Poetry Worth Hearing: Episode 40

Welcome to the 40th episode of Poetry Worth Hearing, which you can find on You Tube, Audible or Spotify podcasts or at https://creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/kathleen-mcphilemy/episodes/Poetry-Worth-Hearing-Episode-40-e3guthk This feels quite an achievement. We have had so many wonderful poems and poets over the past four years and I hope you will feel this episode is no exception. I just want to make one alteration to the submission policy for future episodes, which is that should you have been included in the current episode, you do not submit for the following one. This is to try and keep the door open to new contributors.

This month's interview is with Steve Ely, well known as a poet and a teacher and as a challenging voice in poetry circles. In addition to talking about his life in poetry, he gioves a reading, at the end of the episode, from his long poem, Orasaigh. Although Steve was not responding to this month's prompt of 'time', this poem reaches back into history and geologial time.

Poems submitted on the theme of time ranged through philosophical reflections to personal memories. Poets included in this section are Maureen Jivani, Steve Xerri, Bethany Rivers, Stephen Paul Wren, Sara Stegen, Christopher Horton and Paul Stephenson.

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Steve Ely is an award-winning poet, novelist and biographer. He is also Reader in Creative Writing at the University of Huddersfield and Director of the Ted Hughes Network. His most recent publications are Eely (Longbarrow Press) and Orasaigh (Broken Sleep) (both 2024). Among other publications are:

The European Eel (Longbarrow Press, 2021)

Lives of British Shrews (Broken Sleep, 2023)

Lectio Violant (Shearsman 2021)

Incendium Amoris (Smokestack, 2017)

Englaland (Smokestack,2015)

Oswald's Book of Hours (Smokestack,2013)

He is also editor of Apocalyptic Landscape: Poems from the Expressionist Poetry Workshop (Valley Press, 2024)

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Maureen Jivani

Galaxia

Wandering the universe in search of a god I find the stars and planets holding on to silence though all is flux. I carry a watch. Its fingers spinning. Each planet I greet is out of time. Each star falling apart, describing dis-aster. Hours pass, or possibly decades and the cold burns fast. I turn and run for home, which is light years away – my heaven-swept mother at its hearth.

black holes

time doubling back –

stars fall towards you.

Quantum

            Remember me. Someday I’ll be a star: words emblazoned on your t-shirt the day you rocked up to The Saturday Show, sparks in your eyes, hoping the cameras might pick you out from all the little lights and spinning planets so full of hope. What a day! The stars lined up. You sang. You danced . How you danced! Back home that evening, exhausted, you fell asleep before your dreaming head had time to show or tell.

folding your t-shirt

time collapses

stars will hold you

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 currntly busy with her next collection. https://www.maureenjivanipoet.co.uk

Steve Xerri

Point Cloud : Above Whitestone

– for Judith Adams

the distance paced by these two figures along the horizon

corresponds to a good hour, as they track back to the house

for a pot of tea & then – as one hurtles away on a train & space

opens up between them – return to lives running separate but held

in a mental point cloud, replayable 3-D scan of the sheltering declivity

of moorland where their walk veered & conversation wandered

from one idea to another : the data map of a perfectly ordinary day

above Whitestone, to be re-examined from various angles as passing

years alter what they know of what they knew – & in the future,

meaning today & miles away, the task will be to fire up the laptop

& delve spits deep through the layers to excavate whatever details

have been waiting all these decades to be identified, some by now

sunk almost from reach, others pushed upward to the light,

distributed across axes x y & z (west to east, north to south,

rockbed to skyline) & ingrained in the geology of the day – fragments

of rotted gateposts; honeycombed bones; roots of bracken splicing

the peat; abraded chunks of glass; bottletops & corroded coins;

bird skulls & flakes of adder skin; rusty wire still snagging tufts

of wool : the flotsam of a landscape adrift on tannin-dark streams,

with the odd ripple of gritty black infolded where a hearth once

burned long before this tract of spongy ground registered the tread

of our two walkers following old paths of sheep-lads & weavers –

it seeming always, then as now, to be the moment just before

the hidden is uncovered – a fragment of mother-of-pearl under drenched

foliage, a forgotten phrase emerging from paragraphs of talk to reveal

some deeper meaning : & maybe this time, looking up into brightness

for the length of a blink, the viewer will catch the contour

of summer cumulus solid-seeming as carved marble towering overhead

while the two moving figures drift from pivot to pivot & spend ordinarily

perfect hours looping twines of talk around, as always, everything

(A point cloud is a digital grid created by a 3-D scanner to represent an object, terrain, building or interior, which enables everything it has registered to be replicated in great detail and rotated in virtual space to be viewed from any angle.)

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.

Bethany Rivers

In the executioner’s blade of my timeline

your death shines dark.

The blade is blinding

in its reflection of the sun,

cuts shadow

from object.

It stands

in the back garden

of my childhood,

a monument.

The lawn is so green

it hurts.

Do not be fooled

by the diamond

necklace of dew:

it is lean with hunger,

can slice your fingerprint

clean.

The wooden frame

is old and rotten,

has known the blood

of the innocent.

Where there was

a single thread of time

it is now divided

into the before

and after.

