This is the twentieth episode of Poetry Worth Hearing which feels pretty remarkable. Also remarkable are the poems and poets you will hear in this episode. The theme for this episode was 'now', which poets were welcome to interpret in any way they chose. It starts with Richard Price, a poet who seems very much of the now when he talks about being 'open to thinking' rather than seeking to present what has already been thought. He talks about poets who have influenced him and shares some of his translations or versions of those poets as well as reading his own work.
Other poets you can hear in the episode include Jane Burn, Tony Curtis, Helen Overell, Diana Bell, Richard Lister, Lynne Wycherley, Trisha Broomfield, Steve Xerri and Dinah Livingstone.
You can hear the episode at https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/kathleen-mcphilemy
Richard Price
Richard Price is the author of many collections including the award-winning Small World (Carcanet). He has described his poetry as lyric poetry which tries to look closely at the usual themes nested in the poetry of family and relationship while exposing larger social and structural patterns beneath and beyond the intimate. He has completed a PhD on the novelist Neil M. Gunn and has written about the history of poetry magazines in the 20th century inBritish Poetry Magazines 1914-2000: A History and Bibliography (with David Miller). Key works include Lucky Day, a collection which focuses on the early days of his daughter who has Angelman's Syndrome; Moon for Sale, a Guardian Newspaper Book of the Year; and The Owner of the Sea: Three Inuit Stories Retold, a Scotsman Newspaper Book of the Year. He is the Head of Contemporary British Collections at the British Library and teaches at the Poetry School. His latest book is Late Gifts (Carcanet). He has recently published an article in the Glasgow Review of Books whic is well worth a look: https://glasgowreviewofbooks.com/2024/01/12/witness-or-confession-lucky-day-and-late-gifts/?fbclid=IwAR0tS3SeiqJk3u_k8l8dMbuX661y8V-ETEfhDBtSgYLS4W1tT8_LF0RB8co |
Jane Burn
This poem originally appeared online in The Blue Nib and was recently reposted on Facebook. I asked Jane to record it so here it is.
Jane Burn is an award-winning, working-class, pansexual, autistic person, poet, artist, and essayist. She has an MA in Writing Poetry from Newcastle University; she won the 2022 academic prize for best overall performance. In 2022, Jane explored her neurodivergent writer’s theories funded by Arts Council England and is currently putting these ideas into a book. In 2023 she was awarded a grant by the Royal Literary Fund. Her poems are widely published and anthologised. Her latest collection, Be Feared, is available from Nine Arches press. She lives off-grid with her family in a Northumberland cottage for most of the year. She has recently won the Michael Marks Environmental Poet of the Year Prize 2023-2024, for her pamphlet A Thousand Miles from the Sea, which can be ordered from the British Library and Wordsworth Grasmere. |
Tony Curtis
Belgian Hares
On the drive from Pilkem to Artillery Wood
In the wide field’s stubble we see a hare
Rise up from its haunches,
Stand tall, then with sinewy legs
Stretching and pumping, bound
Directly into a solid wall of ripe corn
To disappear.
There is no metaphor here.
That July at Charleston
Serving dinner Grace looked upset: it seems
the village has had two telegrams today.
Duncan says with the harvest and the hay,
they are already lacking the men.
Virginia helped Grace clear things away,
which is certainly unusual.
Some thirty miles across the Channel
England is piling up its dead.
Had we not heard the big guns
carried on an East wind?
At breakfast the tea spoons had rattled again
on our saucers, Vanessa said.
These poems come from Tony Curtis' forthcoming collection, Leaving the Hills, to be published by Seren.
Tony Curtis was born in Carmarthen in west Wales in 1946. He studied at Swansea University and Goddard College, Vermont, and is the author of several collections of poetry, including War Voices (1995); The Arches (1998 -see the link above); Heaven’s Gate (2001) and Crossing Over (2007). In 2016 Seren published his From the Fortunate Isles: Poems New and Selected and in 2017 Cinnamon published his selected stories Some Kind of Immortality. He has also written books of criticism, including The Art of Seamus Heaney (1982), Dannie Abse (writers of Wales Series,1985, How Poets Work (1996),Welsh Painters Talking (1997), Welsh Artists Talking (2001), )and Wales at War: Essays in Literature and Art (2007). He is the editor of several books, including The Poetry of Pembrokeshire (1989); The Poetry of Snowdonia (1989); Coal: an anthology of Mining (1997) and Tokens for the Foundlings(2014). Tony Curtis is Emeritus Professor of Poetry at the University of South Wales where he established Creative Writing in the 1980s and directed the M.Phil In Writing for many years. He won an Eric Gregory Award in 1972 and the National Poetry Prize in 1984. In 2001 he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and was awarded a D. Litt in 2004. He has toured extensively giving poetry readings and lectures and won the 1993 Dylan Thomas Award and a Cholmondeley Award in 1997. He lives in Barry, Wales. In 2023, his first novel, Darkness in the City of Light was published to positive critical responses and was short-listed for the Society of Authors Paul Torday Memorial Prize. https://tonycurtispoet.com/ |
Helen Overell
The pulse of now
This is what we know, this in-breath,
the pause, the sigh of exhaled air,
all our yesterdays lead to this,
our tomorrows unfold, moth-winged,
dappled by radiance of soul,
the luminance bright as the stars
in a desert night — great clusters,
brimful, spilling over with light,
steadied by that sense of presence,
those here among us, those long gone,
enfolded within this moment,
known to us by the least whisper,
the call of the song of the world.
