Poetry Worth Hearing: Episode 42

In this episode, you will hear an interview with Claire Crowther. She reads a couple of her favourite poems and gives a short reading from her own work. You cna find the episode on You Tube and Audible podcasts or at

Poets in the open submission section, where the theme this month was 'weight' include Eva Wal, Paul Stephenson, Dorothy Yamamoto, Lisa Kelly, Maureen Jivani, Alice Huntley, Sara Stegen, Richard Lister, Pat Winslow and Ben McGuire.

I have enjoyed choosing the poems for this episode, because poets have used the prompt to go off in more unexpected, sometimes oblique directions.

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Claire Crowther is a British poet and author of five full-length poetry collections, Stretch of Closures, The Clockwork Gift, On Narrowness, Solar Cruise and A Pair of Three and six pamphlets, Knithoard, Bare George, Silents, Incense, Mollicle, and Glass Harmonica. She is Deputy and Reviews Editor of Long Poem Magazine. She also teaches on the Creative Writing Masters' Course at Oxford University. Her collection of new and selected poems, Real Lear, was published by Shearsman in 2024.

Poets mentioned by Claire were the Anglo-Welsh poet, David Jones (1895-1974), and Lorine Niedecker, an American poet, (1903-1970).

She also referred to ergodic poetry, described by AI as 'verse that requires "nontrivial effort" from the reader to traverse and assemble the text. Coined by scholar Espen Aarseth, the term means the reader must actively participate—solving riddles, following hyperlinks, or piecing together fragmented pages—rather than simply reading linearly.'

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Eva Wal

The Scale

How much does a whale weigh

against a bullet in a child?

How much is a cup of tea

for a journey on water

with no shore?

How much is your love

scaled against justice for

a woman in a prison cell?

Is a planet worth less

seen from the whole of the universe?

How much do your belongings count

Your house your shelter your home

against a dictator’s will?

What’s the worth of your favourite things?

How do you measure memories?

How much does your childhood weigh

Can you trade it for feathers or for gold?

How much are your dreams

in a hand on the forehead of dying man?

How heavy is a flower or how

light against the grain of evil?

How much does the image of a god or

a goddess weigh against the mass of

people ready to kill for the idea of belief?

What weight needs a toe carrying a ballerina

or a tongue for a word of comfort or

a sting?

How much the devil is your money worth

And can you trade it for your fate?

How much is a weapon for wisdom?

A basket of sorrow

a quarrel a fight

for an eyeful of joy?

The amber of a happy moment

against the vastness of despair?

Can a trace of an artist’s single

brush stroke or a pencil’s line

compete with the colourful richness

of an Indian elephant decorated for

a festivity?

The whale in the ocean and the child

they ride the waves to a faraway shore

Eva Wal is a visual and multimedia artist as well as a poet and writer of short prose.

In 2009 she published her first poetry collection “Marmorsee” (marble lake).

In 2017 she founded the group „Dada was all good“ with participants of the workshops at the Arp Museum to meet members of Oxford Stanza 2 in Bonn.

Following the collaboration and friendship with members of Oxford Stanza 2 Eva started to write poems in English as well as translating poems.

In 2019 she edited a booklet with English-German poems, “Oxford Stanza 2 meets Dada war alles gut”, together with Bill Jenkinson and, more recently, she published a pamphlet of poems in German and English, Poems in the Hourglass - Gedichte im Stundenglas in Oxford.

Paul Stephenson

Leftovers

A small bowl of spaghetti.

A tea plate of crumbled feta.

Two fingers of red wine.

The anecdote half told.

A chunk of cheddar.

A crisp lettuce heart.

The joke that landed badly.

Three cherry toms.

A scoop of vanilla.

The song in my head.

My drunken confession.

Your hand on my arm.

Dropping in on my old work

It’s been a year. No card to swipe, I have to ring,

announce my name, get buzzed in. For an instant

in the lift, I hesitate between fifth and sixth.

Of course it was fifth. A giant cheese plant has

appeared where no cheese plant appeared before,

and a small display of brochures is fanned out

on a low table by a lime green Ikea Klippan sofa.

Seems Jacqui is covering reception over lunch.

Hello there, Paul she says, Can’t keep away, eh?

She tells me Philip is in, but Angela isn’t, gives me

a sticker for my lapel that says GUEST, which

fades in twenty-four hours. I complete my details

in the form on the clipboard (third biro lucky),

hear the water cooler halfway down the blue

carpet-tiled corridor gurgling for what seems like

an eternity, then Nicola’s light plimsoll footsteps,

the rollers of an office chair, clack of internal door.

Sometimes there’s a man with a guitar on his back

And when there is, he’ll walk right past

on his way, probably to play, or to practice,

give a lesson maybe. Later, when there’s a man

with a guitar on his back, he’ll go by the other way

having probably just played, practiced, his lesson over.

The hour may have passed. No, let’s say ninety minutes,

what with the walk there and back. And so the man

with the guitar on his back might still be walking,

his student a bit better at chords than they were

when they picked up the guitar an hour ago.

