Poetry Worth Hearing: Episode 36

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.

The feature for this month is an exhilarating and playful presentation by Elvire Roberts and Rachel Goodman of their collaborative poetry collection, Knee to Knee. I met these two poets at the Tears in the Fence Festival in September and as well as being excited by their performance on stage, I realised how well it would work on Poetry Worth Hearing. I asked them if they would do a recording and, very kindly, they agreed. As well as taking liberties with language and how it sounds, their poems are also notable for how they look on the page and include some innovative punctuation which it is well worth seeing for yourself. Publication details are given below.

Other poets in the episode are Maureen Jivani, Helen Overell, Paul Stephenson, Kate Young, Richard Lister, Sara Stegen, Dorothy Yamamoto, Trish Broomfield, Sarah Mason and Lizzie Ballagher.

You can access the podcast on this link: or go to Audible, Spotify podcasts, or You Tube.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/6R8PXnk1CJ4cXMkogb9hOz?si=ktdGLj_zQbq2ydvdVP1Nig

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Elvire Roberts is a Queer poet and signed language interpreter. She is widely published in journals including 14 Magazine, Dark Mountain, Finished Creatures, Magma, Reliquiae, The Rialto, Tears in the Fence, Tentacular, and anthologies The Language of Salt, Ten Poems About Getting Older, Apocalyptic Landscape, More Song 2025. Her debut pamphlet is North by Northnorth (Five Leaves Press). Elvire can be found at:  www.elvireroberts.co.uk and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/elvire.roberts.3

Rachel Goodman used to be an actor and mime artist.  Then she worked for BBC Radio and TV as a presenter.  Now she lives in Norfolk and writes poetry.  After gaining an MA in poetry from UEA, she has been widely published in journals including Magma, Aesthetica, Finished Creatures, Under the Radar, Poetry Salzburg Review, Tears in the Fence, Ink Sweat & Tears, Lighthouse.  She has been twice shortlisted for the Bridport Prize, and has won or been placed in several other international competitions.  In 2026 she takes up the Etchells Fellowship at Durham University.

Rachel can be found on Facebook and Instagram at https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100010145655829 and @rachelmwgoodman

Knee to Knee (Dialect Press) is a collaborative, synergetic poetry book, each poem co-written by Rachel Goodman and Elvire Roberts.  It is available to order via your local bookstore or direct from Dialect Press on this link.

The next Knee to Knee reading is at Wymondham Words literature festival on Saturday 29th November 2025. 

Dialect Writers is a Community Interest Company committed to investing in literature and writer development.  Their publishing arm is currently crowdfunding to publish innovative, collaborative works while treadingly lightly on the planet, championing voices that thrive in collective, cross-disciplinary action.

https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/dialectpress

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Maureen Jivani

Alma Makes a Home for Ghost Children

 

All the children

are fully fleshed

pyjama-dressed 

and smiling

in their dormitories

for in-between

the midnight sherbets

and the knickerbocker-glories

they leap-frog 

through the night

by candlelight,

play snakes and ladders

up

and 

down

they

go 

and never watch

the sour-faced clock

and never know a moment’s loss.

In the Mouth of the Mersey Tunnel 

Snug on the living-room couch you’d drag the dark

                        blanket over our heads, play Lost in Space

and space was always The Tunnel

and the mouth of The Tunnel was swallowing cars,

                        motorbikes, red lorries, yellow lorries, caravans,

charabancs to cheer us on, realise our dreams

                        of seaside trips, candyfloss, ice-cream.

And space was always The Tunnel 

                                                     swallowing stars,

lining its throat with blind cat’s eyes

                        as traffic purred, roared, snarled, 

then we’d crawl out from beneath our cover,

                                                           curious moles blinking

into the light and on we’d go,

                        never looking back, dashing feverishly

past the space-occupying lesions in your brain,

                        Clatterbridge with its Disney-covered walls.

Maureen Jivani's poems have been published widely. She has a pamphlet of poems, My Shinji Noon, and a full collection, Insensible Heart, published by Mulfran Press. She has an MPhil in writing and is currently busy with her next collection.

Helen Overell

Way back in Liverpool

Overnight Kippers cured in Lourdes

appeared — strung aloft along lines

on either side of Union Street,

the entire catch turned from flattened

salt-sweet flags to bloated bunting —

Something rotten in the House of ...

cue the drum-thump Orange brigade —

bowler-hatted, banner-bearing —

poker faces shifted to snarls.

Likely lads — butter wouldn't melt ... —

kept well clear, heard how drummers gagged,

marchers retched, followers broke rank,

while mothers — ignorance is bliss —

prayed double-overtime on beads

hidden deep in apron pockets.

