Poetry Worth Hearing: Episode 44
Episode 44 of Poetry Worth Hearing includes an interview with the poet and translator, Jamie McKendrick as well as a brief reading of his poems. The prompt for the open section of the podcast was weather and you will find weather-related poems from Heather Moulson, Paul Stephenson, Lynne Wycherley, Helen Overell, Terry Jones, Lizzie Ballagher, Richard Lister, Matt Thomas and Maureen Jivani.
Reading the submissions for this episode, I was struck by the impact the long hot summer we have just endured had made on so many people. Sometimes, this resulted in poems that did not go far beyond a literal evocation of that experience, but I was more drawn to work where the weather had been internalised and turned into something more than itself. Of course, a recurring theme was climate change and I salute those poems which warn us about what we have lost and what we are in danger of losing through humanity's failure to be mindful of the planet.
You can listen to the episode at https://open.spotify.com/episode/7vI0cv03fJjjRwq14TX2xg?si=LBXwqtZNQsul8Zqd91WL9w or find it on You Tube, Audible or Spotify podcasts.
Jamie McKendrick has published numerous books of poetry, most recently Drypoint and the self-illustrated pamphlet The Years which won the Michael Marks Illustration Award. He has translated, among other works, all six books of Giorgio Bassani’s The Novel of Ferrara and has translated the poems of Valerio Magrelli and Antonella Anedda. His writings on art and poetry have been gathered together in The Foreign Connection.
Here is the text of the Hart Crane poem which Jamie read:
At Melville's Tomb
BY HART CRANE
Often beneath the wave, wide from this ledge
The dice of drowned men’s bones he saw bequeath
An embassy. Their numbers as he watched,
Beat on the dusty shore and were obscured.
And wrecks passed without sound of bells,
The calyx of death’s bounty giving back
A scattered chapter, livid hieroglyph,
The portent wound in corridors of shells.
Then in the circuit calm of one vast coil,
Its lashings charmed and malice reconciled,
Frosted eyes there were that lifted altars;
And silent answers crept across the stars
.
Compass, quadrant and sextant contrive
No farther tides ... High in the azure steeps
Monody shall not wake the mariner.
This fabulous shadow only the sea keeps.
Heather Moulson
Weather
I never talk about the weather,
he replied dismissively.
But I wondered how he could say that;
The sensation of rain touching your face,
entitled droplets sitting on your coat.
Your skin warm and dry underneath.
And when the sun touches your back
filling you with endless possibilities.
The overnight snow on the ground
resembling your mother’s clean sheets.
As a child, I tasted snowflakes on my tongue.
Unique, salty, wet – a sensation never ever forgotten.
How could you not talk about it?!
Hailstones hammering outside.
The roof rattling, the cat swiftly brought in.
Both of us watching a new and raging world.
A change of subject cast a grim shadow.
I wondered how he stood on abseiling.
Heather Moulson has been a part of Poetry Performance in Teddington since it was founded in 2017. Since then, she has performed extensively in London and Surrey. Heather was a winner of the Brian Dempsey Memorial Award 2019 and has been long-listed for the Roger McGough and Dempsey & Windle Summer competition.
Heather is also a third of the Booming Lovelies who have performed at the Guildford fringe, as well as Camden and The Spice of Life. Heather has a new pamphlet out titled Slummy Mummy. She also enjoys sketching, especially her grumpy black cat, and is the author of Conversations with Dobby.
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Paul Stephenson
Sundial, Tower Hill
I can walk round and round
and still not come up
with anything that might
relate to our story,
not a thing I can use
by way of metaphor,
as incident, accident,
departure, way in.
Bridges have been built,
deep tunnels bored.
Winter festivals, bombings,
none of it a part of us.
One day, one year, the river
froze over. We are talking ice.
Aigues-Mortes
Late June. I’d never been so hot.
High limestone walls all around.
Well-preserved towers. Medieval.
We had lunch inside the ramparts.
Then ventured outside the ramparts.
That’s when I’d never been so hot.
It was hell. Mercury above forty.
All baking earth, all fortification.
We traipsed the dusty perimeter.
Sun was too yellow. Sky too blue.
Withered grass. Salt marshes.
The timetable said no more buses.
No words. Conversation stagnant.
Somewhere close, the dead waters.
I always sit in the same direction
but today I’m facing the other way.
The sun’s hot on my neck and
I’ve a clear view of the pavement
into the distance. The same local café,
the exact same glass of chilled
white wine. In one of those cheap
round wine glasses, always falling over
in the sink and cracking. Smashing
salad – cucumber, artichokes, parmesan.
Not everybody likes artichokes,
some think them slimy. But I love
cupping the hearts on my tongue. Listen,
I’m getting carried away here with
what I didn’t mean to say: three people
are queuing outside the dry cleaners
eager to collect their style and now
at two o’clock the line outside
the post office stretches back as far
as the osteopath. The woman just joined
is wearing violet denim dungarees
and has stuff on her mind
and one of those things in her hand,
those gizmos you see advertised
and wonder if you want one but then
the programme comes back on
and what’s going to happen next,
and probably not. The lengths
people will go to for a stamp
or to sign for something that might
revolutionise the way they stand
in line for the post office or stretch
the people they’d like to stamp on.