Take a breath
Take a breath, a moment,
let the busy world still,
consider the slow silver
glide of the snail,
foot-bound, eyes on tapered
tentacles, the dip and
sway of spiral shell that sets
rock-fast at shadow-strike,
sight enfolded, head, tail,
withdrawn into silence;
notice the sheer persistence
in grazed and nibbled leaf,
the within-green lacework
sifts of layered light.
Helen Overell has work in several magazines and some of her poems were highly commended or placed in competitions including the Poetry Society Stanza Competition 2018 and the Poetry News Members' poems Summer 2020. Her first collection Inscapes & Horizons was published by St Albert's Press in 2008 and her second collection Thumbprints was published by Oversteps in 2015. A booklet of her poems Measures for lute was published by The Lute Society in 2020. She takes an active role in Mole Valley Poets, a Poetry Society Stanza group. |
Diana Bell
On the Edge
Breathe in, breathe out
heart beating –
a flutter of life
eyelids drop like blinds
against the world
voices float without answer
throat a burning fire
lungs filled with knife blades
spitting words like choking on glass
limbs detached
skin burns
belly a sunken pit –
all feeling evaporated
heart beating –
breathe in, breathe out
Diana Bell is a multimedia artist working with sculpture, painting & installation. She has collaborated with dancers & poets & published two books combining painting & poetry. Diana was commended for the Settle poetry prize & is included in ‘Poems for the NHS’ as well as in the magazine Alchemy Spoon. |
Richard Lister
Give me a child:
Nadia, chipped front tooth,
crouches as close as she dares
to a sputtering gas burner,
her left leg trembles.
Where's Dad?
Distant voice of a Russian shell.
Rewind to Putin, alone on stage,
in the cream polo-neck jumper
of a talkshow host.
Two hundred thousand Russians
waving red, blue and white,
some bussed in, some true.
Further back: Agent Viktor sips a slick
of raw quail's egg from a mug,
FC Spartak Moscow, tries not to gag,
pauses ten beats for poison.
No spasm, so sends a glass flute
upstairs to the President.
Yeltsin, cream-moulded hair,
pours his smile over
an apparatchik, a neat man
at the margin of the hall,
blue cardboard folder under his arm
to carry his notes.
Stop: breeze block room,
sputtering gas burner
and a tin sink crammed in,
its surface so cold
Putin's boyish hand sticks.
Rats that terrify the dogs.
The title is a part of a quote from Aristotle.
In their wake
Last week, the magnolia
was an exuberant stroke,
bold and bright
against a powder blue sky,
each flower fat with life-lush pink,
air soaked with its earthy scent.
And now, as its petals curl,
and dry to crumpled beige and fall,
I feel I'm walking in the pause
that follows God and Adam's evening stroll,
the grass in their footprints
still bending back to shape.
Lister draws you into stories of intriguing characters, images and places. In his recent collection, 'Edge & Cusp', his poems ‘capture life like a vibrant painting, giving you the time to examine and ponder the hues of existence in all its beauty and tragedy’. His work is published in twelve international magazines including Acumen, Orbis and Ekphrastic Review and is carved into the Radius sculpture. He coaches leaders to bring life-giving transformation in the UK, Asia and Africa. |
Lynne Wycherley
To a Neutron Star
Who are you, cold heartbeat?
How many times has your tireless pulse
touched the toiling atom of my life?
In nebulae, your note of snow intones ‘now’, ‘now’.
Ice-motes in Vela, the Crab.
After the explosion, only you remained,
a small bright face suspended
angel-child in a ravaged field,
gas clouds flung round you, lit dust
scarlet and lime – a plerion –
and all the hare-lipped outrush of its bloom.
You flick a feather through our sight-lines,
the jay-blue ‘o’ of our world
through desert arrays, our upturned eyes
staring from a susurrus of sand
to catch the sleet
of your lonely note –
forever ‘now’, ‘now’.
In a Church near the M40
i.m. Dr J R L Highfield
Ironstone – you read its glow,
warm bergamot: the now
of then, how light suspends,
Warden Gilbert gazing
from stained glass.
Beyond, the road is restless,
carbon-screed. It cries, it bays –
time’s furore,
time swept away.
