Poetry Worth Hearing: Episode 32

This episode features an interview with Phoebe Nicholson, poet and founder of the Oxford Poetry Library. The prompt or theme for the episode was 'house' and it includes a wide variety of takes on that theme. I solicited poems from the published work of three poets, Theophilus Kwek, Pat Winslow and Dinah Livingstone. Other poems in the open section are by Iain Strachan, Heather Moulson, Trisha Broomfield, Richard Price, Beth Davyson, Lucy Ingrams, Lizzie Ballagher, Beck Reynolds, Lesley Saunders and Sean Burke.

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Phoebe Nicholson came from the United States to study English in Oxford. Here, she discovered in the city a nurturing poetry community which prompted her mission to democratise poetry, first through visiting street markets with a cargo bike laden with poetry books and later through the many and diverse activities organised by the Poetry Library in its home in Park End Street. You can read more about Phoebe and the Oxford Poetry Library in an article by Jenny Lewis in the most recent issue of Poetry News, published by the Poetry Society.

Poets mentioned by Phoebe included

Alan Buckley, whose second full collection, Still, is forthcoming from Blue Diode Press;

Vanessa Lampert, whose first full collection, Say It With Me, was published by Seren Press;

Laura Theis, whose second book, Introduction to Cloud Care, has been published by Broken Sleep Books this year;

and Ada Limón, who, I discover, is the 24th Poet Laureate of the United States.

Here is a link to the Oxford Poetry Library: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://oxfordpoetrylibrary.com/&ved=2ahUKEwi4jsOGu_WMAxX_TEEAHU_NAgIQFnoECC8QAQ&usg=AOvVaw2PZEnBgBGHxln6kUcO1u9h

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Theophilus Kwek's new book, Commonwealth, is forthcoming from Carcanet in June this year from Carcanet Press. Thanks to Carcanet for permission to use the two poems in this episode. Theo will be the featured poet in Episode 34 of Poetry Worth Hearing, to be published at the end of June.

Pat Winslow

The Chest of Drawers

All forbidden things have a spell cast over them. I never knew what was in it, only what came out – a saw long enough to play music on, pliers, sealing wax, string, a harmonica whose notes freaked the dog out, farthings, screws, offcuts of lino, fuse wire, rubber bands. The drawers were skew-whiff and wouldn’t close straight which is how she’d know you’d been in. She might slam your hands tight. You’d never get them out. You’d be gnawing your arms to stumps while she got on with the cooking and sat down to eat. If it was Coronation Street, you’d have all night to do it. The Avengers, News at Ten, football. She’d be there till the little white dot disappeared, eating toffees and spitting nuts across the room. The only escape was the window left open for the cat, over fences and walls till you reached the Cunninghams and could leg it to the heath and the tree where the man hung himself and the horses sometimes came galloping. The whole of London would be below you, your stumps would be trailing blood, and her enormous bulk would be monstering up the hill in hairnet and slippers, brandishing the stick she’d give you what for with, which is why none of us ever went anywhere near it.

First appeared in The Poetry Society’s  Poetry News

Also in https://ghostfurniturecatalogue.wordpress.com/

Pat Winslow has published seven collections, most recently, Kissing Bones with Templar Poetry. A winner of several notable competitions over the years, she enjoys commissioned collaborations with film-makers, composers and artists. She is currently working on a novel as well as her poetry.

Dinah Livingstone

Nerve

Roof leaks, stop it with sticky tar,

thick and black like a babe's first shit.

Wall cracks, we imperfectly plaster it

with a slapped mixture of pinkish powder.,

Light bulbs break, we are in the dark,

drains block and the sludge reeks of decay.

Propping and prodding keep the frail pad cosy

and fickly hold the primal soup in check.

Neither can we ban weakness from this bonehouse;

I bleed, I ache, I alter every day.

Skull lurks, disintegration stalks us,

I am unwomaned when I've had no tea.