Helen Overell writes:- I have work in several magazines and some of my poems were highly commended

or placed in competitions including the Poetry Society Stanza Competition 2018 and

the Poetry News Members' poems Summer 2020. My first collection Inscapes &

Horizons was published by St Albert's Press in 2008 and my second collection

Thumbprints was published by Oversteps in 2015. A booklet of my poems

Measures for lute was published by The Lute Society in 2020. I take an active role

in Mole Valley Poets, a Poetry Society Stanza group.

Paul Stephenson

Rehabilitation

After the war, the officers were sent to university

to help with their insertion back into society.

My grandfather propped himself up at the bar

of The Eagle pub on Bene’t Street, Cambridge.

He got chatting to a college don, confessed

he was toying with coming up to read for a degree.

I was thinking of mechanical engineering, he said.

Man, what on God’s earth for!?, asked the don,

when you’re already a practiced army engineer.

He said, Come to my rooms, we’ll talk further,

so my grandfather went, spent three years juggling

Shakespeare, Chaucer, Keats and Shelley instead.

Treasure Hunt

after Meg Cox

When I remember Mantova,

it’s not Romeo banished

or the Palazzo Ducale – it’s you

in t-shirt and shorts

disappearing round corners,

leaving me hand-written clues.

Passing GO

We played this game where I appeared nonchalant

but was dying inside. We played it for several years

and the rules of the game were such: I’d hope for this

moment, this feeling, this declaration, this realisation

after all this time, and keep moving round the board

in a clockwise direction, hopping forwards, onwards,

throwing dice, moving my small hat, iron, vintage car,

as we both went about buying hotels, taking it in turns

to pocket the community chest, round and round until

one day I got to play my Get Out of Jail for Free card.

Paul Stephenson’s first collection Hard Drive was published by Carcanet in 2023. It was shortlisted for the Lambda Literary Award and Polari Book Prize. He has three pamphlets: Those People (Smith/Doorstop, 2015), The Days that Followed Paris (HappenStance, 2016), written after the Paris terrorist attacks, and Selfie with Waterlilies (Paper Swans Press, 2017). Paul has an MA in Creative Writing (Poetry) from the Manchester Writing School. He co-edited the ‘Europe’ and ‘Ownership’ issues of Magma Poetry. He helps programme the Poetry in Aldeburgh festival. He is from Cambridge and lives in Brussels.

Kate Young 

Checkmate

It is 4 years 6 months since he had his last fix,

since he took his last drink and, in that time

he has fathered two beautiful girls.

He has taught the eldest to play chess,

to guide her hand the way he guided mine

across the lacquered, chequered board.

How I loved the black horse, its carved mane

with a knight’s ability to hop and jump

over danger in triangular configuration.

It is a typical Sunday afternoon until we hear

ghost-knuckles rap the glass of the door,

and standing there is the same old dealer

wearing the smirk of an undefeated King

and bearing a gift – the white powder

smiling with promise in late June sunshine.

It exchanges hands, slips into a pocket

and the game recalibrates, his daughter

bolting over the board, hot on my hooves.

Kate Young’s poetry has appeared in webzines/magazines nationally and in Canada. It has also featured in the anthologies Places of Poetry and Write Out Loud. Her pamphlets A Spark in the Darkness and Beyond the School Gate have been published with Hedgehog Press. Find her on X @Kateyoung12poet or her website kateyoungpoet.co.uk

Richard Lister

What if, as Venice sweeps

into Polesden Lacey

- with the purr of a Morgan,

not the dip and slide

of a gondola’s pole -

one mask conceals

an uninvited guest?​

Papier maché layers

warmed by her skin

mould to enfold

just enough of her face

to confuse the gaze

of doorman, hostess

and the man in her sights.

She enters the ballroom,

her Columbina mask

a swish of lustrous

black feathers.

He’s dancing a quickstep

with a wasp-waisted

brunette she’s never seen.

In this crowded room,

where couples touch

as they turn on the beat

he never feels the paper

slide into his pocket.

So it’s later, on the lawn

for a smoke, he reads

‘I know’.

Fate shuffles, we play

[Boy enters]

I am caught.

Brilliant light marks my face,

dust burns on the footlights.

Vladimir: You have a message from Mr Godot?

Vladimir and Estragon, battered bowler hats

like down at heel Laurel and Hardys,

cavort through the loops of their lines.

One day they miss two pages, press on seamlessly.

Boy: I was afraid, sir

that I'd fail to give your cue,

that you'd yank my arm even rougher than scripted.

I try to be the boy, stop acting,

yet it’s still me on stage,

fourteen, upper lip with tufts of moustache.

The director had chosen me for the part,

no audition, seen something in me:

a stillness perhaps, or innocence.

Drunk with this, I could reel onto stage.

