This week we are joined by the brilliant Kim Moore. Her first full length collection The Art of Falling (Seren) won the Geoffrey Faber memorial prize in 2017. She won a New Writing North Award in 2014, an Eric Gregory Award in 2011 and the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize in 2012. Her latest book was recently released under Seren.

Today she shares a great poem by Vicki Feaver called 1974. We talk sexism, self-reflection and all things poetry.

This week we are joined by the super woman Chrissy Williams. She is the author of Bear (Bloodaxe Books, 2017) and more recently Low. She's had an array of cross-art, creative excavations which have resulted in visual art, poetry pamphlets, and everything in between. She also curates and edits the online journal Perverse.

She introduces me to a poet I hadn't heard of before called Oli Hazzard

So proud to be back, not least because now I have a child and am doing some extreme juggling. To open this series I've got the amazing Jack Underwood. His double pamphlet Solo for Mascha Voice/Tenuous Rooms was published by Test Centre in 2018. Happiness was published by Faber & Faber in 2015. He is senior lecturer in creative writing at Goldsmiths, University of London. He comes into the studio to talk about metaphysics, Awards culture and the wonderful Natalie Shapero.

This week's poem is The Sky by Natalie Sharpero. you can read it here - https://poets.org/poem/sky-0 

The final episode of the second season and it is a special one. We are joined by the wonderful Ella Frears. She is a poet and artist based in London. Her debut collection, Shine, Darling, (Offord Road Books, 2020) was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and was shortlisted for both the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, and the T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry.

She has had poetry published in the LRB, Poetry London, The Guardian, The Telegraph, Ambit, The Rialto, and the Moth among others.

Today she brings in two strange, short poems. One by Dianne Williams called The Idea of Counting. The other is by Michael Earl Craig and it's called Tomatoes Disrespect us.

this week we are off across the waters again joined by Poet, essayist, and translator Indran Amirthanayagam. He is a Sri Lankan born poet raised in Colombo London, and Honolulu. He’s the author of numerous poetry collections, including The Elephants of Reckoning (1993), Ceylon, R.I.P. (2001), The Splintered Face (2008), Uncivil War (2013), and Coconuts On Mars (2019). He writes, translates, and publishes poetry and essays in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Haitian Creole. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Kenyon Review, the New England Review, and many other magazines. 

Today we dissect a poem called City of Tailors by Mervyn Taylor. You can read it here http://mokomagazine.org/wordpress/2020/10/28/mervyn-taylor/

Another brand-spankingly new episode of the Pickle Jar. This week we speak to Charlotte Ansell. Charlotte performs her poems regularly and her work has appeared in Poetry Review, Mslexia, Butcher’s Dog, Prole, Algebra of Owls and various anthologies; most recently ‘These are the hands’ – an anthology of poems by NHS workers. She has won various  competitions (Red Shed, BBC Write Science competition in 2015,  Watermarks in 2016, commended in Yorkmix  in 2016 and shortlisted in the Poetry in film category of the Outspoken prize for poetry in 2017). Her latest collection Deluge was a PBS Winter choice and is out with Flipped Eye.

Today we dig deep into a Sylvia Plath poem called Stillborn. You can have a read of it here - https://hellopoetry.com/poem/695/stillborn/

Deborah Alma is a UK poet, with an MA with distinction, in Creative Writing from Keele University. She is editor of Emergency Poet-an anti-stress poetry anthology, The Everyday Poet- Poems to live by (both Michael O’Mara), and #Me Too – rallying against sexual harassment- a women’s poetry anthology (Fair Acre Press, March 2018). Her True Tales of the Countryside was published by The Emma Press in 2015 and her first full collection Dirty Laundry was published by Nine Arches Press (May 2018).

Deborah is also the Emergency poet and owner of The Poetry Pharmacy in Shropshire.

Today she joins me to look at a Seamus Heaney poem called Postscript. Read it here - https://poems.com/poem/postscript/

This week we are joined by poet and performer Amy Acre. She has two pamphlets both of which were Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choices, she also won the Verve poetry Prize with a memorable poem called every girl knows, but bigger than that, she is the editor of one of the biggest and wildest small presses in the country, BAD BETTY PRESS. 

Today we talk about this exert from Dionne Brand’s The Blue Clerk you can download it here 

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/amriss56owc8jqb/AACM357cp4pdukBknElETOkza?dl=0

Another week Arji’s pickling the poems you'll love. This week’s guest is a poet, producer and workshop leader. His poems have appeared in Ambit Magazine, Oxford Poetry and Ink, Sweat and Tears. He is the director and co-founder of TOAST Poetry, an organisation dedicated to the professional development of poets. Lewis Buxton has his new book Boy in Various Poses out with Nine Arches Press. Today we are looking at beautiful piece by Ellen Bass. You can read it here - https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/02/04/what-did-i-love

This week we travelling to the states to hit you up with Carlos Andrés Gómez. He's a Colombian American poet, speaker, actor, author of Fractures, Hijito, and the memoir Man Up: Reimagining Modern Manhood. This man has too many awards to fit into this bio, he's star on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam and TV One’s Verses and Flows and today he is bringing in a poem by Rachel Eliza Griffiths called Seeing the body.  You can read it here : https://poets.org/poem/seeing-body