The Poetry Exchange

In this episode you will hear Liis talking about the poem that has been a friend to her - 'The Island' by A.A. Milne.

Liis visited us at Wise Words Festival in Canterbury. For the first time, we held The Poetry Exchange in an open, public setting, amongst the poetry books at Waterstones, Rose Lane, Canterbury. We are very grateful to both Waterstones and to Wise Words for hosting The Poetry Exchange so warmly.

Liis is in conversation with The Poetry Exchange team members Sarah Salway and John Prebble.

*****

The Island

by A.A. Milne

If I had a ship,

I'd sail my ship

I'd sail my ship

Through Eastern seas;

Down to the beach where the slow waves thunder -

The green curls over and the white falls under -

Boom! Boom! Boom!

On the sun-bright sand.

Then I'd leave my ship and I'd land,

And climb the steep white sand,

And climb to the trees

The six dark trees,

The coco-nut trees on the cliff's green crown -

Hands and knees

To the coco-nut trees,

Face to the cliff as the stones patter down,

Up, up, up, staggering, stumbling,

Round the corner where the rock is crumbling,

Round this shoulder,

Over this boulder,

Up to the top where the six trees stand....

And there would I rest, and lie,

My chin in my hands, and gaze

At the dazzle of sand below,

And the green waves curling slow

And the grey-blue distant haze

Where the sea goes up to the sky....

And I'd say to myself as I looked so lazily down at the sea:

"There's nobody else in the world, and the world was made for me."

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode you will hear Jonathan Barnes talking about the poem that has been a friend to him - 'Love (III)' by George Herbert.

Jonathan visited us at Wise Words Festival in Canterbury. For the first time, we held The Poetry Exchange in an open, public setting, amongst the poetry books at Waterstones, Rose Lane, Canterbury. We are very grateful to both Waterstones and to Wise Words for hosting The Poetry Exchange so warmly.

Jonathan Barnes is in conversation with The Poetry Exchange team members Victoria Field and John Prebble.

*****

Love (III)

by George Harrison

Love bade me welcome. Yet my soul drew back,

Guilty of dust and sin.

But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack

From my first entrance in,

Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning

If I lacked anything.

‘A guest,’ I answered, ‘worthy to be here.’

Love said, ‘You shall be he.’

‘I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear,

I cannot look on thee.’

Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,

‘Who made the eyes but I?’

‘Truth Lord; but I have marred them; let my shame

Go where it doth deserve.’

‘And know you not,’ says Love, ‘who bore the blame?’

‘My dear, then I will serve.’

‘You must sit down,’ says Love, ‘and taste my meat:’

So I did sit and eat.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, you will hear the brilliant actor Maxine Peake talking about the poem that has been a friend to her: ’Turns' by Tony Harrison.

Maxine visited The Poetry Exchange at John Rylands Library in May 2016. We’re very grateful to John Rylands Library for hosting The Poetry Exchange. Thank you also to Tony Harrison and Penguin Books for kindly granting permission for us to use the poem in this way.

Maxine Peake is in conversation with The Poetry Exchange hosts, Fiona Bennett and Michael Schaeffer.

'Turns' is read by Michael Schaeffer.

*****

Turns

by Tony Harrison

I thought it made me look more 'working class'

(as if a bit of chequered cloth could bridge that gap!)

I did a turn in it before the glass.

My mother said: It suits you, your dad's cap.

(She preferred me to wear suits and part my hair:

You're every bit as good as that lot are!)

All the pension queue came out to stare.

Dad was sprawled beside the postbox (still VR),

his cap turned inside up beside his head,

smudged H A H in purple Indian ink

and Brylcreem slicks displayed so folks might think

he wanted charity for dropping dead.

He never begged. For nowt! Death's reticence

crowns his life's, and me, I'm opening my trap

to busk the class that broke him for the pence

that splash like brackish tears into our cap.