Choirboy

I quit the choir

because I didn’t believe in mornings

because I couldn’t do Sundays

because the get-up didn’t suit me

it was black and white

I quit the choir

because I didn’t reach the high notes

because the words weighed on me

because I only ever mouthed

too afraid to join in

I quit the choir

because I was waiting for the spurt

because it was starting to get late

because I was short for my age

they said the quiet one

I quit the choir

because I began to hear myself

because I began to suspect myself

because of voices in my head

I thought I knew my song

Paul Stephenson’s debut collection ‘Hard Drive’ was published by Carcanet in 2023 and was shortlisted for Lambda Literary Award and Polari Book Prize. He has three pamphlets including ‘The Days That Followed Paris’. He co-edited the ‘Europe’ (70) and ‘Ownership’ (92) issues of Magma and helps programme Poetry in Aldeburgh.

Dorothy Yamamoto

Heartstones

The rock you grubbed from the earth

fingers scrabbling for purchase

The granite egg on the beach

chosen from thousands

The cracked geode with its miraculous

starburst of light

The pebble—smoothed with touch—

that’s always in a pocket

The ones you carry with you

without knowing you’re carrying them

Nest

It’s made

to answer a body

and balances on my palm:

twigs and grasses, feathers,

gleanings of brushes—

woven by a bird

no heavier than a coin.

Now it is absence

like a hare’s form in a meadow

or the warm bed left

with the weight of your presence.

Dorothy Yamamoto is the rep for Oxfordshire Stanza 2. Her most recent collection is HonshūBees (Templar), and she also writes crime novels, as Mariko McCarthy.

Lisa Kelly

Design of Deaf-Aid and Conference Amplifiers with Corrected Characteristics, August 1938

The Post Office Engineering Department is considering

my request. I told them I want to take part in conferences.

As an officer of the Engineer-in-Chief’s Office, I want to get on,

want to hear what’s going on, want to be included.

Two amplifiers will have to be built – one for desk use,

one that is self-contained and portable with its own batteries.

One will sit under my desk like an obedient dog,

and one I will lug around like a pet tortoise.

Sometimes I just want to fit in, blend into the background

like anybody else. But now I will have to pipe up.

All that bother, all that building, all those batteries,

if I’m as buttoned up as my winter coat, will be a waste.

I’ll be a waste of time with my bulky attaché case.

Better perhaps to keep my ears shut, my mouth shut

and my ideas to myself. But I want this conference amplifier.

They tested me with an audiometer to measure my deafness.

I explained how I prefer my right ear to my left, how I sit

with people on my right if I can help it. Put my left ear

against the wall in the pub. Missing what’s said over a pint is one thing –

missing an opportunity for a pay rise is another.

I like to hold a telephone receiver to my right ear. They told me

it’s because it responds better to the higher speech frequencies.

Both my ears suffer from middle tone deafness, and I need

the maximum possible amplification. I know what that means.

It means I can’t sit less than ten feet from the microphone.

They will have to save me a spot at the front. I will turn up

with my case of batteries and headgear receiver, the weight

of two newborns. It’s 1938. Time to hear what’s going on.

Lisa Kelly's The House of the Interpreter (Carcanet) was a PBS Summer 2023 Recommendation. She was shortlisted for the 2024 Forward Prize for Best Single Poem - Written. She is an AHRC-funded PhD researcher at the University of Birmingham, exploring the climate crisis through the lens of British Sign Language. 

Maureen Jivani

                                      Justine

i pluck out                                                 a giant poppy

my heart                                                    in the breeze

place it                                                      and the other

on a scale                                                  white-knuckle

on another                                                 still rock

my fist                                                       in a hurricane

my heart                                                    my closed fist

my fist                                                       my open heart

in balance                                                  love them

one becomes                                             love them

                                      both?

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

Alice Huntley

Weight Lifting

The best prayer I’m learning is

a room in my head where I go through

the motions of wishing my own self well

like rubbing the hands of a traveller in from the cold.

Come in. It gets warmer every time.

There are four doors, and each one opens in turn.

Perhaps you arrive through the heavy one,

finely carved as is fitting for one I respect.

Please sit. Let me look at you, and I mean really look.

In this room it's not awkward at all.

Or maybe you enter shyly

through the soft curtains of one who is dear to me.

My heart swells with love and I weep at this chance

to spend time gazing full on your face, your limbs,

to contemplate your laughter.

You might come through the secret door of the stranger,

you are the lady in high-viz by the entrance to the tube

and I cannot recall your face nor you mine but we smile

in any case and let this unexpected visit be a kindness.

Only then I am ready for who will step through

the saloon doors of one with whom I have trouble.

The first time, in swung Jim,

that grand contrarian, the terror of every family Christmas

ten years dead and hands still too big for his body,

eyes like a wounded orangutan.

I did not know I still carried the weight of him.

Here's where we sat. Here's where I blessed him.

