Ben Yeoh Chats

Rishi Dastidar and I chat about life, poetry, writing and poets always having another job. Rishi gives advice on how to be a poet, embracing Insta poets and whether last lines are harder than first lines, or second books harder than first books; and why we love lists and why we need to pay more attention to verbs.

He is open to offers from companies seeking a Chief Poetry Officer.

A fascinating and wide ranging chat from this leading British poet.

Transcript at the blog here with video.  

Links to Rishi’s books: Tickertape here and Saffron Jack here. His twitter here. 

***

Rishi Dastidar’s poetry has been published by Financial Times, New Scientist and the BBC amongst many others. His debut poetry collection Ticker-tape and his second book is Saffron Jack. He is chair of the London writer development organisation Spread The Word. Rishi edited  the final part of the Nine Arches Press writers’ trilogy, The Craft: A Guide to Making Poetry Happen in the 21st Century.  (Blog on that here). Rishi is also head of brand language for Brand Pie.

I chat to Mya-Rose Craig, aka Birdgirl, about her love of birding touching upon birdsong and the mysteries of migration. We discuss accessibilty to nature, activism what in birding terms is a “lifer” and how to “pish”.

There’s a transcript (unedited) here plus links to topics we talk about. Links:

Black2Nature, Charity fighting for equal access to nature for Visible Minority Ethnic people.

Mya-Rose Craig’s website.

Get Birding, podcast.

We discuss the award winning book, Fathoms: the world in the whale by Rebecca Giggs. Our conversation covers seeing the history of humanity through the lens of the whale, activism movements, and the poetic in writing.  

Whales as an extractive industry and why the book is not prescriptive in what we might do.  We play overrated/underrated. Rebecca rates: cicadas, snails, worms and plankton.  We end with the process of writing. Why mechanical keyboards might help, and writing in bursts.  

Rebecca's essays and writing have been in The Atlantic, Granta, The New York Times Magazine. Her recent work has featured our relationship with animals in a time of both technological change and ecological crisis.  www.rebeccagiggs.com and twitter @rebeccagiggs  

Ben Yeoh is a playwright and investor. He keeps a personal blog at thendobetter.com and twitter @benyeohben  

A transcript is available at here.

Link to Book (Amazon)