'Turns' by Tony Harrison. From ‘Selected Poems’. (Penguin; 3rd Revised ed. edition, 7 Feb. 2013)

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of our podcast, you will hear Harry talking about the poem that has been a friend to him: ’Poem (Lana Turner Has Collapsed)' by Frank O'Hara.

Harry visited The Poetry Exchange at John Rylands Library in May 2016. We’re very grateful to John Rylands Library for hosting The Poetry Exchange. Thank you also to City Lights Publishers for kindly granting permission for us to use the poem in this way.

Harry is in conversation with The Poetry Exchange team members, Jacqueline Kington and Michael Schaeffer.

’Poem (Lana Turner Has Collapsed)' is read by Michael Schaeffer and Jacqueline Kington.

*****

Poem (Lana Turner Has Collapsed)

by Frank O'Hara

Lana Turner has collapsed!

I was trotting along and suddenly

it started raining and snowing

and you said it was hailing

but hailing hits you on the head

hard so it was really snowing and

raining and I was in such a hurry

to meet you but the traffic

was acting exactly like the sky

and suddenly I see a headline

LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED!

there is no snow in Hollywood

there is no rain in California

I have been to lots of parties

and acted perfectly disgraceful

but I never actually collapsed

oh Lana Turner we love you get up

’Poem (Lana Turner Has Collapsed)' by Frank O'Hara from 'Lunch Poems: Pocket Poets Number 19'. (City Lights Publishers 2014).

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of our podcast, you will hear the brilliant poet and theatre-maker Hafsah Aneela Bashir talking about the poem that has been a friend to her: ’On Children' by Kahlil Gibran.

Hafsah Aneela Bashir is a Manchester-based poet, playwright, performer and mother, originally from East London. Founder and co-director of Outside The Frame Arts, she is passionate about championing voices outside the mainstream.

Winner of the Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship 2019, she was writer-in-residence with Manchester Literature Festival, is an Associate Artist with Oldham Coliseum Theatre and a Supported Artist at The Royal Exchange Theatre. Creating socially engaged work, her play Cuts Of The Cloth was commissioned for PUSH Festival 2019. Her debut poetry collection The Celox And The Clot is published by Burning Eye Books.

Hafsah has worked creatively with Manchester International Festival, Ballet Black, HOME Theatre Mcr, Manchester Literature Festival and ANU Productions Irl. Her SICK! Festival commission, Four Dholis And A Divorce explored mental health set in the South Asian community. Since her visit to The Poetry Exchnage, Hafsah has become a close and vital associate artist in our work.

Hafsah Aneela Bashir visited The Poetry Exchange at John Rylands Library, Manchester in May 2016. We’re very grateful to John Rylands Library for hosting The Poetry Exchange. Do visit them for further inspiration!

Hafsah is in conversation with The Poetry Exchange team members, Fiona Lesley Bennett and Michael Schaeffer.

’On Children' is read by Fiona Bennett.

*****

'On Children' (from 'The Prophet') by Kahlil Gibran

Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,

For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,

which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them,

but seek not to make them like you.

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children

as living arrows are sent forth.

The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,

and He bends you with His might

that His arrows may go swift and far.

Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;

For even as He loves the arrow that flies,

so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of the podcast, you will hear Mark talking about the poem that has been a friend to him: ’For Sigrid' by Derek Walcott.

Mark visited The Poetry Exchange at The Chapel in St Chad's College as part of Durham Book Festival in October 2015. We’re very grateful to Durham Book Festival, New Writing North and St

Chad’s College for hosting The Poetry Exchange. Thank you also to Farrar, Straus and Giroux for kindly granting permission for us to use the poem in this way.

Mark is in conversation with The Poetry Exchange team members, Fiona Lesley Bennett and Michael Schaeffer.

'For Sigrid' is read by Michael Schaeffer.

*****

‘For Sigrid’ from ‘The Bounty’

by Derek Walcott.

The sea should have settled him, but its noise is no help.