Here's where we finally said goodbye.

Alice Huntley is an estuary girl, born by the Humber and living by the Thames. She has an MA in Chinese Studies and writes & reads with local poetry groups in Barnes & Chiswick, London. Her work deals with memory and the body and has appeared in Mslexia, inksweatandtears,  Pennine Platform, London Grip and The Waxed Lemon. 

She offers this note on her poem: 'It’s based on my encounters with the buddhist loving kindness meditation, sometimes called ‘Metta’. It has a strong structure (almost like movements of a symphony that build to a finale) where you practice extending loving kindness to yourself, then someone you respect, then someone you love, then a stranger and finally someone "with whom you have trouble"’  

Sara Stegen

The weight of it

Sometimes I think I hear you say it

the thing that I am called

it’s been yours too

although you have left it on a gravestone

decades ago

It’s our anchor

it’s who we are

you heard it in that storm

when your husband yelled from the attic

he would have jumped after you

had you fallen too

he said so much later

It’s the thing that defines us

the letters strung together

can slip from our grasp

when storms come for us

when they drown out our self

and we slip underneath the waves

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.

Richard Lister

Leaning on you

Bayeux

One rose stem, swan-white petals

edged with pink, leans against your stone

like Lily, your girl, softened by wine,

shoes kicked off from dancing In the mood

with the piano, as always, not quite in tune.

You, tail gunner, shut off from the rest

of the crew, your hands in layers of gloves

- thin silk, blue wool, leather gauntlet -

scan the night for the faintest glint

of a German fighter plane: them or us.

The flower leans in with its scant weight

- even less as the petals dry and wilt -

still waiting for you with your broad hands

and mussed up hair. The stone,

limestone smooth as cream,

neatly chiselled: A cherished memory,

Malcolm Burgess 6 June 1944 Age 21.

Which leaves me wondering.

Eighty years have passed,

so who still holds you dear,

who knelt and left this rose?

Richard Lister MA, ACC

Poetry Judge, Mentor & Workshop Facilitator

Mole Valley Poet

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' 

 Pat Winslow

The Train

Once, when she was old, she found herself on a train going west with a suitcase full of stories. Each time she got off to cross to another platform, the suitcase got heavier, and thinking she might just abandon it, she waited for what she hoped was the last train, only it didn’t come. By now it was getting dark so she went in the waiting room to sit out the night. The suitcase was still on the platform waiting like a dog for her to come back. The night was darker than any she’d ever known, which meant the strip lights in the waiting room were harsher than they really were. They were like a high-pitched dentist’s drill entering her head. She went back on the platform. A soft snow was starting to fall. She could feel it landing on her face and hands. She stood by her suitcase. They were like two friends who’d known each other all their lives standing side by side saying nothing because they’d already said all there was to say. When the train came, neither of them got on. They let it go, its little green light pulsing like a glow worm towards the sea.

Freefall

For Delroy

He’s no hero though

he did throw himself

from the sky into

the arms of the world.

Twelve thousand feet

was higher than he’d ever been

the pummel of wind

fierce enough

to rattle teeth from sockets

and fillet skin from bone.

The journey was now now now

Earth’s arc immense.

The chute, when it opened

yanked him briefly upwards.

The past, a yellowing map

of crooked darknesses

became a minor detail

in the broad expanse of light.

The world was green and new

and rising up to meet him.

Take-off thrilled him

but what amazed him most

was coming down

was better.

Pat Winslow has published seven collections, most recently, Kissing Bones with Templar Poetry. A winner of several notable competitions over the years, she enjoys ommissioned collaborations with film-makers, composers and artists. Reently, she has been working on a novel and developing her interest in prose poems.

Ben McGuire

Snapshot from Pisa

Marble-plated baptistry,

depth of cathedral

and, as if from another shot,

or from some other landscape,

the famous belfry

leaning in,

gawky

like a taller, younger brother.

At the top of that tower

bolstered against gravity,

slow topple

stopped for now, I got the pull

of a long curve of earth.

After it’s been set up,

all a building does is fall.

Kept Bearings

That’s where he lived.

Lived – the word

thuds. Calls him history.

Association’s tug

from the streetscape

is still a live weight.

It’s all there is.

My of-him and for-him

drop into the past.

I wonder how

I bear the love

I bear him now. 

Ben McGuire’s chapbook Luke the World: Elegies for a Brother won the Coast to Coast to Coast Journal Prize in 2023. Poems of Ben’s have appeared in Stand Magazine, Poetry Ireland Review, The North, The Irish Times and elsewhere. He lives in Bray, Ireland. 

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As I said at the top of this post, you can listen to this episode on You Tube or Audible podcasts or at

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Our next episode, and it promises to be a bumper one, will be the last before the summer. The theme is 'trees' and I already have some exciting items. If you would like to submit, please send a recording of up to 4 minutes of unpublished poems, plus the texts plus a short author bio to poetryworthhearing@gmail.com. Any comments or suggestions should be sent to the same address.