In this episode, Jack and Rachael discuss religion in poetry and the buried histories found within words with Camille Ralphs and Stephanie Sy-Quia. Audio postcards in this episode come from Eve Esfandiari-Denney, K Patrick and Hannah Sullivan. 

CAMILLE RALPHS (b.1992, Stoke-on-Trent) is a poet, critic and editor. Her poems and translations have appeared or are forthcoming in magazines including the New York Review of Books, the Poetry Review, The Spectator and the London Magazine, and she has released three pamphlets: Malkin (The Emma Press, 2015), which was shortlisted for the Michael Marks Award; uplifts & chains (If A Leaf Falls/Glyph Press, 2020); and Daydream College for Bards (Guillemot Press, forthcoming 2023). She writes critically for publications including the Telegraph, the Poetry Review and the Los Angeles Review of Books, produces a regular column for Poetry London and conducts an interview series for Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal. She is Poetry Editor at the Times Literary Supplement. Her debut collection, After You Were, I Am, will be published by Faber in the summer of 2024.

 

STEPHANIE SY-QUIA was born in 1995 and is based in London. Her writing and criticism have been published in The Guardian, The White Review, The Boston Review, Granta, The TLS, and others. She is a Ledbury Poetry Critic and has twice been shortlisted for the FT Bodley Head Essay Prize. Her debut Amnion, published by Granta Poetry in 2021, received a Somerset Maugham Award and was a Poetry Book Society Winter Recommendation; was longlisted for the Rathbones Folio and RSL Ondaatje Prizes; and won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. She is the recipient of an Eric Gregory Award.

'Joseph in Bird Mask Can Fly', written and read by Eve Esfandiari-Denney. Her pamphlet, My Bodies This Morning This Evening, is out now (Bad Betty Press, 2022).

'Splash', written and read by K Patrick. K Patrick's debut poetry collection is forthcoming from Granta.

An extract from ‘Was It For This’, written and read by Hannah Sullivan, taken from her most recent collection, Was It For This (Faber, 2023).

RACHAEL ALLEN is the author of Kingdomland (Faber) and co-author of numerous artists’ books, including Nights of Poor Sleep (Prototype), Almost One, Say Again! (Slimvolume), Green at an Angle (Kestle Barton) and Material (Loose Joints). She was recently Anthony Burgess Fellow at the University of Manchester, is the poetry editor for Granta Publications, teaches Creative Writing at Queen Mary University, and her second collection of poems, God Complex, is forthcoming from Faber in 2024.

JACK UNDERWOOD is a poet, writer and critic. He is author of Happiness (Faber 2015) Solo for Mascha Voice (Test Centre, 2018) and A Year in the New Life (Faber 2021). His debut work of non-fiction, NOT EVEN THIS, was published by Corsair in 2021. He has collaborated widely with composers and artists, and his work has been published internationally and in translation. He is senior lecturer in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths College.