Poetry Worth Hearing: Episode 34
- kathleenmcphilemy8
- Jun 26
- 9 min read
This is the 34th episode of Poetry Worth Hearing and the last before the summer. It opens with an interview from Theophilus Kwek, whose newest collection, Commonwealth, has just been published by Carcanet. In addition, we have an exciting group of poems on the theme of 'borders', including a couple of poems about Palestine by Jane Duran which she very kindly agreed to record for this episode. I am also delighted to have a poem especially written for this episode from Jessica Mookherjee. Other poets include Helen Overell, Lizzie Ballagher, Isabela Basombrio Hoban, Paul Walton, Jane Thomas, Gwyn Carney, Marco Giudici and John White.
Theophilus Kwek has published five full-length collections, including Moving House (2020) and now, Commonwealth from Carcanet. He has been shortlisted twice for the Siongapore Literature Prize, and his pamphlet, The First Five Storms (ignitionpress, 2017) won the inaugural New Poets' Prize. In 2023 he was the youngest writer and first Singaporean to be awarded the Cikada Prize by the Swedish Institute, for poetry that 'defends the inviolability of life' is part of the Forbes 30 Under 30 Class of 2024
Jess Mookherjee
|
Helen Overell
Embroidered panel — mid 1950's
for Pat
The panel unrolls — pieced pilgrims in muted
tones, appliquéd, embroidered by hand — strettle
stitch on this tunic, infill of double herringbone
on that over-garment, and look, here is an ox —
the coat in bold coral knots — and a woman
seated on a donkey, holding a child, swaddled,
who looks out on the world, and the rust-red
shadow of a cross in faded crottle-dyed blocks;
all robed with ply of needle on woven cloth,
eyes, large, in sketched faces outlined in finest
machine thread, tell of crossing borders, fleeing
from danger, seeking shelter, of weary footfall,
belongings in a bundle — the story, re-told
through millennia, threaded through all of time.
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. |
Lizzie Ballagher
an elm’s age
leaf trove lying long in peat
bears still in rust-scratched veins
in the fine quill
of its straightest stalk
the signature of sun risings,
settings, ten millennia ago;
the ink of chlorophyll grown green
before fields & farms—
perhaps before man
had ever planted grain:
leaf trove…love letters
printed in the press of peat,
templates for another, slower time
an elm’s age away:
leaves thin as the border
between then and now
between earth’s life
and loss
at words’ end
holding its breath
till it turns blue
then ultramarine
the sky drops day
lets blackbirds’ liquid song
fall silent
under the first bat’s
flickering
lets light go
from indigo
to purple
with a slow sighing
ruffling,
rippling my hair
my standing on end
on the back of my neck
and heavy hair—
dissolving day—
unmooring me
on the edge of day
between day & darkness
between light & the drawing down
of night’s black blind
on that narrow margin
where water meets soil,
green & growing things that reach
deep into clay
for sustenance
here the sky clarifies, lifts back,
mist dispersing
as low light dyes the icy river
to rose-water
where neither the reeds’ faint hiss
nor the fall of a willow
into the shallows
will stop us following
the long, low bank
going east & ever farther east
until another sunrise—
and the dreaming sea
Wildwoods
Sheep country, someone said
before we left
the house above the bay
to walk the coast-path
on a gritty day
that should have been April
but was wintry, grey:
wind bleating over walls
at every turn.
Rounding a blind bend
on the headland,
behind us rainbows
leaping over eastern heaths
gleefully as lambs in fields,
we were canopied, suddenly,
by oak-woods, beech-boughs—
wet trees flocking landward
under the drive of drizzle:
branches looped with lichen
thick as sheep’s wool
in wire—but pallid green,
shedding shawls
& fleeces that flapped
in the westerly: dimmed light
flickering between
in ghosts & gusts, in lobes
of epiphytes, moss stars….
Woody Bay: rainforest
abandoned by the ages—
ancient reliquary on western edges:
decked with pennywort—
with succulents’ green coins—
with hart’s-tongue ferns…
a coastal fringe as fine
and soft along the cliffs
as sheared merino.
Lizzie Ballagher's focus is on landscapes, both interior and exterior; also, on the beauty (and hostility) of the environment. Having studied in England, Ireland, and the USA, she worked in education and publishing. Her poetry has appeared in print and online in all corners of the English-speaking world. Find her blog at https://lizzieballagherpoetry.wordpress.com/ |
Isabela Basombrío Hoban
ABOVE CLOUDS
Trees reaching above clouds
Clouds reaching beneath
Orange trees in bloom
Walking by those fruits of good fortune
That hang heavy
And drop on the plaza
Witnessed by a dove
Fluttering in suspension
High above
From the terrace
A view
Of mountains oblivious to
Sunsets orange like oranges
While on the patio and dreaming of the desert
A tall thin-skinned green cactus
Lives in a pot
A strange and gentle creature
Isabela Basombrío Hoban is an award-winning poet and a multidisciplinary artist. Originally from Peru and living in Ireland, she is a bilingual poet writing in English and Spanish. Her recent books are "Nothing belongs to everyone" (Nada pertenece a todos), "Rain Love Death Poets" (Lluvia Amor Muerte Poetas) and “Another type of abbreviation” (Otro tipo de abreviatura 2024), all published by Ediciones Vitruvio. Her publishing houses are Ediciones Vitruvio in Madrid, Spain and Salmon Poetry in Ennistymon, Ireland. Isabela is the recipient of the 2023 Premio Nuevo Ateneo Online (New Athenaeum Online Award). The New Athenaeum Online Award recognizes the work of authors who have written an important work of great literary value and who strive to contribute to new forms of cultural diffusion to reach the reading public. The jury is composed of authors of recognized prestige. Isabela was a fellow with the "Next Generation Leadership Project" of the Rockefeller Foundation and has received awards for her poetry from the Mayo County Council Arts Section and Culture Ireland. |
Paul Walton
Elegy in Photographs
1.
