Poetry Worth Hearing

This episode had as its prompt 'other spaces'. I chose this idea because our main feature features poetry by the Argentinian poet, Sergio Raimondo, introduced and translated by Ben Bollig and Mark Leech. It seems to me that one of the functions of translation is to take us to 'other spaces.' Dinah Livingstone has given us a translation from Virgil's 4th Georgic, which takes us to the other space of the underworld. A very high proportion of the poems I received were concerne

The theme for this episode ( https://open.spotify.com/episode/1FeZemtLFiCIBpkyFqC24u?si=y7M0SktZQXSU1-8FcCiVrw ) was 'writing nature/writing eco' and it was prompted by some comments by Nancy Campbell which, unfortunately, I didn't have room for in Episode 37. The other relevant context was the end of COP 30 which seemed to close without achieving very much. Eco-writing and eco criticism can be problematic and controversial, reflecting just how important it is at this time

Episode 37 of Poetry Worth Hearing ( you can find it at https://open.spotify.com/episode/5B0OWm9QD29n6ty1ayNrAs or on You Tube, Spotify and Audible pocasts) had for its prompt 'hiding and seeking' which drew a huge range of poems and approaches. The episode is bookended by an interview with Nancy Campbell and her reading of some of her poems. Nancy Campbell's debut collection  Disko Bay  (Enitharmon, 2017) written during a winter residency at Upernavik Museum in Greenland,

The theme for this episode was 'games people play' and I received poems about all sorts of games, from chess to football to Monopoly. Many writers went back to the past and childhood to find their games. Rather surprisingly, I didn't get anything about online or video gaming although Lizzie Ballagher does take us into the digital world with her 'Cyber Pirates' . Of course, there were also many poems about the games, not always benevolent, that people play with each other. T

The 35th episode of Poetry Worth Hearing had as its prompt 'making up'. As ever, I hoped poets would interpret this as widely as they...

This is the 34th episode of Poetry Worth Hearing and the last before the summer. It opens with an interview from Theophilus Kwek, whose...

This episode opens with a selection of poems from David Constantine's A Bird Called Elaeus, introduced and read by the author. Many...

This episode features an interview with Phoebe Nicholson, poet and founder of the Oxford Poetry Library. The prompt or theme for the...

In this episode, you can hear Tony Curtis, the distinguished Welsh poet and Professor Emeritus of Creative Writing at South Wales...

The prompt for this episode was rule-making and/or rule breaking, an idea which occurred to me after reading a sonnet sequence by Claire...

The prompt for this episode was 'Words and music, perhaps', a misquote from W B Yeats who was himself, reputedly, tone deaf. I have...

This episode had the theme of 'losing and/or finding'. Perhaps not surprisingly, I received more poems of loss than of discovery. Some...

The theme for this episode was 'canonical'. I was hoping for a range of poems which would either celebrate the traditional canon of...

This episode features an interview with Northern Ireland poet, Matthew Rice, where he talks about his jurney in poetry and gives a short...

This episode will be the last before the autumn, and also the last before the general election. Appropriately, therefore, the theme this...

The theme for this episode is 'other' and so I asked Jane Burn, who describes herself as working class, neurodivergent, pansexual and who...

This episode features an interview with Ruba Abughaida who is part Palestinian, part Lebanese. Her poems reflect the struggles of the...