Boy: What am I to say to Mr Godot, sir?

In the dressing room, I try out signatures

in green biro on the back of a flyer,

opt for italics with bold sweeping capitals.

Mirrors blaze from unshaded bulbs.

We move from a studio theatre to St Georges,

Tufnell Park - 4 km north of the West End -

play into cavernous space. They could’ve

said yes, the smattering could’ve

become fulsome applause but

[Silence]

Estragon: Well shall we go?

Vladimir: Yes, let’s go.

[They do not move]

'Fate shuffles' is an Arthur Schopenhauer quote

Richard Lister MA, ACC

Poetry Judge, Mentor & Workshop Facilitator

Mole Valley Poet

(M) 07484 100450

Scattered with Grace 'abounds with light & shade' 'sumptuous poetry collection'  

Edge & Cusp 'a truly beautiful collection of poetry that will leave you changed' 

Workshops 'really enjoyable', 'stimulating' & 'thought-provoking' 

Sara Stegen

Do for play today

Kids play whenever wherever

even if we tell them to ‘Stop!’

Because it is dangerous

or bothers us – still they still play

they do it anyway

As babies they play with their feet

the most natural way of play

shake rattles chew on cuddly toys

we sing them songs

tickle them or hide behind our hands

they high scream with delight

when we reappear

Kids play for years and years

growing up there is so so much play

we never run out of things to play with any way

We turn serious later in life

a little dull perhaps

we play at being grown-up

serious – you know

life boobytraps and handicaps – us, you know

our playing tendencies collapse

and we relapse

often play is watching sports

or going to the gym

life traps us

we don’t go out and play

we don’t play and play collapses

But tell me when was the last time

you sat on a swing

or swung a stick or threw a pebble

plucked a flower’s petals or

rolled around in stinging nettles

when was the last time

you swung and kicked

out your legs

as high you could go?

Promise me

will you go out – today

and tell me – later

what you did do for play today?

Sara Stegen is a Dutch poet and non-fiction author who writes about land, family, nature, and neurodivergence. Home is a boulder-clay ridge in the northern Netherlands where her bike shed contains 8 bicycles and where she is working on a memoir about apples and autism and her first poetry collection.

Dorothy Yamamoto

Playing table tennis at 104 Woodfield Drive

My sister and I

shunt the chairs into corners,

tighten the butterfly screws

each end of the net, scratching the table’s varnish.

There’s a moment of pure calm

when I hold the little white ball

between finger and thumb

then we’re off, whooping, yodelling,

tripping over the fireside rug, chair legs,

rolling ourselves in curtains,

while the ball does its dotted dance

off pebbledashed walls and ceiling,

zinging along a picture rail

sometimes hitting the cat (ten points),

or leaping into the mouth

of the open stove (game over),

and all the time we’re thinking, breathless,

yes, yes,

we’re better than this, we’re bigger.

That night I dream the perfect shot—

a cannon off all the cushions—

which flings the windows open, soars

above the swings, the neighbours’ gardens

to print itself on sky—

a daytime moon, the blue air of the future.

Dorothy Yamamoto is the rep for Oxfordshire Stanza 2. Her most recent collection is Honshű Bees (Templar)

Trish Broomfield

Double Blank

There’s a hush in the snug, Jim’s laid double six

Frank’s in trouble, eyes fixed on his domino pips.

Behind the bar Sal hugs a rum and black

Jim, leaning back, clasps his Red Barrel pint

Frank lays six to six, a five the other side, ‘Your shout.’

‘Easy,’ Jim lays five and three.

Knowing that Frank will cheat if he leaves his seat

he shouts, ‘Same again Sal, love.’

Sal’s kicked off a shoe,

rasps her heel on ragged flagstones,

her Embassy smoke blown to the rafters,

Jim’s eyes return to the table

Frank’s butcher’s fingers pick from the pile

Jim gives a lopsided smile

Sal wiggle-walks, one shoe off,

giggles, slops beer, steers her way

through farmers talking sheep.

By the fire Andy’s feigning sleep.

Frank peeks at his remaining pips,

all fours and twos, no way he’s prepared to lose

Jim’s counting the stones in the pile

he’ll win by a mile.

Frank levers up, heads for the gents

Jim winks, from his pocket pulls a double blank.

On his return Frank trips, lands on Andy, who

into his outstretched palm slips a double blank.

Wrestling

Wire-cut cheddar came from Mrs Bale’s store

where bacon rested ready to be sliced, newspapers spread unread.

A haze of coffee and Glade was over laid with the waft of

burnt breakfasts, Mr Bale fed his to the dog

before taking twenty Silk Cut from the shelf behind the till

sucking his fill by the back door.

We bought Mother’s Pride,

watched our cheese rolled in greaseproof, ends tucked in.

