Poetry Worth Hearing: Episode 33

This episode opens with a selection of poems from David Constantine's A Bird Called Elaeus, introduced and read by the author. Many thanks to Bloodaxe for allowing us to usse these poems. The prompt for this episode was 'garden', to be interpreted as widely or narrowly as poets chose and the idea of garden continues in Jane Burn's wonderful elegy for Derek Jarman, 'Erosion is the Only Song they Know', which was shortlisted in the 2024 Livve Canon competition and appears in the Live Canon Anthology. Thank you to Jane for recording the poem and to Live Canon.

There follows a fascinating interview with Aaron Kent, poet and founder of Broken Sleep Books. Aaron talks about publishing, the ethos of Broken Sleep Books and his own writing as well as reading some of his own work.

In addition, you can find poems by Paul Surman, Lizzie Ballagher, Simon Maddrell, Trisha Broomfield, Dinah Livingstone and Inge Milfull.

David Constantine is a poet, short story writer, novelist and translator. He was also a founding editor of Modern Poetry in Translation. His work is an inspiring combination of erudition and generous humanity, which always remains open to the contemporary world. He has published many collections of poetry and translations with Bloodaxe including Belongings, published in 2020 and , most recently, A Bird Called Elaeus, a translation of selected poems from The Greek Anthology, Bloodaxe, 2024.

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Jane Burn

Erosion Is the Only Song They Know

This is a poppy…in memory of the dead – Derek Jarman

A place where the wind can scour a leaf to its bones, where stems fail

under gale-flung spray             

but there was still time                                         

—borrowed time—          

 to plant again, to tempt a rose’s scent above the thorns.                    

Time to scrape a place for hyssop,                       

to witness each small ascension greening from the corm,      

time to coax the tongues of bugloss                                        

into harmonies of blue.                                      

Time for lichen’s soft claim, for puffs of santolina,                                       

for columbine, thrift and rue—                          

for borage, seeded like a miracle by the door.      

For night to curl into the creases of kales’ glaucous coat,                                    

for morning to haze the darkness away.                               

He dreamed an Eden                                                                  

for straying seeds—

watched sea-mist shiver on horehound, bead its dew to the grass.                    

From afar, the cottage seems too frail                         

to bear the endless stretch of sky—                                                   

its yellow-framed windows speak

in semaphores of light,                       shade and skim with ghosts,         

carry the landscape upon their glass, shape embers of sun.                      

Roots creep the shingle—                            

each life here bound to a frail, determined thread.

Larks spin the air with flight.                         The spit shifts.                  

Slabs of flint sink back into the ground.                 

Skeletons of scrap wear skins the colour of rust. 

He crowned each one with flotsam—                                

each suffered twig, each drifted lean of wood                                            

has slowly turned to bone.

Their shadows tell the hours.

                                  Erosion is the only song they know.              .            

Every beachcombed bit recalls                                          

the hand that patiently brought it here.                                     

Cobbles hang in rosaries—          

the rain that mumbles their beads will return, in the end,                                              

                                           to the sea

Gorse pods spill their grist to the scree.              

Hope is rosemary, placed in the shore’s palm.                       

Hope is Dungeness—      

its bleached and twisted self—                                                        

the way it remains                               

unfenced, untamed, unashamed.               

The nuclear station’s hum was the one lament          

it had the power to make—                  

like the corpse of a whale, its shape fades into the grey.

The lighthouse carries no fire inside its old panopticon eye—                                  

its purpose gone, its duty quenched,                        

its counsel no longer required.

The paths remember his feet—the distance his gaze.

The flowers repeat his name in their language of new growth.                

He scattered shells,              planted porcelain gems,

watched the sway of toadflax drifting over the ness.                                            

The peninsula smiles.

Dusk brims with stocks and moths dip to their scent.                   

The shingle spills his memory—                      

each foot upon the stones sings out a requiem.

The wind will aways belt his home with its breath—will fade the layers

of varnished tar, will salt-scour the poem he nailed upon the wall.                                  

The seasons shift another year                            

around this land.               Paradise haunts gardens.                   

The dawn still breaks its heart against his home.

Notes

The artist, writer, filmmaker and gay rights activist Derek Jarman (1942-1994) lived at Prospect Cottage from 1986 until his death from an AIDS-related illness. In that time, he created an incredible garden.

This is a poppy…in memory of the dead – from Modern Nature, by Derek JarmanGardening on borrowed time – written in one of Derek Jarman’s sketchbooksParadise haunts gardens – from Derek Jarman’s Garden

Aaron Kent has described himself as writer, publisher and stroke survivor. As this interview will show, he is much more besides. His first two collections include The Working Classic (The 87 Press) and Angels the Size of Houses (Shearsman). Do support Broken Sleep Books. It is an invaluable outlet for writers who don't appeal top the mainstream presses.