We went outside
in the
sun.
Your banter had
me on the
run.
As you shot -
I quite forgot
all my best
rules
to look cool.
2.
I caught your
face on my
screen -
A face in
a place we’ve
been.
But your look
all focus
took
with thoughts of
what might have
been.
3
I read your
news in my
feed.
Such news you
don’t choose to
read.
Battles lost
and boundaries
crossed
It seems death
breeds rhymes and
dreams.
Paul Christopher Walton Born in Staffordshire, Paul read History at Brasenose College, Oxford, wrote Bluff Your Way in Marketing and helped unleash Quorn upon an unsuspecting world. In retirement, Paul combines two of his passions as The Brand Historian, guest lectures for the Oxford English Faculty, creates poetry anthologies (the latest, on the Côte d’Azur, has just been published) and can often be found on the Croisette in Cannes with his flute. |
Jane Thomas
My Father in his Coracle : Drift
At the edge of the river Styx
a frayed rope
ravels away like a cream eel
unclutched
coracle adrift
heading to where blue herons sleep
rift wing bats drink-dive
and unbodied moths test their wings
and thither in to the light
oarless
clipped silver under tongue
you follow
dawn threads
of apple mist
and wild thyme
weight gone
drifting into
willow
white
space
Jane Thomas has been highly commended in competitions including; The Bridport, Fish, Hippocrates, and Rialto. Her work has been published recently in Stand, Mslexia, and The Oxford Review of Books. She is currently completing a poetry collection on the theme of Alzheimer’s. |
Gwyn Carney
Out in the Styx
The old timbers grumbled
as she drove over the
wooden bridge
to visit the care home
on the other side
She waited...
cheap carpets, talc, Mint Imperials
stale urine
a new face approached
-Are you the doctor?
Only for the last thirty years
-Who have you come to see?
Don't you know? Didn't you call me?
-Room four is a cough
-Room nine wandering
-Room fourteen a rash
No names
Over the years she had tried
encouragement and compliments
cajoling and suggestions
but the TV blared
and drowned out all thought
Remembering Orpheus,
she had asked for music
and tried to transfer a patient
out but there were
objections
paperwork
funding problems
There is another way
she thought
There is a better place
Note from Gwyn Carney: I work as a GP and write in my spare time. This poem is about the border between life and death. I wrote it a few years ago and the Care home that inspired it (if that is the right word, conspired to create it might be better) completely changed during covid. The staff, of their own volition, decided to live in the home for 6 weeks at a time during the lockdowns, and got to know their residents so much more deeply and really cared for them. So there is hope! |
Jane Duran
These poems are taken from the most recent issue of Painted, Spoken, edited by Richard Price. www.paintedspoken.com which if you are quick you can obtain for free if you send an A5 SAE to the editor. They are part of a set of poems on Palestine which Jane is currently working on.
Jane Duran was born in Cuba and raised in the USA and Chile. Enitharmon Press published five collections of her poetry, including Breathe Now, Breathe (1995) which won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. Her most recent book, the clarity of distant things, was published by Carcanet in 2021. She received a Cholmondeley Award in 2005. |
Marco Giudici
US vs THEM
Contrails are cuts
in the sky
on my arms
cuts to welfare
this is warfare
us versus them
we drive past their
sandstone homes
this is unfair
you say as fumes
reclaim the air
this is warfare
us versus them
the hedges are high
so are the stakes
and wind turbine blades
severe your sky
this is warfare
us versus them
piccola mia
you must persevere
Marco Giudici is a British-Italian poet based in North Wales, who has adopted English as his main "lingua poetica". Marco's poems explore socially and politically charged themes such as social dislocation, inequality, migration and climate change. Marco will read some of his poems at the upcoming Spoken Word event at Llangollen Fringe Festival on 14 July. Some of his previous poems in Italian were shortlisted at national poetry awards including Premio Tirinnanzi and Lericipea. Marco obtained a PhD in History from Bangor University and currently works as a freelance writer, volunteers at a community garden and is also a passionate singer songwriter. |
John White
Donnybrewer
Two would be left, ‘Mousey’ and ‘Ginger’,
the ‘Johns’ they separated by our hair.
His garden backed on to the airfield
where the ball we lamped was scarred
and pocked and put on weight with water
so you shrank from its woozy flight
or ‘threw your head at it’ with eyes shut,
smudged and retted, until the light
drained off or the siren went
for the shift change up at Dupont.
And a change, in time, in the townland:
I’d find a route to ‘Grammar’, he
‘the Modern’, neither one would stay
to see it an extension of the runway.
John White was born and raised in County Derry. He lives near Oxford, where he works in a special needs school, and completed the Oxford Master’s Degree in Creative Writing, gaining a distinction. His poems have been commended in major competitions, including the Ginkgo Prize for Eco poetry, and published widely, including The North, Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry News, Poetry Wales, and Oxford Poets 2007 (Carcanet).Winner of the iOTA Shot Pamphlet Award 2023. Attachments |
That's all for this episode, which you will find online at https://creators.spotify.com/pod/show/kathleen-mcphilemy/episodes/Poetry-Worth-Hearing-Episode-34-e34nakt. You can also find it on Audible and You Tube podcasts. Please listen and share. The next episode is due in late September and prompts will be posted, probably next week, here, on Facebook and through email. If you would like to be added to the PWH email list you can fill in a contact form here, or email me at poetryworthhearing.com. Comments and suggestions can be made in the same way. I hope you enjoy this episode and that you have a good summer.
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