Summer Gathering, Epsom
remembering Daphne
I arrived late. Judith couldn’t come. Tim left early.
Jean had stayed the night, was on fantastic form.
Aud made another pot of coffee. Chatted a while.
We sat in the garden. It was blustery, started spitting.
Didn’t last long. Aud handed us cardigans, shawls.
We did one prompt. Then gave in, our legs too cold.
Aud announced lunch, hollered upstairs for Paul.
A lovely spread. Salads, dips, chicken, salmon.
We loaded our plates, poured ourselves a glass of rosé.
Huddled in a circle. Talked a bit about Daf as we ate,
the time at the château on the canal, and the Poison Hotel,
how she’d had to throw all her clothes into the pool.
And how we met, and all she did, and the time she sped
down winding Suffolk country lanes blasting Howl.
How she was never ill. Though always had something.
Aud suggested Daf would have liked the obituary.
Tim said she wouldn’t, but that she’d probably laugh
at being knocked to Tuesday on account of Ray Reardon.
Then Tim said he had twelve more obits on the way,
how he likes to get to know them, take them to lunch,
had to pitch for her to feature. We did another prompt.
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. |
Lynne Wycherley
Jenny Lind Waiting for Snow
Malvern Hills, 1884
If I could conjure it –
my hands are snow finches
speak the spark of it –
frost on my tongue
sing back a width
of argentite and iron
could wonder grow again
fibril by fibril
heart know again
how silence furs Norrviken,
its spruce-lines slung
with iodine, cold poem?
Field-gates drain to half-light,
halvdagen. I’m
hedge-tint, topaz, rust.
Where is that zero
that barely begins? Shiver-hairs
on stolon, culm
ghost-hawk that hovers
bluely and is gone?
I must wait for weather
to slip-glaze my sleep,
Anders Celcius brushing the slope,
ice-sewn cuffs,
cambric throat.
Needlings: not-quite-home.
Jenny Lind – Swedish opera singer who retired to Malvern
Anders Celcius – Swedish thermometrist / astronomer
Wildfire, Dunwich Heath
A rush – a roar – its
living page sent skyward.
I see yet cannot see it
through the flames,
sparks and char
on cobra-tongued air.
Coastguard cottages
white with shock.
Gorse-scent gone
to quanta in the fray.
Warp losing weft. Delicate
ling-buds swept on
a breath. Their life,
my love, in atoms.
We’re good at making Mordors,
grey on grey, turning
the sun to a blacksmith,
her hapless gold,
helpless strength;
tinder-grass, frail anvil.
Fire fighters ebb.
What flits at the edge?
Weeet – click-click!
A wheatear?
Skreek – chatter-chatter!
Dartford warbler? His
rain-cloud cape,
dawn-tinged vest,
a oneness of quiet weathers:
small world to calm
our fissile lives and coax
a burnt seed back.
Lynne's ninth collection At the Edge of Light: new poems was edited and published by the late, great John Lucas, Shoestring Press (Nottingham). She continues to live in the West Country, circled by farmland and stars. |
Helen Overell
Ear to the Ground
For decades, those with an ear to the ground
told of troubling absences — bird song,
the rustle of insects — hoped they were wrong,
spoke out as loud as they were able, found
crackle of wildfire replaced absent sounds
from up ahead, creak of calving ice, long
reach of sudden thunder, torrents so strong
floods engulfed rivers, oceans almost drowned,
already strands of life were stretched as thin
as wisps of gossamer — some broken, lost,
adrift, tugged by the tide, scorched by the sun,
the change in the weather confounded kin,
despite the many warnings, while the cost
rose, gnawed at the land, so much to be done.
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. |
Terry Jones
The Freeze of 63
And in that savage winter that locked
solid the whole of second term,
skating was substituted
for the steady state of the timetable.
They built a great basin of snow
over the hallows of the football field
with white banks replenished nightly
from pans heavy with water.
They bought a van load of old skates,
curved Ice dancers, long-bladed racers,
let us loose to find our fit and lace up
through hooks and multiple eyes
Like new risen toddlers
stiff in the leg and wary
we gave our bodies
to the bland treachery of the ice.
It mocked us with the smacked bums
of corporal punishment
till we learned smartly
to slide away scot-free.
And as I recount this story
I bring you a snowball
that I have kept back
all this time for just this moment
let you cup its light weight
till your palm winces
in some process of wet
chemistry or dry physics
that I can’t explain because
they reduced the teaching hours
that whole Easter term - cancelled
lessons that have never left us.
Terry Jones former Competition Secretary, Newsletter editor and chair of Ver Poets. Member of Reading and Enfield Stanzas. Have led workshops and discussion groups on Poetry Topics for many years. Former Teacher and Careers Officer. |
Lizzie Ballagher
Blow, feral wind:
and wrap me round
with cloak of gladness.