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Paul Surman

Seeing the Angel

It might have arrived

out of a tangle of background detail:

the roses already going over

at the end of summer, the garden

sprawling towards decay.

If it were possible at all,

it would be at one of those times

in a life when you are no longer

exactly who you were, but not yet

who you will become.

Perhaps a disorderly breeze would

tousle an unkempt sky over the dying

garden—a breath of disquiet,

movement breaking things apart

with an unsettling vision.

It will be standing there then,

made from the tall spaces between

organic forms, forsythia and the like.

From the prodigious earth,

a wingless, irreligious angel.

Not the angel of cold perfection

and vatic pronouncement. But one

of absence and imperfection, real

in the way that voids between words

allow them to make sense.

Paul Surman - Poet

Author of Places (Oversteps Books)Seasons of Damage and Beauty,The Ghostly Effect, and Telling The Time (Vole - Dempsey & Windle)

His website is at: https://paulsurman.weebly.com/

Lizzie Ballagher

Just call me Tess

Born in a low-raftered room,

June baby in a house of shadows,

you were puny & poorly,

not expected to live,

set to sleep in trembling hope

in the rough wooden cradle:

rocked, rocked on the chestnut floor

beside a brass bedstead.

And you surprised them all: survived

in the warm world of women—mother,

grandmother, sisters—while your father shrank away

and you grew past our Dorset schooling

to dream the cottage garden spiked

with flowers like church clock-towers—

gothic spires in a drift of rose-petals & perfume…

though darkened by Bockhampton’s woodland.

I see you in the church-minstrels’ gallery,

bow in hand, eyes ranging our gathering

from aloft. Small, clever—set

to charm us all: No escape from you,

not even in church, where—with brothers,

fathers, uncles all—you played your music

like men at a country fair: to catch our eyes,

to catch at our hearts….

And, Tom, Jemima’s son: you fairly won my own.

But you grew famous, rich, and strange to us

who’d been your playmates years before. Forgot

our names. You grew to be much more than fiddler:

poet, storyteller, grower of flowers, architect,

dreamer, reader, scholar…and—I know—

one who cheated women. You looked right through me

at the garden gate when I was first with child.

Although you asked me kindly how I did,

you feigned not knowing who I was. Was my name

so soiled? This hurt my heart; it cut me deep.

Just call me Tess, I told you,

or Fanny Robin: foolish lass to get a child

without its father. So, away with you

and play your saddest song for Dorset girls

that men have done great wrong.

For sure, indeed, you were a man

of music & fine words; a fiddler,

your words tumbling to the page

like silver bars of music from the gallery—

beguiling, confusing, seducing.

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/

Simon Maddrell

turned upside-down

using slates from the roof

bring my seventies stone patio

up to a retro state of shattered

at times we need to take down  

layered tiles that shield us ––

smash into unavoidable pieces

slated fragments fill my paths

the cracks help the storms seep

in a good way, like plants root

i sit on the old cartwheel bench ––

my broken remains, listen to wrens

and robins instead of facing all that

common gull shit, i smell compost

— scent hyacinths in sky

Goldfinches

for Robert Hamberger

Painted beauties visit both our gardens.

Rob offers sunflower seeds, eagerly

pecked, mine only devour nyger, in spite

of being given the two –– I wonder

whether they are settling for second best

or if they are happy to accept whatever

is on offer –– maybe these dead seeds are

an acquired taste like sweetbreads. Like me.     

The finch’s markings bewitch me for all their

twitchy suspicion. Glad Rob’s not like that

apart from the colours of his kindness. Now

I know they prefer teasel & thistle, I never

thought I’d say –– you accept what you can

at my age. Maybe third best isn’t so bad.

my walls are made of bungaroosh

lots of soft stuff, agèd lime flaking

but also half bricks, cobblestones

in-between pebbles, broken shells

& coral, which just goes to show

we all have a bit of sea inside us.

Of course, there’s flint that could

start a fire, be a weapon or a tool.

The walls of my home are the same

inside & out — hidden by stuccoed

façades. But my walled garden is

unabashed & naked to the eye ––

shuttering formed the four walls

excluding those who believe

it is the worst material in the world.


Mouse Run

It’s as if a mouse is hiding — in wait every day

for me to do the gardening –– then jumps nine

steps, vaulting the door frame into the kitchen.

On those nights, I catch one in a humane trap.

This might be a coincidence, but it is not

the same mouse –– except for that time

I carried one to the compost heap for a treat,

which it clearly regarded as a day-excursion.