I only find my centre now and then,

when good animal spirits give a shove

or where beyond tiredness joy slips in:

ocean, eros, here-earthly union, love.

And when I spin in centrifugal panic,

feel dizzy as the velvet night wears thin,

I do not flee the hound of heaven frantic

but from the hole I fear is where my centre should have been.

String snaps, I collapse, am disassembled.

How now scrap antiquated parts; add; see

whether this heap of heterogeneous junk all jumbled

fits back together another way?

Constantly. This is the price of every poem

and of living, every time it snarls up, wisdom.

The permanent point is cordial

being both membership and individual.

It needs a great heart not to deviate into religion,

courage to utter, endure chaos, utter anew,

nerve not to give up making and, with knots between,

thread the blood-red garnets, despite what death will do.

‘Nerve’ was first published in the pamphlet Something Understood (Katabasis, 1985). It was first published in book form in Time on Earth. Selected and New Poems (Rockingham  Press, Ware, 1999).

Dinah Livingstone has given many poetry readings in London, throughout Britain and abroad. Her tenth poetry collection,Embodiment, was published in 2019. She has received three Arts Council Writer’s Awards for her poetry, which has also appeared in various magazines and anthologies. She is a translator of poetry and prose and, after twenty years, recently retired as editor of the magazine Sofia. katabasis.co.uk/dinah.html

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Iain Strachan

Clearing Mother’s House

They are only material things, to which undue attachment

Is supposed to be wicked, and yet,

These things I barely notice until sorting for new destinations,

For auctioneer, for charity, for sentimental keepsakes,

Still cling.

As I place each in a box, I feel I am ripping a part of your soul from the house,

Mine too, as, taken for granted till now, they

Have dwelt in the quiet tabernacles of memory

o be revisited, and the loss comprehended, as I gaze upon them

Taking photo after photo, frantic to preserve:

The Chinese designs on ginger jar lampstands,

The porcelain statue of a Japanese lady,

The leather-bound books, of Dickens, Wilde, Lawrence,

Red, blue and green on the antique bookshelves,

The nature drawings on the walls

The leather-topped drum table and desk.

And your own fine oil-paintings:

Landscapes, seascapes, a Renoir girl, flowers,

The snow-covered Great Gate at Trinity College,

A cat with piercing eyes, a village, a woodland path.

The living-room, it seems, still holds echoes

Of the music you loved: Finzi, Pärt, and Elgar

I play the Finzi on forty-year-old loudspeakers, for old times’ sake.

But more than these, the scent

That used to greet me in the hall,

That unique random blend that each home possesses,

Of carpet, fabric, plants, leather

And who knows what else.

A scent that is home. A scent that is Mother.

A scent that is you, that no camera can capture.

Could it be that in this scent, you still occupy the house,

This half century haven I have known for so long?

No, it will pass too, for the house is but a canvas

Upon which you painted that which brought you joy,

That which you beheld as excellent, praiseworthy, and lovely.

And now you have passed through that dark, mysterious glass

Through which we see dim glimmers of the reality beyond

And where you, my mother, now dwell, forever reunited with those you love

And, free of the decay of mere material,

Reassemble, incorruptible, into the image in which you were made.

Iain Strachan is a retired data scientist, and has been writing poetry on and off since 1993.  In the 1990s he had several poems published in a small magazine "Pulsar Poetry".  He started writing more at the onset of the pandemic, and read out one of his poems just at the start of lockdown on BBC Radio Oxford, after they sent out a request for listeners' poems.

Since 2022, he has been involved in a Facebook poetry group "Invisible Poets" which now has around 60,000 members.   He has had several poems published in their regular  anthologies, which raise money for Save The Children fund. He is also a moderator for this group, with the job of spotting when people have used AI to write their poems, passing it off as their own work, which is not allowed in the group.

