Arji's Poetry Pickle Jar

Raymond Antrobus MBE FRSL was born in London, Hackney to an English mother and Jamaican father. He is the author of Shapes & Disfigurements (Burning Eye, 2012) To Sweeten Bitter (Out-Spoken Press, 2017), The Perseverance (Penned In The Margins / Tin House, 2018), All The Names Given (Picador / Tin House, 2021), Signs, Music (Picador / Tin House, 2024).

His individual poems have been published in The New Yorker, The Guardian, Granta, Poetry Foundation, Lit Hub, London Review of Books, The Poetry Review, The Deaf Poets Society and elsewhere. In 2019 he became the first ever poet to be awarded the Rathbone Folio Prize for best work of literature in any genre.

Other accolades include The Ted Hughes Award, Lucille Clifton Legacy Award, PBS Winter Choice, A Sunday Times Young Writer of the year Award, Somerset Maugham Award and The Guardian Poetry Book Of The Year 2018, as well as a shortlist for The Griffin Prize, T.S. Eliot Prize and Forward Prize. In 2018 he was awarded The Geoffrey Dearmer Prize, (Judged by Ocean Vuong), for his poem Sound Machine. Also in 2019 and 2021 his poems (Jamaican British, The Perseverance and Happy Birthday Moon) was added to the UK’s GCSE syllabus

Today we talk about his PBS CHOICE SELECTED Book Signs, Music.

So proud to get Gail McConnell into the studio today. She's the writer of two pamphlets and one amazing book. The Sun Is Open was brought out on Penned a few years back and it really is a groundbreaking book and well worth a read.

It won the The John Pollard Foundation International Poetry Award and The Christopher Ewart-Biggs Memorial Prize  and was shortlisted for the Michael Murphy Memorial Prize. It was a Poetry Book of the Month in the Guardian and in The Observer, a book of the year in the TLS and The White Review, and a poetry book of the year in The Telegraph and The Irish Times. The Sun is Open was warmly reviewed in the Dublin Review of Books, Some Flowers Soon and Blackbox Manifold. I wrote about the book in The Irish Times and further coverage appeared in The Telegraph and the Belfast Telegraph. I discuss the book in conversation with Emily Berry for the Poetry Society podcast, with Pádraig Ó Tuama for the Corrymeela podcast and on Sunday with Steven Rainey on Radio Ulster. With Conor Garrett I made 'The Open Box', an arts feature based on the book for BBC Radio 4. 

Today we talk extended metaphors, animals and descriptive language in this homage to the American poet Kay Ryan. The poem is called Spiderweb.

Guys. If you are reading this PLEASE SUBSCRIBE AND SHARE as it helps me a lot.

Very happy to be back with Ellen Cranitch in the Pickle Jar.

She is a poet and lecturer. Her first collection, The Immortalist, was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Award for Best First Collection. Her new collection, Crystal, was published by Bloodaxe, named “Dignified, moving and sure…" by The Observer where it was named book of the month, it was also recommended by Stephen Fry and Ian McMillan.

Today she brings a Prynne Poem into the Pickle Jar and we speak of line breaks, intensity and the importance of syntax.

With two books on the horizon, I'm extremely excited to bring Salena Godden into the Pickle Jar.

Salena Godden is an English poet, author, activist, broadcaster, memoirist and essayist. Born in Hastings, UK, of Jamaican-Irish heritage, Godden based in London. Widely anthologised, she has published several books. She has also written for BBC TV and radio and has released four studio albums to date.

Today we crack open a Nikita Gill poem to see what we can find.

Very excited to bring Bryony Littlefair into the Pickle Jar. Partly because her debut poetry collection Escape Room (Seren, 2022) was excellent. Also because her pamphlet Giraffe won the Mslexia Pamphlet Prize in 2017. But mostly because we both LOVE Tony Hoagland.

So here's us geeking out over Tony Hoagland for 20 minutes!

Immensely proud and thankful to PBS for bringing Paul Muldoon into the studio.

Paul Muldoon is so big he's off the charts. I don't think there's many awards he hasn't won in his huge career. Today we celebrate his 14th book 'With Joy in Service on Rue Tagore'.

I learnt alot in this episode and so will you.

If you like the episode please SUBSCRIBE AND SHARE

We're finally back.

This week I'm joined by Golnoosh Nour. A Tehran born poet who has two fantastic collections. The most recent was Rocksong on Verve and it blew my face off. So I invited her in to talk about a poet and poem she really loves. Amongst Darkness by Forough-farrokhzad.

Enjoy it. Share it. Pass it on.

This week we are taking a trip to Birmingham to celebrate with the crew from Uni_Slam.

Uni_Slam is a huge event that takes place yearly in The Birmingham Hippodrome. Each year University students come together to share their poems in a competition that celebrates the diversity of poetry in this country.

On the same weekend the Uni_Slam team invites to the festival some of the Poetry Collectives that hold some of the best emerging poets of the scene.

I am honoured to give a podcast stage to some of those collectives.

In this episode we listen to poets from

Roundhouse Poetry Collective

The Poetry Society’s Young Poets Network Collective

Barbican Young Poets 

Nottingham's Speak Easy

South Yorkshire's : Hive Young Poets

Manchester's Young Identity

Hope you enjoy! FOLLOW, SHARE, MESSAGE... let's get it bigger!

Hey everyone. I'm working on a new series so please subscribe and support by sharing.

Happy to be back here to present another special speaking with the wonderful Victoria Kennefick 

Victoria grew up in Cork and lives in Kerry. Her debut collection, Eat or We Both Starve (Carcanet Press, 2021), won the Seamus Heaney First Collection Poetry Prize and the Dalkey Book Festival Emerging Writer of the Year Award. It was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize, the Costa Poetry Book Award, Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry,

Today she talks about her new book 'Egg/Shell' and reads her favourite poem from it.