Business Competition, and her second, Green, will be published by Little Betty Press next year. She lives in Sheffield and is a creative director of Sheaf Poetry Festival.
A Course in Miracles
Howarden, 2019
I’ve been counting the fly agarics
on the library lawn and today
there are 31. At lunch the theology scholar
laughs because I’m wearing slippers.
I eat a baked avocado, which I’ve
never eaten before. I watch the yews
that brush the churchyard wall
while he pronounces the Greek Αποκάλυψic
and asks me what is being revealed
that might not be known otherwise.
The avocado has been cooked in its skin
with red onion and pepper. A visiting vicar
tells me Christians are unafraid because
they know they will be saved and asks
if I have a faith like that? I imagine myself
in the ruins of my house, fashioning
a fallout shelter from a blown-off door.
When John ate the scroll in Revelation
it tasted both bitter and sweet
and allowed him to speak prophesy, but
did he wash it down with anything?
The teacher of A Course in Miracles
says consuming food is not essential
but a human experience we’ve grown used to -
while polishing off the last forkfuls
of a tuna jacket. Every day
more toadstools rise out of the grass
like cartoon thought-bubbles.
I have been reading about the expanse
of their finely rigged root systems
and how they communicate with trees.
If I have faith in anything it’s the plants.
When the time comes they’ll eat me inside out.
You can read Georgie Woodhead’s poem ‘When my Uncle Stood at the Top of the Office Block Roof’ here. You can find out more about Georgie’s collection Takeaway (Smith/Doorstop, 2020) here.
Vicky Morris is a British/Welsh poet, mentor, editor and creative educator from north Wales. Her debut pamphlet If All This Never Happened (Southword Editions, 2021) was a winner of the Munster Fool for Poetry International Chapbook Competition and shortlisted for Best Poetry Pamphlet in the Saboteur Awards 2021. Her poems have appeared widely in magazines and journals, including: The Rialto, Poetry Review, Mslexia, Poetry Wales and The North. Vicky has placed in various competitions including first in the Prole Laureate Competition 2019 and the Aurora Prize 2020. She was shortlisted for the Mairtin Crawford Award for Poetry 2022 and highly commended in the Liverpool Poetry Prize 2022.
Vicky mentors poets at all stages and is the editor of seven anthologies of poetry and fiction by emerging young writers. For the last 14 years, she has built development opportunities for writers aged 14 to 30, founding Hive in 2016. Through Hive, she has mentored many emerging young poets who’ve received accolades such as the New Poets Prize and the Foyle Young Poets Award. Vicky received a Sarah Nulty Award in 2019 for her writer development work and was an Arvon/Jerwood mentee 19/20. www.vickymorris.co.uk
You can also follow me on X - @cwjoneschris or on Bluesky - @cwjoneschris.bsky.social for more updates on future episodes.
Sea Road
(Summer of ’85)
Remember the night you and Lorn walked back this way,
past the jangling cluster of amusement arcades, the bingo caller’s
muffled boom on the mic, the slot machine beeps and flashing lights,
then the long quiet stretch of Sea Road. Remember the man
who stopped his car, not once but twice, pretended to fiddle
behind a torch-lit bonnet, and you saw his open fly,
his hand offering up his cock like a fairground prize
to two young girls in beach dresses. Lorn still chattering,
heedless of the whisper in your ten-year-old throat,
and you daren't look back or turn off the road.
Then up ahead, you see a shape in the dark, that same car
waiting, bonnet raised, headlights off, engine ticking,
the dim glow of torchlight. But this time, he's upped
his game. And now you are running, Lorn pulling you
down this long, empty road, running like the dark
is closing in behind you, like it's stroking the backs
of your legs, running from the edge of something sharp
and faceless, until you burst into the hall, gasping, out of breath.
Mum shouting — What, what is it!?
Both of you mute, moving along a road somewhere.
The dark of a car boot, your mouths gagged shut.