Gilbert, Robert – Warden of Merton College 1417-1421
Lynne Wycherley is an émigré to the West Country. Her quiet, lyrical voice has featured widely across the years; Listening to Light: new & selected poems was published by Shoestring Press in 2014 followed by two later collections. A new pamphlet is in train.
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Trisha Broomfield
Now
Now, I would ignore the time
I thought I did not have
I would say, yes, let’s go,
push my way through people
grab the last window seat,
I would graciously allow you to pay for coffee
say yes to cake
I would be empathetic and listen
instead of talking
I would treasure every moment
of our time together
not regret that when I could
I did not
say yes.
Trisha has three poetry pamphlets published by Dempsey and Windle and features in many anthologies. Recently she has had two pieces short listed by the Lancaster One Minute Monologues and one poem chosen By Phare Online Poetry Magazine. She is one third of The Booming Lovelies who appeared at Guildford Fringe Festival this year, and will be appearing at the Farnham Literary Festival in March and the Cranleigh Literary Festival in April 2024. You can hear her more of her poems on the Poetry Worth Hearing poetry podcast and on BBC Upload. FB Trisha Broomfield Poetry Instagram @magentapink22 @boominglovelies |
Steve Xerri
Or Never
just an ordinary black & white snapshot, but see
how the curves of the parked MG & its open door
span & divide the picture space with such balance
no other arrangement seems thinkable : the central
subject, a dark-haired child, his skin unblemished
under the foxed emulsion, one white-socked foot
resting on the running board, box of chocolates
on his lap, can only be me gazing out past the camera
to connect directly with his own eyes reflected
from my grizzled head : but as I look back at him
what if unsettles what is, & could have unravels did
– maybe a swerve occurs in my mother's timeline
& a mining accident kills her dad in his prime
so the family cancels the van booked for the move
down south where a different history is waiting,
& her life rolls out in the confines of her village so she
never holds me, never knows me, nurtures another
lad's hunger for books – her son who has the mind
of an engineer, says blood to rhyme with good
& is the one to lick scrapes of her spiced cake batter
from the wooden spoon : or other circumstances
veer & a young evacuee's ship re-routes to avoid
U-Boats in the Atlantic & my father's people land
somewhere not England so he never knows me,
never holds me, vanishes from the story taking with him
his colour sense, his gift of wordplay, & it's not me
copying his jazzhands on the dancefloor but his athletic
son, destined to make his name as a doctor
– & she emerges from her back door into a flood
of winter sun, it's Christmas Eve & marriage the last
thing on her mind – & he opens his curtains
on a square of blazing sky criss-crossed by parakeets
– & the photograph fogs in my palm, its shadows
spreading to engulf the car's interior, fluted leather
upholstery & the reclining form of the passenger,
last detail to go the catchlight in his young eyes
Steve Xerri (https://stevexerripoetry.co.uk) was Canterbury Festival Poet of the Year 2017. His work has appeared in numerous print and online magazines, including Atrium, Brittle Star, The Clearing, Fortnightly Review, Golden Handcuffs Review, Ink Sweat and Tears, The Interpreter’s House, One Hand Clapping, The Poetry Shed, Poetry Society Newsletter, Raceme, and Sentinel Literary Quarterly. His first pamphlet Mutter/Land was published in 2020 by Oystercatcher Press. |
Dinah Livingstone
I live on Earth
in the Goldilocks zone
not too cold
not too hot
but just right.
I’ve got a Goldilocks bed
with a mattress
neither too hard
nor too soft
but just right.
I wish but don’t always manage
to live my day in a Goldilocks way
not idle
not overwhelmed
but just right.
And if I invite someone to supper,
make them a pie
with a gratin topping,
its browning should be
not too pale
not too burnt
but just right.
It’s not always that easy.
In some encounters
it’s hard not to say
too much or too little,
too many words
or too few,
to get it just right.
The same goes for words in a poem.
Stop.
New Year 2024
Today the first of January,
still early, and dark grey,
the London plane tree at my window
holds out its naked arms and knobbly fists
to the new morning: ‘Here I am,
aching for spring greenery.
Yes to another year.’
It’s seen at least a hundred.
Slowly the light increases
as the sky becomes pale blue.
Dinah Livingstone has given many poetry readings in London, throughout Britain and abroad. She has received three Arts Council Writer’s Awards for her poetry, which has also appeared in various magazines and anthologies. Her tenth collection, Embodiment, was published in 2019. She is a translator of poetry and prose and edits the magazine Sofia. katabasis.co.uk/dinah.html
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Copyright of previously unpublished poems remains with the author.
This was an exciting celebration of the New Year even as we find ourselves witnessing terrible events and cowering in the shadow of climate change. Please keep sending your poems to Poetry Worth Hearing; our poems are worth hearing, whatever the din of the world around us. Recordings of up to 4 minutes of unpublished poems with texts and a short up-to-date bio to poetryworthhearing@gmail.com. Please send the texts of your poems as Word documents rather than pdf.
The theme for the next episode is 'creature' -again to be interpreted as widely as you choose.