Poetry Worth Hearing: Episode 45
This episode, which you can find on You Tube or Audible podcasts or at https://creators.spotify.com/pod/show/7IR7ltf5pxOs84DTJh17b7/episode/0AjRr7W2n7TY4clCI2OXE3/wizard features an interview and reading from Mary Jean Chan. The prompt for the episode was 'wealth' which could be interpreted as widely as poets chose. I was slightly surprised by how many poets found wealth in the worlds of nature, relationsips and family and how few took on capitalism, bankers financial oligarchs etc. Perhaps against forces which often seem overwhelming, we need to assert our private values. Included are poems by Michael Klimeš, Ebtisam Elghblawi, Sara Stegen, Kate Venables, Kate Young, Trish Broomfield, Steve Xerri, Terry Jones, Helen Overell and John Greening.
My first encounter with the work of Mary Jean Chan was when they published their pamphlet, a hurry of english, with ignitionpress. Since then they have published two full collections and we look forward to the third next year. Their debut collection Flèche (Faber, 2019), won the Costa Poetry Award. Bright Fear(Faber, 2023), their second book, was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection and the Dylan Thomas Prize. Chan co-edited 100 Queer Poems (Vintage, 2022) and is Departmental Lecturer in Poetry on the MSt in Creative Writing at the University of Oxford. Chan's forthcoming collection, Movement's Measure, will be published by Faber in June 2027.
Michael Klimeš
Flat 8 Mount View Birthday
It is the circle of life my brother says
as Elan plays with Lego on the rug
we played on when we were three
and had no sense of the urgency:
get stuff done adulthood pushes us too,
but for now I just want to absorb the joy –
How Babi and Děda see us bond from a picture
they stand in from the Highlands
when they were still in our time
before theirs ended, and how we love them
by living fully making memories in their soon-to-be cleaned out flat
by eating Nando’s (Babi’s favourite), and drinking to good health,
how we’re here for mum’s birthday
and comfort each other in grief –
This is the wealth of our family.
Michael Klimeš is a financial journalist based in London. He has been published in Alchemy Spoon, London Grip, Poetry Worth Hearing, Wildfire Words, One Hand Clapping Magazine and Iota. His pamphlet Love Carries the Future was shortlisted in the Full House Literary Magazine Digital Chapbook 2023 competition and longlisted in the Black Cat Poetry Press pamphlet competition 2024 and Alchemy Spoon Pamphlet Competition 2022. |
Ebtisam Elghblawi
Wealth of imagination of home
What is home like,
a porcelain woman sculpture, still standing,
tall, elevated, dancing alone,
haunting silence, and holding stillness
from another space, in transit time.
She sits where I sit on my red sofa,
in my kitchen
As if she remembers other spaces, other places,
other hands that once placed her carefully,
fondly.
cats drift through the space like soft,
shifting thoughts,
some by the door, some on the window shelf
watching roses spilling over, alluring scent
of rosemary.
a squirrel comes to my doorstep,
trustingly,
taking food from my hand without fear,
joyfully
like the world briefly agrees to be kind
and serene.
Watching the clouds under the bright,
spraying sun,
transform and mutate
Shimmering and illuminating the white wall,
in the infinite, dimly lit,
as to rewrite my own history, melody
and symphony, a new chapter of
being alive and thriving.
A gentle breeze blows and lifts my hair
through open, delightful moments,
A moment before the poem
of home was born
She watches all of that without moving,
in complete silence, stillness,
and calmness,
yet somehow,
she belongs to it all
and that is how home becomes
Wealth of the body
Ugh, my body took it all,
Ugh, my body is learning to cope.
My body is stitching, knitting, and braiding
the broken pieces and unpleasantness
all together in a floating
reassembled mesh,
Beneath the resounding cascade of the running red
water of life, which burst out immeasurably, harshly,
and unexpectedly on a cold, clear December day before
Christmas, by a senseless, ruthless cruelty.
A pure devilment.
The body was unplanted; the bone split,
undressed the flesh, and unleashed a flood
of blood by a hard spike.
The body is weaving the dismissed burden
into braids of life, gliding up
and pulling its unhealed pieces upright
with grace.
To sweep off
woeful sinister things.
Alike dissolving.
I am proud of my body
for how it still battles to adjust
and stand firm.
I am proud of how much it has
achieved and accomplished
right now.
Small things are small wins,
no matter the struggles, obstacles,
and hurdles.
My body took it all, and yet
it is nurturing, rebuilding, renewing,
and re-emerging itself with
every passing day.
And I woe and marvel at how my body recalls
its way back to life, darning light
through every fracture and broken pieces
sustained in its quietest moments
of wisdom.
The moment before a poem
of wonder was born.
Ugh, my body took it all,
Ugh, my body is learning to cope.