Now I take them up the road to World Peace

Gardens in the hope they find solace

perhaps even a greater sense of purpose

than the creamed hazelnut mix at the end

of a plastic tunnel. Maybe this is what’s meant

by a humane trap –– making the same mistakes

but with a refined repetition. That much I know

having trampled many criss-crossed paths

filled with plenty of sex, drugs & ice cream.

Every time I tend my garden, I am juggling

with death but in search of bread, perhaps

like the mouse, or maybe mice prefer to eat

the hearts of seeds, leaving husks like skeletons

for pigeons to pick over. I favour different avian                      

visitors, even yearn for flashes of jay and a robin

to bring back my dead, remind me to live outside

a plastic tunnel, watching nature pass me by.

Simon Maddrell appears in Gutter, Magma, MODRON, Poetry Wales, SAND, Southword, Stand, The Moth, The Rialto, Under the Radar, and others.

Pamphlets: 2020: Throatbone, UnCollected Press; Queerfella, Joint-winner, The Rialto Open Pamphlet Competition.

PBS Selections: Isle of Sin, Polari Press, 2023; The Whole Island, Valley Press, 2023; a finger in derek jarman's mouth, Polari Press, 2024.

Polari Press published Patient L1 in Feb 2025. 

Out-Spoken Press will publish Simon's debut collection in Feb 2026.

Simon Maddrell (he/him/they)

@simonmaddrell

Instagram / Facebook / Bluesky / Threads

YouTube / SoundCloud / LinkedIn

Website: https://simonmaddrell.com        

Trisha Broomfield

The Deep Midwinter

‘A garden on a plate? That’s a new one on me,’

Mum perplexed, reached for two dinner plates,

‘The teacher said by Friday,’ we reminded her.

Our garden in Brisbane had towering eucalyptus and pampas grass,

we couldn’t imagine that fitting on a plate,

‘The best one wins a prize,’ I eyed the plates hopefully.

Mum passed us plastic bags

‘We’ll need soil, all gardens must have soil, go on.’

My sister and I dug up stony Cotswold soil,

Mum built a raised bed on each plate,

‘We’ll need plants.’

We stared out of the kitchen window

everything seemed too big to put on a plate

Mum’s eyes fixed on the washing line,

‘Of course!’ She lit a cigarette.

Many Rothman’s later,

she had enough spent matches

to make a picket fence around each soil patch.

Dad added a washing line of cocktail sticks and string,

a path of sliced potato stepping stones.

‘Vegetables!’ Mum was getting into the swing,

we rolled Plasticine parsnips, carrots, clumpy cabbages.

‘They can’t be the same.’

Inspired, Mum reached for the sieve,

icing sugar sifted like snow onto my sister’s garden.

‘There, the deep midwinter, that’s a winner.’ Mum beamed.

We carried our plated gardens in biscuit tins to school

where other plates were gathered

verdant green with velvet pansies,

our gardens were as out of place as we were.

But much to everyone’s surprise Miss Coulson fell in love

with the deep midwinter, awarding it first prize.

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 Cranleigh Book Festival and are looking forward to performances at the Guildford Fringe, Petersfield Museum and the Aging Well Festival in Brighton, all in September.

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, most recently May 8th.

Find her poetry on Instagram @magentapink22 @boominglovelies

Dinah Livingstone

Another May Day

I no longer get to Minsmere every Spring

but still walk through my local public gardens,

where also in young leaf the may tree

froths with its starry blossom

and hope springs anew for our species

becoming finally kinder and free.

In the park I see young people

running or sitting together on the mound.

They are so beautiful,

enjoying their Maytime,

loving as they can.

First of May. First of May,

kind sun, shine on us today.

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

Inge Milfull

Medieval Merchant’s House, Southampton, Easter 2024

In the enclosed garden

I sat, out of the coastal wind—

beside me the high old wall,

plain, but not blank,

sunlight reflecting off irregular stone,

patched mortar between.

Nobody else arrived out back—

there was only me on the one bench,

a sparsely planted garden bed,

the door of the utility shed.

A load off my feet,

a load off my mind,

as I warmed after wind chill—

downslope the sparkle of the Solent.

Inge Milfull is half German, half Australian. She grew up in Germany and now works in Oxford as a lexicographer. She now writes mostly in English. She is a member of the Back Room Poets and runs one of their poetry workshops.

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That completes this episode. If you have not already listened, please go to https://creators.spotify.com/pod/show/kathleen-mcphilemy/episodes/Poetry-Worth-Hearing-Episode-33-e33a0st. You can also find it on You Tube, Audible and Spotify podcasts. Comments on this episode and suggestions for the futuree are very welcome and should be sent to poetryworthhearing@gmail.com.

Next month's episode has the prompt 'borders' This can be the border between countries, the border on your page or any other liminal place. Submissions of recordings of up to 4 minutes of unpublished poems plus texts plus author bio should be sent to

poetryworthhearing@gmail.com .