The Tom Phillips poems that we focus on can be found here:
Blue Dress
The call comes out of the blue.
How else? There is only the blue.
It is what we have lived with.
Afterwards, I am dazed by the day.
I replay the phone ringing twice —
the way I picked up the second time
remembering she used to do this.
“It's alright Mum, it’s me calling”.
She names a date and place,
the hours she could be there.
She knows it might sound crazy.
Too far away. Afterwards, I wonder
if she heard the hesitation in my voice.
I want to get something for her.
Perhaps because I don't believe
I am enough. Maybe to make up
for birthdays I’ve missed. Or just
to have something, whether true
or a lie. Something she can't deny
is a gift from her mother. Something
she can hide from her father if he asks.
I would need to pick out something
not too expensive she could say
she bought for herself. Something
un-extraordinary. A plain gift giving
nothing away. Something to wear perhaps.
I choose Oasis, the airy boutique
with a glass lobby and mirrory gallery
at the top of a silver river of stairs.
Thin men in hoodies and tall girls
with eyeliner and ponytails
peer over a chrome rail.
I flatten myself against the side
like a nun, try to be invisible.
I braved this place for her.
Beyond the lobby, random rails
of fluid clothes. Denim. Sweats.
Coats with fur-edged hoods.
I don't know who she’s become.
It’s foolish. Impossible. As I turn
to go, a rack of spare clothes —
one-offs, small sizes, shop returns —
and suddenly a bolt of blue in my eye
like shot silk from Shandong.
I run it through my fingers.
The grain catches. I trace
the scalloped neck to the waist,
test the lay of its deep V over
an inset panel, across the breasts.
I push my hands inside, try to gauge
the space for her ribs. In the LED light
it turns purple indigo delphinium iris.
Correspondences: The Credence of Birds
A gritstone edge. Boulders higgledy-piggledy with sprouts of purple heather. No sun to speak of but light diffuse and silver, an evenness to it. Maybe rain, if there’s the wherewithal. Or a sort of shimmer to the flattened grass, as though rain has been. An absence left. A man in a red anorak, a bouldering mat folded on his back, walks quickly right to left. If Heaney’s chorus of boulder-still birds beginning to stretch from under their shawls can be made as lovely as he wrote it, do it. Pheasants, falcons. A spray of meadow pipits darting out from their hair and hands. Chip-chip- chip-chip. A woman climbs the rocks toward a platform stage-right, with the silhouette of an ancient fort just about suggested. The birdsong continues – ek-ek-ek-ek – but she is alone. Perhaps she addresses herself. Or perhaps, someone else. Someone absent. No questions, but the fractals in the bracken, their green mathematics transposed as music, the closing cadence that resolves the song.
She:
I might believe that a kingfisher strung up on silk can predict the weather, or that placing the semen of a pigeon on someone’s shirt can make that person love you. You think it’s wild, but you believe time runs as the crow flies. Take the roses replanted to my new house, those roses that know a home before this, my young son, the woman I was, its stems grown long and winding through the pale fuchsia, the fuchsia with its pale pink memory of a previous owner. The latitude of these two recollections mapped in space, in gradients, and tangled into a grammar of now, or here, the woman I am. I would send you their late bloom like a temple tumbling into the sea to keep in your wallet with the present tense and the half built, a botanical representation of time, the ongoing of what’s gone inscribed in the ground underfoot.
Chorus:
sip-sip-sip-sip
A cage in the side of a boulder opens. A Japanese tit flies out and across the water. A stone arch at the back of the stage, where the river runs down to the orchestra pit. Hanging from the stone, an iron hook and a small bell. The bird rings the bell and collects a folded piece of paper that could be your fortune from the hook, flies into the gods. Let it go.