Heather Moulson

Housewives’ Choice

Mum sips the sweet scalding brown tea,

her lipstick imprint on the china cup.  

It’s just the two of us while the kettle boils.  

“They’re expecting, you know”, Mum says.  

“Expecting what?”, I ask through the steam.

Her face sets with impatience, we go round Betty’s.

“They’ll have to live here,” she tells her neighbour.

“An auntie, eh?”, Betty pats my ponytailed head,  

not pausing for breath as she runs to the kettle.

I stayed quiet and looked at the toys in her catalogue.  

“It‘ll only be a quick wedding,” Mum says.  

Were they expecting a slow one? I say nothing.

Lying in bed, I could only think of the five of us,

all racing towards the boiling kettle.

Overnight, that scalding asset became treacherous.   

Next day is Friday, and I watch Crackerjack.  

Mum does no housework, just sticks the kettle on.

The Lino crunches beneath her slippered feet.

Heather Moulson is originally from Hertfordshire but now resides in Twickenham with a somewhat cantankerous, grumpy, black cat. She has been writing poetry since 2017 and has performed extensively in many London and Surrey venues.  Heather is a founder member of Poetry Performance that performs monthly at the Adelaide Pub in Teddington. Her debut collection Bunty, I Miss You was published in 2019. A year later she won the Brian Dempsey Memorial Award.  Her work has been included in several anthologies.  Heather writes mostly about nostalgia and affairs of the heart. 

Trisha Broomfield

Bingo

Nan squeezes next to Ethel, concentration as fierce as competition

milliner’s fingers crooked, tiny pen held as though her life depended on marking her card.

‘Legs Eleven’ comes the call, Nan’ crosses out, steals a sideways glance

Ethel has it too, her Bingo card askance, a leftie born.

‘Clickety Click, sixty six!’ Nan crosses biro through, Ethel has it too.

‘Kelly’s Eye, number one!’

Nan, pen poised, pounces

‘Two little ducks, twenty-two and battle commences,

Ethel is sure to win, a line if not a full card.

‘Seventy-even Sunset Strip!’

Nan almost tips her Stout.

Ethel smirks but Nan, smooths her Gor-Ray skirt,

mumbles ‘I’m on a wining streak, I can feel it in me water.’

‘Or your stout,’ snips Ethel.’

‘Tickety-Boo, sixty two!

Numbers sail over blue rinse perms, the bright blazered compare

has promised Frank Ifield after this,

but they all know it’s Jim from the chip shop, hair slicked back.

Suddenly, ‘HOUSE!’ the shout stabs Ethel in the ribs, she was sure she’d win.

Nan beams, sweat blossoming on her shadowed upper lip.

Exhausted she chortles, wobbles up the receive her prize,

‘A turkey! She cries, what do I want with a turkey!

It’s a frozen one at that, I can see it defrosting and I’ll never get it in me oven!’

‘I would.’ Ethel mutters, and graciously Nan stutters, ‘It’s, it’s yours Ethel.

Mind you invite me round to dinner, remember I’m the winner.’

Trisha Broomfield has three pamphlets (published by Dempsey and Windle) and contributed to many anthologies.

She is one third of the Booming Lovelies, who performed at the recent Farnham Literary Festival and are appearing at the Cranleigh Book Festival on 23rd April.

She is also a member of the Cranleigh Writers’ Group who are reading from their second anthology at the Cranleigh Book Festival on 25th April.

Her new collection, My Acrostic Mother, illustrated by fellow Lovely Heather Moulson, is available to order; bookstores and online. She has just made the long list of the Richmond Poetry Prize for the third time.

You can hear her poems at Poetry Worth Hearing and BBC Upload.

Instagram @magentapink22 @boominglovlies

Richard Price

Balcony

The room with only one true wall.

The extra room. A place to rest, a place of jeopardy.

You’ve no garden. You’ve been made afraid of public parks.

You grow a few herbs and the dusty greenery humanises the ambition of industrialisation.