My body is stitching, knitting, and braiding
the broken pieces and unpleasantness
all together in a floating
reassembled mesh,
Beneath the resounding cascade of the running red
water of life, which burst out immeasurably, harshly,
and unexpectedly on a cold, clear December day before
Christmas, by a senseless, ruthless cruelty.
A pure devilment.
The body was unplanted; the bone split,
undressed the flesh, and unleashed a flood
of blood by a hard spike.
The body is weaving the dismissed burden
into braids of life, gliding up
and pulling its unhealed pieces upright
with grace.
To sweep off
woeful sinister things.
Alike dissolving.
I am proud of my body
for how it still battles to adjust
and stand firm.
I am proud of how much it has
achieved and accomplished
right now.
Small things are small wins,
no matter the struggles, obstacles,
and hurdles.
My body took it all, and yet
it is nurturing, rebuilding, renewing,
and re-emerging itself with
every passing day.
And I woe and marvel at how my body recalls
its way back to life, darning light
through every fracture and broken pieces
sustained in its quietest moments
of wisdom.
The moment before a poem
of wonder was born.
Ebtisam Elghblawi
Writing to see light in darkness. Her poems are inspired by the dark chapter she was thrust into when an e-bike rider at force hit her from behind while she was walking on the footpath. The vigorous strike and fall caused her multiple fractures and lifelong injuries, which affect and impact her daily. The inspiration for these poems is how the world can suddenly, at a glance, look different based on changing circumstances and events, not in her hands, but by a demon’s ill act. Alongside being a dermatologist, Ebtisam always loved painting and writing poetry. Those two pieces were selected in a competition to be read live at National Poetry Day and at the Wirral Poetry Festival in 2026, consecutively.
|
Sara Stegen
Slow richness
My days have slowed
bed – kitchen – walk
My days have slowed
shrunk to home
My days have slowed
retreated inside me
My days have slowed
to the pace of an earlier age
I have been slowed by the recovery
workload
I have been slowed down in my days
They say that the new luxury
is time – attention – slowness
Being in the moment
is the new richness
So good
Nature isn’t cruel –
it’s honest, there is
some life, some death,
some joy, some love
for all – some procreation,
it’s brutal and honest –
for all.
Humans however are brutal
and cruel and dishonest.
There is some life, some death,
some joy, some love
for all – some procreation,
but they will pretend to be
fake good, do fake good,
while they bring you down,
watch you fall –
and still will deny all.
All the while humans will tell
I am good, trust me,
I’d never do you wrong.
It’s a dog eat dog world,
but I will pray for you.
A human hug feels like death
and their smiles do not touch
their eyes. Show don’t tell, truth.
It stinks with untruth.
Nature tells you when
and where something stinks.
Her stagnant waters stink
like a hidden carcass does.
It’s just their words, right.
They cover up their actions.
They are good like that,
so good at secrets,
covert, they are good at
being camouflaged and cruel.
On Sundays they will pray
for the others, the sinners
in this world and throw money
in the silver collection plate,
a bell signalling distress and danger.
They are so good.
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. |
Kate Venables
London Underground happy
It’s one of those days
when everyone on the Tube
is just – happy.
All the men are beautiful,
the women all are kind,
the buskers all professionals,
and the train guards don’t mind
when you dawdle.
Even the sooty little mice
who live between the rails
make people smile.
And the sun shines
when the line
comes overground.
Kate Venables is a doctor. Her poems and short stories have appeared in magazines such as Lighthouse and The Frogmore Papers and in The Hippocrates Prize Anthology. She is working on a pamphlet. |
Kate Young
Unexpected Treasure in ME5
Small boy, football at his feet
drinks his father’s pride,
feels the fizz swell his belly.
Grass, two weeks post-drought
breathes, an explosion of green
running the park.
Gloss-gold coins drop
from chestnut, newly plump.
I pocket some, rub riches.
Gold
Today, as every day she is Midas –
slumped on a chrome and bronzed throne
flipping the screen, scrolling for nectar.
A request pops into her inbox –
she accepts, messages the man
who has the face and form of a god.
He grants a wish, a constant stream
of emoji hearts whenever she posts
on apps with click-and-clack-taps.
In return he asks for her soul,
her soft nakedness at his fingertips
to be exposed to the world.
She sinks into her flat-white,
tastes the cold dregs and knows
that nothing she touches will turn to gold.
Kate Young’s poetry has been published in journals including Stand, Fly on the Wall, Alchemy Spoon and Poetry Scotland. Fear was placed 2nd in The Canterbury Poet of the Year Competition, 2022. Her pamphlets A Spark in the Darkness and Beyond the School Gate have been published by Hedgehog Press. Find her on X @Kateyoung12poet or her website kateyoungpoet.co.uk |
Trisha Broomfield
Allergic to Rich
I wish I’d said yes to Benjamin Shah
I’d be sipping champagne, spooning up caviar
but consistently my heart
rules over my head, I’m stubborn
and sometimes quite easily led.
