In this episode, Andrea Holland talks with us about the poem that has been a friend to her – 'Song of Myself' by Walt Whitman.

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Andrea Holland is a poet and lecturer in Creative Writing. As winner of the Norfolk Commission for Poetry her collection 'Broadcasting' was published in 2013 (Gatehouse Press). The collection focuses on the forced requisition of several Norfolk villages for D-Day training in 1942, and the subsequent dislocation of villagers and community. Her pamphlet, 'Borrowed' (Smith/Doorstop, 2007) was first-stage winner of the Poetry Business Competition 2006. Her writing has appeared in journals such as Mslexia, The North, Rialto, Smith's Knoll, and in Slanted: 12 Poems for Christmas (IST, 2014).

Andrea joined us at the National Centre for Writing in Norwich. We are hugely grateful to the National Centre for Writing for hosting us so warmly, and to all the readers who visited us there.

Andrea is in conversation with The Poetry Exchange hosts, Fiona Bennett and Michael Shaeffer.

The 'gift' reading of 'Song of Myself' is by Michael Shaeffer.

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From 'Song of Myself'

Walt Whitman

I believe in you my soul, the other I am must not abase itself to you,

And you must not be abased to the other.

Loaf with me on the grass, loose the stop from your throat,

Not words, not music or rhyme I want, not custom or lecture, not even the best,

Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice.

I mind how once we lay such a transparent summer morning,

How you settled your head athwart my hips, and gently turned over upon me,

And parted the shirt from my bosom bone, and plunged your tongue to my bare-stripped heart,

And reached till you felt my beard, and reached till you held my feet.

Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass all the argument of the earth,

And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own,

And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own,

And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women my sisters and lovers,

And that a kelson of the creation is love,

And limitless are leaves stiff or drooping in the fields,

And brown ants in the little wells beneath them,

And mossy scabs of the worm fence, heaped stones, elder, mullein and pokeweed.

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