Hold me in the sway
of your reeling arms.
For sure, I cannot hold you!
I know you will be gone—tossed
east to west in winter squall,
whirled away in gritty ice-drop,
or in salt that flies from wave-crest.
Madcap wind, you make me sing!
So, dance me round, bear
to me scent of winter sweetness—
oranges, ginger, cinnamon
and smoke of frankincense—
all to rise around us.
Then call out the new:
unfurling yellow catkins,
first snowdrop pushing
through brown leaves,
fat blood-red buds that burst
crimson on gloss of wintergreen
camelia, on frosted grass blades,
even in the howling, low, slow
pause of winter: warm me
with your flickering candle-fire.
After months of writing about Exmoor, Lizzie Ballagher is soon to be travelling to Italy for Poetry on the Lake at Orta San Guilio, then onwards to Bergamo, Siena, Rome, and Assisi on a long-awaited poetry and faith pilgrimage, hoping to return full of ideas for fresh writing. |
Richard Lister
Hailstone
Merrivale, Bronze Age
You hug the withering fire.
Snow is spat from the sky.
The fire gasps and gutters.
You've no wood to add.
At least your sheep,
all mud scrawled wool,
give off some heat
and trace of company.
Even through roof thatch,
her cry’s flint sharp:
'Come out from your hut
you soft-skinned man and work!'
Stones must be set to stand:
a line to trail and tap the stars.
Do you dare scrunch deeper
into the cowl of the earth?
In the smoke you hold
the ice-slip fingers of loss.
Grief is like a cold draught
through an ill-made wall.
What did the stars do
when your wife retched up blood?
They waited, hard as hailstone.
Richard Lister MA, ACC Poetry Judge, Mentor & Workshop Facilitator Mole Valley Poet |
Matt Thomas
The Clay
The rain herds, or schools,
or better yet, troops
through the forest swinging,
tree to tree on the wind,
chattering, screeching leaf to leaf
swelling, receding a
percussive music, each leaf
rebounding in turn from
the land and spring,
light shimmering ones
and zeros, digitizing, pixelating;
throwing wet
what clay we have to fashion
You Listen To A Breath
and wait to hear if another comes
Cold rain steaming on the hood
of the truck like a sweated horse
in snow. You cross with them
and have to make your way back.
They can’t follow,
so the parting is twice, lonelier
for that and the cold rain
steaming on the hood of the truck
like a sweated horse in snow.
Tsunami
I imagine the ocean where
the Shenandoah is now,
phytoplankton stink like the moan
of the Norfolk-Southern reaching
our bedroom, call of gulls,
the backs of pelicans in formation
skimming the crests of waves,
porpoises breeching between
poplars, stunning beauty
beneath which lies the agony
of suffocation, corpses
of people, deer, squirrels, mice,
rats, groundhogs, sparrows,
foxes, cats, dogs swaying
in the current, voices
that once rode the breeze now
breathless, speaking
in the old, deep
language of wet,
righting the inversion; shifting
land, firmament of water.
Draft Kings
The wet yard still
in the hollow of the roar
grass remembering
Two day’s growth in the hayfield,
round bales barricading
Winter want.
Summer is beer drunk and tired,
cicadas
in the trees,
the world a whirr,
Tech is losing by 6, bawling
of the new semester rising
on unsteady legs,
late-born, to learn
yet again,
the limit of knowledge, hurt
of a bad bet.
Matt Thomas is a smallholder farmer, engineer, and poet. His recent work can be found in Ragaire Magazine and Poetry Salzburg Review. 'Cicada, Dog, & Song,' a second full-length collection, is available now from Serving House Books. He lives with his family in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. |
Maureen Jivani
Apricity
In the midst of winter, I found there was within me an invincible summer
Albert Camus
In this blistering hour of loss, snowmelt
inside my flesh and bones makes itself a space
amongst the corpuscles. My sleeping heart
wakes inside my ribs. Lub dub. Lub dub.
Enough. Enough. I take your hand,
whisper, I’m here. Outside, on the pond,
skating children, with woollen scarves,
are colouring the day in shades of gold. And light pure
as a newborn, sparkles through the windowpane.
Your eyes close. And I don’t know if you hear
my week’s dull story where nothing much happens
except today’s long journey through bluish drifts,
the car’s bumps and starts, familiar ghosts
at the crossroads guiding me home.
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. https://www.maureenjivanipoet.co.uk |
That's everything for this episode which you can listen to at https://open.spotify.com/episode/7vI0cv03fJjjRwq14TX2xg?si=LBXwqtZNQsul8Zqd91WL9w or on You Tube, Audible or Spotify podcasts. If you have comments or suggestions, please send them to poetryworthhearing@gmail.com rather than using the chat or contact functions here as they have a tendency to disappear. The prompt for the next episode is 'wealth'. Submissions of up to 4 minutes of unpublished poems + texts + author bio should reach me at poetryworthhearing@gmail.com by October 18th. I hope you have enjoyed this episode and will share it with others.
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