Money is always my stumbling block
I’m allergic to rich, live life on the knock,
so when bills roll around, building up to knee high,
I recall past times happy and relive with a sigh
that day at the health spa when asked, I said, ‘Nah’,
instead of ‘Yes please’ to Benjamin Shah.
Trisha Broomfield has three pamphlets (published by Dempsey and Windle) and contributed to many anthologies. One of which is this year’s Surrey Poet Laureate anthology to be launched in late November. She also has three poems in the Wildfire Words open submissions 10. Published online. Her most recent pamphlet, My Acrostic Mother, illustrated by Heather Moulson, is available to order online and at bookstores. All four of her pamphlets are available at the Surrey Poet Laureateship Library in Epsom. Trisha is poet for the monthly Cranleigh Magazine, the annual Caistorian, and one third of the Booming Lovelies poetry trio. You can see them next on 7th November at GLive Guildford as part of the Winter Wellfest.
You can hear Trisha’s poems at Poetry Worth Hearing and BBC Upload. Instagram @magentapink22 @boominglovelies |
Steve Xerri
Uses of Cartography
everything changes. days ride on the slow sine wave
of light-levels, the seasonal cycle of green, gold, rust,
winter's black – when the work of storing & preserving
what has ripened in the sun or fattened in pasture
& forest keeps every body alive through the lean & cold
but change becomes upheaval, aimed at the future
like an arrow – the will to unity of possession, the merge
of patches & ribbons of common ground into a single
great block enclosed by one who guides no plough across it,
lends no muscle to maintain clear drainage or set wheatsheaves
drying in stooks, one who racks up rents to price out tenants
& denies a dead man's firstborn the right to his father's plot :
with everything changed nobody may comb the woods
for kindling or gather cobnuts & rosehips from the bushes,
nobody take eel & pike from the local river
centuries later we can still read this rewriting of the place,
a view as of birds or angels precisely outlined to order
on thick sheets of vellum : we can imagine the quiet
in a chamber broken only by the whisper of a quill,
the stealthy scrape of a knife, repeatedly scratching out
& resetting dashed borders till the manor has swallowed
a whole village's oxgangs & halts only at the cross-hatched
band where pea rows & barley plots peter out in stony soil
everything changes. squares are erased where once stood
dwellings plucked down in the creation of a deerpark,
swineherding paths to woodland forage found blocked
by a new-inked thorn hedge – & the story is told
that the dividers marched across boundaries by the map
maker are followed soon after by strong-arm gangs hired
to slaughter dissenters like wolves passing among sheep
once the work is done very little is left unaltered :
a handful of titles inscribed across tracts of colour
replace ancient family names swept from the chart
along with the souls who bore them, tenants now dubbed
hedge-breakers, vagabonds, falling into an uprooted life
of piecemeal work & sleeping in ditches that foreshadow
the grave – & from this bloody birthing into the language
of the term landowner follows a lineage of fencers-out
striding into the present waving their pieces of paper
which, read in the raking light of history, reveal
the marks of true trespass – by the few against the many
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. |
Terry Jones
Annual Report
The disposal of personal effects
is ongoing. Some items of clothing
were viewed by close associates
and pieces were selected by them
albeit reluctantly. The remainder
went to a relevant charity.
Toiletries are now largely exhausted
and medical products disposed of.
Numerous small containers,
many already well past their use-by dates,
were binned. Shoes were placed in a street shoe-bank.
Books, the ownership of many of which
had been debated, remain in situ.
Bank accounts have been reassigned
to their new owner. The expertise
of the funeral directors was noted
and commended. Clinicians were at all times,
and continue to be, solicitous.
A promising start has been made as far
as can be judged. When we report
at the end of the second year we hope
a clearer picture will emerge, going forward.
IRISH MONEY
This poor place is where you all came from
though you did not have the brogue you hear
in these counties. You spoke like us Brits
as I recall it anyway. Was that not so,
Kennedy, Rooney, Docherty and Walsh,
in those ancient days when we were
smelling each others’ farts in chapel?
We sailed here from Fleetwood to Larne
on the night ferry for goods lorries,
the logistics trailers, jenga’d with outers
for stacking in Ireland’s hungry shops.
Our pilgrimage was westward bent
till we swapped pounds for Euros and
sought the bare birthplace of Colmcille;
a rock altar, repository
for a scatter of cent pieces,
deliquescing now to a copper broth.
Flickering swifts performed repeated
crossings over these gifts
like a grace, as if they had usurped
priestly duties in a shrunken diocese.
But that is not true, for they are tourists like us
who arrive only to depart.