You’re in a miniature from Western Asia.

You want to be sitting in front of that fountain down there, waiting.

Earth is a scale model of paradise, two lovers are just meeting at the poor gate.

Your mind’s eye is open.

You can hear the practice songs from the Baptist centre,

you can hear the clapping of car-doors around the mosque.

You can see the dual towers of the Greek Orthodox church. Rest in Peace, Chris.

You barely use the rosemary but once in a while twist off one or two of the spiky leaves.

Take the scent in and your spirits lift. A plastic bag of fennel rests in the balcony corner, flaps;

your larder.

You feel you’re part of a history of civilization,

of farmland, foraging, gardens and cities, absolutely depending on each other

but now bad-tempered, griping.

No bikes allowed on the balcony but can the authorities see this one?

You’re above it all.

Is the laundry dry yet? –  someone here would like to smoke.

“Let them take in the fumes from the horizon, an incinerator clogged with impulses.

Let them take in the particulates from school-run tyres.

Breathe deeply. Enjoy the hit!”

(“Well, alright, but can you brush your teeth before we kiss.”)

From a balcony, “great speeches”.

From a balcony, disgraceful speeches.

Here's an open-air breakfast and the local star has gone from ripe sunrise to pale, unbitable stone.

Here's a fear of altitude.

From a high balcony a ridge of forest is making the edge of the world.

      (The advice is to stay put: the firefighters should come in this way, all ladders and zipped-up risk.)

      From a balcony, chatter, gentle laughter.

The two of you were here in the early days of ‘the two of you’.

You’d been grateful for solitude but you’re glad you’re both here, you’re glad to be part of an ‘and’ now.

Richard Price's latest books are Late Gifts (Carcanet, 2023) and Tinderness (Wild Pansy, 2022). He is a tutor at the Poetry School.

Beth Davyson studied poetry in Sheffield, UK, with Adam Piette and Agnes Lehocksky. She has published in The Poetry Review, the Moth, tearsinthefence and parentheses. Her work has been shortlisted three times for the Bridport Prize and was commended for the Ambit competition, "magick". She currently lives and works in Marseilles.

Lucy Ingrams

eco-relation

        so this place knows you

  places you tonight

spaced among room lamps

  under bevelling moonlight

breathing you gently

  in between owl cries

and the fridge’s low hum

and the fridge’s low hum

  in between owl cries          

breathing you gently

  under bevelling moonlight

spaced among room lamps

  places you tonight –

so this place homes you

Lucy Ingrams' first pamphlet, Light-fall (2019) was published by Flarestack Poets 

and her debut collection, Signs (2023) by Live Canon. Awards for her work include the Manchester Poetry Prize and Magma’s poetry prize. She is based in Oxford.

Lizzie Ballagher

Drifting back

I

Earth’s loaf has a half-baked crust,

is broken bread, torn north

to south where Laurasian ocean yawns so cavernous

where even granite splits, cleaves, is riven open,

where Triassic stone—old red sandstone—slides sideways,

slow-rending             apart.

East in Scottish Highlands, islands,

west in northern Canada and Newfoundland,

the vanished continent drifts in two,

spread thinner under ocean’s weight—               

rich gold butter in the lithosphere

and ever southwards,

diagonally,

through the Appalachian Mountain chain.

II

There was a man, American, who built a house,

chose ballast out of westbound trading ships—

Scottish sandstone quarried from Loch Torridon’s far-off mountains—

to lay his strong foundations;

took sand from nearer valleys—

familiar brownstone from Connecticut—

and fired the bricks to build stout walls,

to make a house where he could break his own bread.

So was his eastern coastal home

a continental drift reversed:

historic stone returned to unity at the last

when two hundred million years, and more, had passed.