She:
I would send you John Cale’s “Big White Cloud”. After all is said and done / everything is just like it began. But time flows one way, whatever leaves it gathers in its talons, and to predict is to look back, to believe that autumn will cause the trees to redden. Bergson says that what we express is the dead leaves floating on the surface of the water, the various and fugitive reduced to the same handful of words, as though love isn’t changed by having loved. I don’t know what this means for us. Perhaps, that’s the point. The reds and golds were always there, it’s only that we see them now. Everything’s clear, everything’s bright. To leave this unspoken way of being unspoken, and so unchanged by language that can only approximate how it feels, to dream in birdsong, the water trickling down from the moors.
The chorus boulders huddle against the cold – chee-chee-chee-chee – Light fades to black – ek-ek-ek-ek
Tzu-Jan as Performance Outcome
Into every account mail is pinging: ‘we will secure
our long-term future by competing on more fronts.’
Let’s find a glade where a thought might grow.
On Penistone Road, fans have assembled a totem pole shrine
out of teddy-bears, Wednesday shirts, and ever-wilting
bouquets. They are taped to a long redundant road sign,
as if to re-construct a universal grammar. Dear
Performance Review, this is what I’d really aspire to.
From Beeley Wood Road, someone has flung a single
ballet shoe over the river. It curls, like a comma
for the mind. A captain of industry exhales
his strawberry vape and dreams of shedding half his
body fat in a fixable world without depression.
His factory remains a nut-free zone. Permit me
to fast-forward half a mile, as I climb the hard yards
towards Birley Edge. One acre of slope is bitumen black
and seeded with beer cans. An emerald fly dances Morse
on the hot-pan of a broken slate, but heather
knits in from all sides, its purples blossoming bees.
Elsewhere, narcissists and lamplighters are blagging
their way into the goonlight, but here, just under
the Birley Stone, someone has evoked their late mother
in flowers of violet and mildest blue. I’d love to stop,
but have business in the leafways of Wharncliffe Woods.
I find a tree, violently uprooted in some long blown-out
gale. The crater where it once clutched earth is a pool
back and forth, close-reading each crevice in the exposed
roots. Elsewhere, there are directives to create
future-facing partnerships, but I want only to collaborate
with pipits that flirt in and out of bracken tips, all day.
Here I sit reading Ta’ Chien to the trees, knowing little more
of strategy than this. Fresh crops of data are being harvested,
and bright careerists kneel to the metrics, but here,
aphids have printed their green bodies between the lines
of ‘Back Home Again Chant’. A golden Labrador lags far
behind its master, and snuffle-blesses my open book.
our Ocean Drive that skirts
the island’s rim, where a Zen Master
might sit to watch waves shatter,
counting each iridescent fragment
as an evening sun flares over Donegal.
Somewhere out there,
Rockall hides its face,
a storm gathering
before its luminous approach.
Strings of fairy-lights dance
along deserted promenades
in the small seaside towns,
streets glinting with rain.
This shore, the edge of all we know.
Beyond the horizon we are strangers
guarding our small square of earth,
faces to the wind, translating a language
of clouds, the taste of a breeze,
cautious when the shore birds up and leave
but trusting the ocean’s persistence,
safe in the consolation of a faith
that each year grows closer to extinction.
North Sea Off Carnoustie
You know it by the northern look of the shore,
by salt-worried faces,
an absence of trees, an abundance of lighthouses.
It’s a serious ocean.
Along marram-scarred, sandbitten margins
wired roofs straggle out to where
a cold little holiday fair
has floated in and pitched itself
safely near the prairie of a golf course.
Coloured lights have sunk deep into the solid wind,
but all they’ve caught is a pair of lovers
and three silly boys.
Everyone else has a dog.
Or a room to get to.
The smells are of fish and of sewage and cut grass.
Oystercatchers, doubtful of habitation,
clamour weep, weep, weep, as they fuss over
scummy black rocks the tide leaves for them.
The sea is as near as we come to another world.
But there in your stony and windswept garden
a blackbird is confirming the grip of the land.
You, you, he murmurs, dark purple in his voice.