In leaving, I place a foreign coin
upon the plate: votive offering
to Hannon, Dolan, Slattery and Dunn,
blameless fathers of my youth
who fed in me a keen hunger,
that is lettered and cut
into the stone of this rich day.
Terry Jones had a career in Education, working in Careers and Training in schools and colleges. Unemployed school leavers, graduates and post graduates in the Fine Arts and Research Sciences were included in his client groups. Since 2000 he has been active in what one might call ‘Community Poetry’, voluntary associations of people who love and practise poetry. He was chairman of Ver Poets, member of Stanza groups in Enfield and now Reading, ran events and workshops, took part in ‘Open Mics’. He now runs a poetry reading group in the U3A. |
Helen Overell
November
for AJ
One of these days I shall turn to you
and not find you, even though
but a moment since you were there
at my side talking of letting dust be,
doing the washing up as you go along
and giving the briefest of glimpses
i
nto the inexplicable nature of husbands
whose dear and lovely ways
bring us comfort and surety,
as do the yellow-gold leaves
that flutter and fall around us,
settle one by one on our path —
portals of light between this world,
now, and the unknown other, as yet.
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. |
John Greening
The five last poems of John Greening’s Cleopatra-Antony
forthcoming in Spring 2027 from Dare-Gale.
In my cartouche
a lion guards
the triangle,
a feather deters
the horned viper
and two hawks
complete me
with their cry,
an applauding
hand, and lips
trying to smile
as he divorces
her and we dance
to the coming battle:
‘Queen of Kings’.
XIV
Everything finished, as it began, on water:
peacefully with pearl-fishers at first, then the hortator
urging the oarsmen to ram, pitch blazing, skirmishes,
catapult, grapnel, and all of us trapped in the marshes
sickening so even my friends desert across the gulf
between Antony and Caesar. I myself
arrange for the punishment of one of those I catch:
torn apart by horses while the others watch,
good men who were tempted. But what, you ask, of the one
who when he saw she had turned her ships round and was gone
(that monster, minion, mallard, goat, wretch, sot,
eunuch, baby with a golden chamber pot)
left his men and followed her to the music and flowers
of Alexandria’s harbour, hating the world and its sneers?
Everything finished there, yet it was not over quite.
We still found time for one ungodly night.
‘Inimitable livers’?
Not the way we
drank, besides
we were partners
in research now:
the Best Methods
of Dying, as
Demonstrated on
Certain Prisoners.
I hadn’t left him
(Dionysus would)
nor was I dead
in the mausoleum,
but camouflaged
by gold. The best
method is the one
you do not notice
as it springs –
the tresha, horned
viper, asp, Eros
killed him.
XV
One of her crowns, a spare sceptre, and our children’s teacher
were all sent to negotiate. To grow richer
was usually the boy’s one aim, but now he said
kill me and he would pardon her. She tried
more subtle gifts but little Caesar would have none.
He wanted Egypt, her gold, her fertile strip, and soon
Alexandria learnt that Rome had begun its march
across the desert Antony, who’d have to teach
himself a lesson in how to die. Yet before I failed
there would be time enough. We drank and kissed and fooled,
until there came that bacchic summons, and the whirling feet
of revellers danced their way towards the city gate.
On Victoria Embankment
It stands not far from Charing Cross, beside
the Thames, the obelisk that’s simply known
as Cleopatra’s Needle, while the tide
of empire comes and goes. Its thrusting twin
is in New York, and both once stood erect
for Alexandria, to mark the place
where Julius Caesar came. If you expect
a different Mark, he isn’t here, alas:
you’d have to go downriver to the Globe
to catch his words, and even those aren’t his,
but she – in stone, on screen, or at the pub
after the show – she’ll be there for your quiz.
John Greening's books include a Selected Poems (The Interpretation of Owls), editions of Arnold, Grigson, Blunden, Iain Crichton Smith, U.A. Fanthorpe — and, just out, William Scammell. A sequel to Contraflow: Lines of Englishness (edited with Kevin Gardner) will be published by Renard, following their edition of his essays, A High Calling. Baylor University Press published his translations of Rilke in 2026 and are about to bring out his next full collection, Crowning. The poems here are from the pamphlet Cleopatra-Antony which is due from Dare-Gale in 2027. |
That's all for Episode 45. Please listen on You Tube or Audible podcasts or follow this link:https://creators.spotify.com/pod/show/7IR7ltf5pxOs84DTJh17b7/episode/0AjRr7W2n7TY4clCI2OXE3/wizard
If you have any comments or suggestions please send them to poetryworthhearing@gmail.com. The theme for the next episode is 'intelligence'. This can be artificial, spook related, a quotient or another word for information - whatever you choose. Please send submissions of up to 4 minutes recording of unpublished poems plau texts plus brief author bio to the same address: poetryworthhearing@gmail.com. the deadline is November 18th.
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