Lizzie Ballagher:A winner in Ireland’s 2024 Fingal Poetry Festival Competition and in 2022’s Poetry on the Lake, Ballagher focuses on landscapes, currently creating a collection of poems about Exmoor. Having studied in England, Ireland, and America, she worked in education and publishing. Her poems have appeared in print and online throughout the English-speaking world. Find her blog at https://lizzieballagherpoetry.wordpress.com/

Beck Reynolds

Welcome Home

Sit in that hideous floral armchair,

kick its frilly skirt and preen your pigtails;

ask your father where he has been

Their smiles don't reach their eyes;

they caress the words as if they could break you

we're getting divorced

Exposed tacks bite your bare feet

as you fling yourself over after carpetless steps -

try not to feel the sting

Take refuge in the remains of bunk beds

sawn in half, scattering trails of sawdust

on green carpet that used to be grass

Wedge yourself between a childhood

you can't wait to outgrow, and fear

of what's beyond those polyfillad walls

You'll always see cardboard tags hanging

from your furniture: it is safer

if you don't unpack

Beck Reynolds is a writer based in Oxfordshire. Her poetry explores themes of identity and belonging, often through the lens of personal experience or observation. She is equally drawn to the minutiae of life as to the big questions. She is a regular at Oxford Poetry Library and was previously featured on Poetry Worth Hearing. 

Lesley Saunders

History of a House

How sometimes you can walk in off the street

through an unremarkable front door,

find yourself in an elsewhere you had dreamed of

and scarcely deserved, with its redemptions

of petty despairs and envies, its low hum of sunlight

like mason bees in the mortar, its furniture

of shadows and a particular quality of salvation

that leaked through its seams like antique rain;

how its years became measured by the crab tree,

from sapling to a soar of bark and hard apples,

an ascension of roses in the gloom of foliage;

how the garden hovered in the dusk, a glimmer

of blue electricity in the wedding days of May:

bell-flower, grape hyacinth, forget-me-not;

how all this could be seen from the kitchen window

and how the sight was a vision, river-mist rising

like wordless devotions in the early morning.

How the stairs were awash with fallen light, heaven

earthed. How we feasted, how the foxes shrieked.

How the table and chairs are dying of loneliness.

Lesley Saunders is the author of several poetry collections, most recently This Thing of Blood & Love (Two Rivers Press 2022) and, with Rebecca Swainston, Days of Wonder (Hippocrates Press 2021), a poetic record of the first year of the Covid pandemic. She is also a prize-winning translator of modern Portuguese poetry.

Sean Burke

Pen y Bryn

If this is home - a place

long submerged, never my own -

would that explain these echoes?

A typewriter tattoos the shape

of thought in time, the violin’s cry

at the peak of a rising figure

and at its heart, a replica pistol,

trigger balanced on a shard of nothing,

an equilibrium conferring peace,

demanding stillness; as if a home were like

any other life, bent on eternity.

Not my own - but all along it seems

I was the piano’s metronome

poised to sound this endlessness;

I was the window filled with the sea,

silent as the sea never is,

the wind scratching it white.

Born in Banff, Scotland, Sean Burke studied philosophy at the University of Aberdeen, before moving to Italy, where he works as a music and drama teacher. His poems have appeared in Orbis, Cake, Squawk Back and Poetry Worth Hearing, and been shortlisted in international competitions. He was recently awarded the Molecules Unlimited 2025 prize.

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You can listen to this episode on https://creators.spotify.com/pod/show/kathleen-mcphilemy/episodes/Poetry-Worth-Hearing-Episode-32-e3229s6 or on Spotify and Audible podcasts. Please send suggestions or comments to poetryworthhearing@gmail.com.

The theme for the next episode is 'garden' be that the Garden of Eden or a flowerpot. Hanging gardens, secret gardens, lost gardens, found gardens, imaginary gardens or devastated gardens -send up to four minutes of unpublished poems, with their texts and a short author bio to poetryworthhearing@gmail.com by May 18th. I look forward to hearing from you.