I am talking about a man whose doors invite a sail

to cross a kitchen-sill at sunrise, to whom the reek of kelp

drying in the sunlit wind on the chattering shoal

or the veils of a drizzle hazing a narrow cave

are a phantom passion; who hears in the feathering lances

of grass a soundless siege, who, when a bird skips a wave,

feels an arrow shoot from his heart and his wrist dances.

He sees the full moon in daylight, the sky’s waning rose,

the gray wind, his nurse trawling her shawl of white lace;

whose wounds were sprinkled with salt but who turns over their horrors

with each crinkling carapace. I am talking about small odysseys

that, with the rhythm of a galley, launch his waking house

in the thinning indigo hour, as he mutters thanks over

the answer of a freckled, forgiving back in creased linen,

its salt neck and damp hair, and, rising from cover,

to the soundless pad of a leopard or a mewing kitten,

unscrews the coffee-jar and measures two and a half spoons,

and pauses, paralyzed by a sail crossing blue windows,

then dresses in the half-dark, dawn-drawn by the full moon’s

magnet, until her light-heaving back is a widow’s.

She drags the tides and she hauls the heart by hawsers

stronger than any devotion, and she creates monsters

that have pulled god-settled heroes from their houses

and shawled women watching the fading of the stars.

"For Sigrid" from THE BOUNTY by Derek Walcott. Copyright © 1997 by Derek Walcott. Used by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of our podcast, you will hear Alison talking about the poem that has been a friend to her: ’Restlessness' by D. H. Lawrence.

Alison visited The Poetry Exchange at St Chad's College Chapel as part of Durham Book Festival in October 2015. We’re very grateful to Durham Book Festival, New Writing North and St Chad’s College for hosting The Poetry Exchange. Do visit them for further inspiration!

Alison is in conversation with The Poetry Exchange team members, Fiona Lesley Bennett and Michael Schaeffer.

'Restlessness' is read by Michael Schaeffer.

*****

Restlessness

by D. H. Lawrence

At the open door of the room I stand and look at the night,

Hold my hand to catch the raindrops, that slant into sight,

Arriving grey from the darkness above suddenly into the light of the room.

I will escape from the hollow room, the box of light,

And be out in the bewildering darkness, which is always fecund, which might

Mate my hungry soul with a germ of its womb.

I will go out to the night, as a man goes down to the shore

To draw his net through the surf’s thin line, at the dawn before

The sun warms the sea, little, lonely and sad, sifting the sobbing tide.

I will sift the surf that edges the night, with my net, the four

Strands of my eyes and my lips and my hands and my feet, sifting the store

Of flotsam until my soul is tired or satisfied.

I will catch in my eyes’ quick net

The faces of all the women as they go past,

Bend over them with my soul, to cherish the wet

Cheeks and wet hair a moment, saying: “Is it you?”

Looking earnestly under the dark umbrellas, held fast

Against the wind; and if, where the lamplight blew

Its rainy swill about us, she answered me

With a laugh and a merry wildness that it was she

Who was seeking me, and had found me at last to free

Me now from the stunting bonds of my chastity,

How glad I should be!

Moving along in the mysterious ebb of the night

Pass the men whose eyes are shut like anemones in a dark pool;

Why don’t they open with vision and speak to me, what have they in sight?

Why do I wander aimless among them, desirous fool?

I can always linger over the huddled books on the stalls,

Always gladden my amorous fingers with the touch of their leaves,

Always kneel in courtship to the shelves in the doorways, where falls

The shadow, always offer myself to one mistress, who always receives.

But oh, it is not enough, it is all no good.

There is something I want to feel in my running blood,

Something I want to touch; I must hold my face to the rain,

I must hold my face to the wind, and let it explain

Me its life as it hurries in secret.

I will trail my hands again through the drenched, cold leaves

Till my hands are full of the chillness and touch of leaves,

Till at length they induce me to sleep, and to forget.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of our podcast, you will hear Martin talking about the poem that has been a friend to him: ’The Lake Isle of Innisfree' by W. B. Yeats.

Martin visited The Poetry Exchange at The National Poetry Library at Southbank in London. We’re very grateful to The Poetry Library for hosting us. Do visit them for further inspiration!