Saturday At 4.00 p.m. the ritual begins;

Mum spreads Flora over each white slice

cuts cheese, reaches for Branston.

Boiling water dances in the pot with Typhoo leaves

Dad switches on the TV

sits in his swivel chair, Mum settles on the floor,

Billy and I slump on the sofa,

share a Pryex plate of cheese and pickle.

Grunts from Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks fill the room

the Royal Brothers bounce in black and white

Jackie Pallow prances blondly

before giving his oppo the third degree.

Soon it is obvious we that we need more tea

but none of us want to take on the task

in case we miss the spectacle

of Kendo Nagasaki losing his mask.

Trish Broomfield has three pamphlets (published by Dempsey and Windle) and contributed to many anthologies. Her new collection, My Acrostic Mother, illustrated by Heather Moulson, is available to order online and at bookstores, including the new independent Paper Moon in Guildford.

She is a member of the Cranleigh Writers’ Group and is poet for the monthly Cranleigh Magazine. She, along with Heather Moulson and Sharron Green, performs as the Booming Lovelies poetry trio, who took part last month in the Brighton and Hove Aging Well Festival and are preparing for new dates in 2026

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

Instagram @magentapink22 @boominglovlies @cranleighwriters

Sarah Mason

The Games People Play

What can I say 

About the games people play?

We are kind, we are mean,

Friends become foes

Social interactions keep us on our toes; 

In love we fall,

Some stay in love

Others continue the game

Break ups and pain,

Family relations

Jubilees, jubilations,

For the unlucky few

A seat at the back of the queue; 

To win a primary goal,

Come out on top

Be the cream of the crop, 

Raise successful mini me’s,

Teaching ways and means 

For a winning move 

So much for them to prove,

In the games people play.

Sarah Mason is a member of The Cranleigh Writers.

' I am a hobby writer and poet, very new to poetry especially.

I have a very busy brain, which at times feels like the Arc de Triomphe! Writing, especially poetry helps to calm my mind traffic. I do have a lot to learn with regards to structure, punctuation even rhythms; as poems in my eyes are spoken songs, visual paintings. After all life itself is a rhythm of sorts.' 

Lizzie Ballagher

In the Scrabble Box

The cardboard tray in this old fifties’ box reveals

my parents’ troubled marriage somehow still intact,

epitomised in endless late-night games of Scrabble.

I check my mathematician father’s neat black numbering,

his flawless, quick-fire computation in column after column

but notice too his almost daily straight defeat:

my mother beat him,

high score after high score.

And, now and then, it seems,

he must have flung the board aside;

the sums are broken off, the game abruptly halted

after only three plays each.

They parted company after a score

of years, seven thousand games,

their words unscrambled later in divorce courts.

But now I remember my mother’s merry laughter,

my father’s head-shaking frustration

at all the bitter calculations.

And, buried under wooden tiles, under the cardboard tray,

I find that I’ve inherited some ancient tallies tucked

inside this Scrabble box and titled Jo vs Ji.

I loved them both:

the man of skilful numbers

and the woman of the winning words.

Cyber Pirates

No cutlass-carrying here.

No haul & splice the mainsail

eye-patch-wearing here.

No Blackbeard swearing

spit & swagger devil-may-caring

swashing & buckling here.

No gaudy parrot screeching here.

No cannonball balking,

no victim plank-walking,

no peg-leg tapping,

skull & crossbones flapping here.

But broadsides I’m firing every day

to drive the pirates far away

from this frail ship of words I sail.

Millennial pirates & AI bots hack

through consoles & decks, into the backs

of words & images never made for them.

Navigating safe channels & deep locks with ease,

they surf in, slice & splice in—disregarding

all the nuanced riggings of the writing—

no courtesy but cunning cut & paste...

and steal the treasure just the same.

These pirates have no name,

no tame landlubber nationality;

they have no face or comic fame,

nor any place to dwell but cyberspace.

They’re sneering, jeering, buccaneering:

beware them @ their game.

Ballagher's focus is on landscapes, both interior and exterior; also on the beauty of nature. Having studied in England, Ireland, and the USA, she worked in education and publishing. Her poems have appeared in print and online in all corners of the English-speaking world. Find her blog at https://lizzieballagherpoetry.wordpress.com/

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That's everything for this episode. Just to remind you. It can be found at https://open.spotify.com/episode/6R8PXnk1CJ4cXMkogb9hOz?si=ktdGLj_zQbq2ydvdVP1Nig or on You Tube, or Spotify and Audible podcasts.

Next month's episode will have the prompt of 'hiding and/or seeking'. Submissions should be up to 4 minutes of unpublished poems with texts and a brief bio. They should be sent to poetryworthhearing@gmail.com by November 18th.

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