And now in far quarters of the horizon
lighthouses are awake, sending messages –
invitations to the landlocked,
warnings to the experienced,
but to anyone returning from the planet ocean,
candles in the windows of a safe earth.
from The Collected Poems 1955 - 1995 by Anne Stevenson (Oxford University Press, 1996)
You can find a complete version of James Schuyler’s poem ‘Hymn to Life’ here from his collection Hymn to Life (1974, Random House). The text comes with an audio recording of the piece.
An afternoon
where adult lads
up from Derby, in shirts and jeans
in January, ahead of an on-the-piss
evening, walk fast at the side
of their reflections in steel;
the fountain near the station,
which, when the sun dips,
will spill onto the pavement and freeze.
In the Millennium Gallery,
Madonnas, flanked by fat putti,
vie for my attention
but I want something more subtle,
a painting or drawing that I’ll
have to work at knowing.
Over there, on the other side,
with no-one else looking,
a watercolour under glass,
‘Biography of a Snowdrop’,
February 20th, 1896, its greyish flower
seeming too heavy for the stem –
how slowly she must have painted
while the light was still good.
Barely out of adolescence, its root,
scrotal, with white filaments.
For our convenience, she returned
on March 14th, prompted, perhaps,
by better weather, to draw exquisite
cross-sections of sex organs:
stigma and stamens; the segmented
flower like a star on a mosque
or a sliced fig, a tile, the day’s tile.
Picking snowdrops first thing,
inside her own biography,
with spring lying in wait. Edith
Spiller. Look her up.
(First person perspective version)
An afternoon
where adult lads
up from Derby, in shirts and jeans
in January, ahead of the on-the-piss afternoon,
walk fast at the side of their reflections
in steel; the fountain near the station,
which, when the sun dips,
will spill onto the pavement and freeze.
In the Millennium Gallery,
Madonnas, flanked by fat putti,
vie for your attention
but you want something more subtle,
a painting or drawing that you’ll
have to work at knowing.
Over there, on the other side,
with no-one else looking,
a watercolour under glass,
‘Biography of a Snowdrop’,
February 20th, 1896, its greyish flower
seeming too heavy for the stem –
how slowly she must have painted
while the light was still good.
Barely out of adolescence, its root,
scrotal, with white filaments.
For our convenience, she returned
on March 14th, prompted, perhaps,
by better weather, to draw exquisite
cross-sections of sex organs:
stigma and stamens; the segmented
flower like a star on a mosque
or a sliced fig, a tile, the day’s tile.
Picking snowdrops first thing,
inside her own biography,
with spring lying in wait. Edith
Spiller. Look her up.
(Second person perspective version)
Making the Best of the Holidays by James Tate (Harper Collins, 2004)
Justine called on Christmas Day to say she
was thinking of killing herself. I said, ‘We’re
in the middle of opening presents, Justine. Could
you possibly call back later, that is, if you’re
still alive.’ She was furious with me and called
me all sorts of names which I refuse to dignify
by repeating them. I hung up on her and returned
to the joyful task of opening presents. Everyone
seemed delighted with what they got, and that
definitely included me. I placed a few more logs
on the fire, and then the phone range again. This
time it was Hugh and he had just taken all of his
pills and washed them down with a quart of gin.
‘Sleep it off, Hugh,’ I said, ‘I can barely under-
stand you, you’re slurring so badly. Call me
tomorrow, Hugh, and Merry Christmas.’ The roast
in the oven smelled delicious. The kids were playing
with their new toys. Loni was giving me a big
Christmas kiss when the phone rang again. It was
Debbie. ‘I hate you,’ she said. ‘You’re the most
disgusting human being on the planet.’ ‘You’re
absolutely right,’ I said, ‘and I’ve always been
aware of this. Nonetheless, Merry Christmas, Debbie.’
Halfway through dinner the phone rang again, but
this time Loni answered it. When she came back
to the table she looked pale. ‘Who was it?’ I
asked. ‘It was my mother,’ she said. ‘And what
did she say?’ I asked. ‘She said she wasn’t my
mother,’ she said.