Martin is in conversation with The Poetry Exchange team members, Alastair Snell and Sarah Salway.

'The Lake Isle of Innisfree' is read by Alastair Snell.

*****

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

by W.B. Yeats

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,

And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:

Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee;

And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,

Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;

There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,

And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;

While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,

I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of our podcast, you will hear Claudia talking about the poem that has been a friend to her: ’The moth' by Miroslav Holub.

We are delighted to feature 'The moth' in this episode and would like to thank Bloodaxe Books for granting us permission to use the poem in this way. Do visit them for further inspiration!

Claudia visited The Poetry Exchange at Greyfriars Chapel in Canterbury, as part of Wise Words Festival in September 2014. We’re very grateful to Wise Words for hosting The Poetry Exchange.

Claudia is in conversation with The Poetry Exchange team members, Fiona Lesley Bennett and Michael Shaeffer.

'The moth' is read by Michael Shaeffer.

*****

The moth

by Miroslav Holub

The moth,

having left its pupa

in the galaxy

of flower grains

and pots of rancid dripping,

the moth

discovers in this

topical darkness

that it’s a kind of butterfly

but

it can’t believe it,

it can’t believe it,

it can’t believe

that it’s a tiny,

flying, relatively

free moth

and it wants to go back,

but there’s no way.

Freedom makes

the moth tremble

for ever. That is,

Twenty-two hours.

Miroslav Holub, Poems Before & After: Collected English Translations. Trans. Dana Hasova and David Young (Bloodaxe Books, 2006)

*****

Adaptation

by Fiona Lesley Bennett.

Czechoslovakia 1976

A man is shuttered away in a laboratory

he stares down the lens of a microscope

into the peppercorn eyes of a moth.

At night words fall through him like particles

that cluster and mutate in spiralling patterns

Nemuze uverit, nemuze uverit, nemuze uverit .

Every twenty-two hours

the moth hangs in its pupa

waiting for the blood to fall

and for the wind and the currents.

Columbia 2011

A woman is kept in a jar, the jar

is kept in darkness, the darkness

is blacker than her eyes. Inside herself

she dreams she is a girl running barefoot

with a net in the garden.

creelo, creelo, creelo

Somewhere

between thought and dream, between

decades and hemispheres and species

the edge of belief begins

like a wing that trembles  

and then lifts. 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of our podcast, you will hear John talking about the poem that has been a friend to him: ’Ars Poetica #100: I Believe' by Elizabeth Alexander.

We are delighted to feature 'Ars Poetica 100: I Believe' in this episode and would like to thank Elizabeth Alexander, Faith Childs Literary Agency and Graywolf Press for granting us permission to use the poem in this way.

John visited The Poetry Exchange at Greyfriars Chapel in Canterbury, as part of Wise Words Festival in September 2014. We’re very grateful to Wise Words for hosting The Poetry Exchange. Thanks also to Spread The Word for their continued support of the project.

John is in conversation with The Poetry Exchange team members, Fiona Lesley Bennett and Michael Shaeffer.

'Ars Poetica #100: I Believe' is read by Michael Shaeffer.

*****

'Ars Poetica #100: I Believe'

by Elizabeth Alexander

Poetry, I tell my students,

is idiosyncratic. Poetry

is where we are ourselves

(though Sterling Brown said

“Every ‘I’ is a dramatic ‘I’”),

digging in the clam flats

for the shell that snaps,

emptying the proverbial pocketbook.

Poetry is what you find

in the dirt in the corner,

overhear on the bus, God

in the details, the only way

to get from here to there.

Poetry (and now my voice is rising)

is not all love, love, love,

and I’m sorry the dog died.

Poetry (here I hear myself loudest)

is the human voice,

and are we not of interest to each other?

Ars Poetica #100: I Believe © 2005 by Elizabeth Alexander, first appeared in American Sublime, published by Graywolf Press, St. Paul, MN, and is used with the permission of Elizabeth Alexander.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.