Touch

   ‘A touch is enough to let us know

   we are not alone in the universe, even in sleep’

                                                        Adrienne Rich

in winter you can’t do this

walk barefoot on the earth

feel the soil kiss your sole

today my left heel and right bridge

ache for the earth

to feel closer to her

parched for the touch of a lover

to hold and kiss

that my feet may be honoured

by another or by the homeland –

that year of lockdowns

when the sun was so dazzling

trees began their season-long

thirst for raindrops rivulets

too early the bluebells arrived

denied the touch of another human

the wind was the only one

my skin felt the breath of

the oak at the end

of a mile of country lane

the only one to rub my back

my greatest birthday gift

a hug from my housemate

their stomach rises falls with mine

the desert my skin entered

how my being didn’t understand

two metres apart at all times

the throb in my head my body

everyone is too far away

now we’re all posted

into 2 cm boxes on a screen

to hear each others’ voices

but not see their eyes

we see partial glimpses

of private rooms we’ve never seen before

we don’t see the invisible wounds

of not touching not smelling:

I remember a moment years ago

my palm caressed by a circling tongue

Bethany Rivers has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and has two collections: the sea refuses no river, from Fly on the Wall Press, and Off the wall, from Indigo Dreams.  She is the author of Fountain of Creativity: Ways to nourish your writing, from Victorina Press.  She teaches creative writing courses and mentors writers one to one. www.bethanyrivers.com

Stephen Paul Wren 

The day Argentina won the football World Cup for the first time

My Time Machine took me to the settee.

By a table covered with cake and tea.

I sat next to small me on my birthday.

Auntie Sue smiled and said hip hip hooray.

Ticker tape fell from the sky on tv.

Orange, blue and white film filled my young eye.

My parents rooted for the Netherlands.

I heard a cluster of noise from the stands.

Uncle Pete told me about the whistle.

Then, I thought of the match winner’s gristle.

The strain on his hot, connective tissue.

Mario Kempes, half the world loves you!

Stephen Paul Wren received his PhD in organic chemistry from the University of Cambridge. Stephen launched and developed the Molecules Unlimited poetry community. This innovative group explores the intersect of poetry and the chemical sciences. He can also be found on Instagram/Threads @luke12poetry.

Stephen’s poetry can be read at www.stephenpaulwren.wixsite.com/luke12poetry and he has written many books. ‘Elementar’ (a collaboration with visual artist Laura Kerr) was published by Paper View Books in 2024; ‘Formulations’ (co-written with Dr Miranda Lynn Barnes) was published by Small Press in 2022; and ‘A Celestial Crown of Sonnets’ (co-written with Dr Sam Illingworth) was published by Penteract Press in 2021. His poem sequence 'A Runner's Lament' was published by Ice Floe Press in March 2025. Atomic Bohemian will publish his book ‘Permanence’ (co-written with Lesley Anne Curwen) in December 2025 (pre-orders are open now), and Turas Press will publish ‘The Chemistry of Emotion (co-written with Fiona Perry) in 2026. Hot off the press, Stephen's book of poems called  'Blood Women' was published by Parlyaree in November 2025.

Christopher Horton

Clutter Jar

The Gatecrashers

These two poems have been recorded, at my request, by Christopher from his new book, Clutter Jar, published by Broken Sleep Books.

Sara Stegen

Bottling time

Levi told me he tried

his hand at brewing

his beer in his bathtub.

I wonder how

you bathe

while brewing and

bottling beer.

I never bottled beer –

or any kind of wine

I think perhaps it is akin

to bottling time.

Capture a certain age

a certain time

a certain day in spirit.

To capture it in glass

conserve the heady feeling

save it for a bad day.

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.

Paul Stephenson

First Tram, Brussels

i.

There you are again                with the distant rumble

coming from Heysel               direction Churchill

me sitting up peering             leaning over to see

what time it must be               that digital red 5:23

ii.

That 5:23 and you again         as you each morning

awake in the dark                   with you in my head

the wet-haired commuters     emerging from below

going nowhere fast                 like my thoughts of you

iii.

There I am again                     not dressed gone noon

busied by the chat                  scrolling posts and feeds

thrown by the flash                of your breakfast face

the grind of beans                   the gas blue with you

Last Orders

The middle-aged guy in the open shirt, black t-shirt,

at the round table, is me. He closes his laptop

as she arrives with a beer, looks at him with pity

because it’s late and why is he by himself, working.

You know, I do have a life…, he says to her in his head,

…and it wasn’t work, really, I was just writing.

A large group at the next table, people chatting

on the pavement out through the window.

He sees the hands of the clock on the town hall.

I could go back…, he thinks, …after this one,

 Ne

but I should stay here in the noise, and with the blank,

because something will, it will, it is bound to come.

He stares at the empty, the ring stains on wood.

She tours the tables a final time, calls le dernier verre.

Paul Stephenson’s debut collection Hard Drive (Carcanet, 2023) was shortlisted for the Lambda Literary Award and Polari Book Prize. He recently co-edited the ‘Ownership’ (92) issue of Magma Poetry and helps programme Poetry in Aldeburgh.

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The episode concludes with Steve Ely's reading from his long poem, Orasaigh.

I hope you have enjoyed this episode and that you will share it with others.

You can find it at https://creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/kathleen-mcphilemy/episodes/Poetry-Worth-Hearing-Episode-40-e3guthk or on You Tube, Audible or Spotify podcasts.

Next month's episode will have the theme 'colour'. Please send your submissions as recordings of up to 4 minutes of unpublished poems, with texts and a short author bio.

The theme for May will be 'weight' and for June, it will be 'trees'.

From now on, I am asking poets not to submit for the next episode if they have been included in the present one.

Submissions should be sent to poetryworthhearing@gmail.com as should any comments or suggestions.