The Poetry Exchange

In this episode, poet and criminal barrister Tim Kiely talks about the poem that has been a friend to him: 'Timothy Winters' by Charles Causley.

READ A TRANSCRIPT OF THIS EPISODE.

We are so grateful to Tim for joining us and sharing his story of connection with Causely's powerful poem.

Tim Kiely is a criminal barrister and poet based in London. His work has appeared in 'South Bank Poetry', 'Under the Radar', 'Atrium', 'Ink, Sweat & Tears' and 'Magma'. He is the author of three poetry pamphlets, 'Hymn to the Smoke' (from Indigo Dreams), 'Plaque for the Unknown Socialist' (from Back Room Poetry) and 'No Other Life' (from Vole Books), all of which are available from timkielybooks.bigcartel.com. He can be followed @timkiely1 on Instagram and Twitter.

You can find 'Timothy Winters' in Charles Causley's 'Collected Poems' 1951-2000 (Picador, 2000).

Fiona and Michael mention this year's Forward Prizes for Poetry - find out more about all the shortlisted poets and the prize ceremony, taking place at Leeds Playhouse on 16th October 2023.

Is there a poem that has been a friend to YOU? Tell us about it and read some of the extraordinary nominations of poems as friends we have received so far... www.thepoetryexchange.co.uk/nominate.

Tim Kiely is in conversation with The Poetry Exchange team members Al Snell and Andrea Witzke Slot.

*********

Timothy Winters

by Charles Causley

Timothy Winters comes to school

With eyes as wide as a football-pool,

Ears like bombs and teeth like splinters:

A blitz of a boy is Timothy Winters.

His belly is white, his neck is dark,

And his hair is an exclamation-mark.

His clothes are enough to scare a crow

And through his britches the blue winds blow.

When teacher talks he won't hear a word

And he shoots down dead the arithmetic-bird,

He licks the pattern off his plate

And he's not even heard of the Welfare State.

Timothy Winters has bloody feet

And he lives in a house on Suez Street,

He sleeps in a sack on the kitchen floor

And they say there aren't boys like him anymore.

Old Man Winters likes his beer

And his missus ran off with a bombardier,

Grandma sits in the grate with a gin

And Timothy's dosed with an aspirin.

The welfare Worker lies awake

But the law's as tricky as a ten-foot snake,

So Timothy Winters drinks his cup

And slowly goes on growing up.

At Morning Prayers the Master helves

for children less fortunate than ourselves,

And the loudest response in the room is when

Timothy Winters roars "Amen!"

So come one angel, come on ten

Timothy Winters says "Amen

Amen amen amen amen."

Timothy Winters, Lord. Amen

From 'Collected Poems 1951-2000' (Picador, 2000), © Charles Causley 2000, used by permission of the author’s Estate.

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

FOR TRANSCRIPT CLICK HERE.

In this episode, poet Michael Mark joins us to talk about the poem that has been a friend to him: 'Little Champion' by Tony Hoagland.

Michael Mark is the author of Visiting Her in Queens is More Enlightening than a Month in a Monastery in Tibet, which won the 2022 Rattle Chapbook prize. His poems have appeared in Best American Poetry, Copper Nickel, The New York Times, Pleiades, Ploughshares, Southern Review, The Sun, 32 Poems, and The Poetry Foundation's American Life in Poetry. His two books of stories are Toba and At the Hands of a Thief (Atheneum). michaeljmark.com 

We are hugely grateful to Michael for visiting The Poetry Exchange and talking so openly and eloquently about his connection with 'Little Champion.'

You can find 'Little Champion' in Tony Hogland's collection 'Application for Release from the Dream', published by Graywolf Press (2015). Many thanks to Grawywolf Press for their support.

Michael Mark is in conversation with The Poetry Exchange team members Andrea Witzke Slot and John Prebble.

The 'gift' reading of 'Little Champion' is by John Prebble.

*********

Little Champion

by Tony Hoagland

When I get hopeless about human life,

which quite frankly is far too difficult for me,

I like to remember that in the desert there is

a little butterfly that lives by drinking urine.

And when I have to take the bus to work on Saturday,

or spend an hour opening the mail,

deciding what to keep and what to throw away,

one piece at a time,

I think of the butterfly following its animal around

through the morning and the night,

fluttering, weaving sideways through

the cactus and the rocks.

And when I have to meet all Tuesday afternoon

with the committee to discuss new bylaws,

or listen to the dinner guest explain his recipe for German beer,

or hear the scholar tell, again,

about her campaign to destroy, once and for all,

the cult of heteronormativity,

I think of that tough little champion

with orange and black markings on its wings,

resting in the shade beneath a ledge of rock

while its animal sleeps nearby;

and I see how the droplets hang and gleam among

the thorns and drab green leaves of desert plants

and how the butterfly alights and drinks from them

deeply, with a stillness of utter concentration.

Published in The Sun Magazine, November 2014 and in the collection, 'Application for Release from the Dream' (Graywolf Press, 2015).

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

FOR TRANSCRIPT CLICK HERE.

In this episode of The Poetry Exchange, we are thrilled to be joined by the poetry tour-de-force that is Salena Godden, to hear about the poem that has been a friend to her: 'You Don't Know What Love' Is by Kim Addonizio.

Salena spoke with Fiona Bennett and Michael Shaeffer about this elusive, gorgeous poem and the part it has played in her life.

Salena Godden FRSL is an award-winning author, poet and broadcaster of Jamaican-mixed heritage. Her debut novel Mrs Death Misses Death won the Indie Book Award for Fiction and the People’s Book Prize, and was shortlisted for the British Book Awards and the Gordon Burn Prize. Film and TV rights for Mrs Death Misses Death have been optioned by Idris Elba’s production company Green Door Pictures.

A hardback edition of Pessimism is for Lightweights - 30 Pieces of Courage and Resistance was published by Rough Trade Books in February 2023. She is currently working on a memoir and a poetry collection which are both due for publication in May 2024, plus an eagerly anticipated second novel set in the Mrs Death Misses Death universe due for publication in spring 2025.

Salena's essay Shade was published in groundbreaking anthology The Good Immigrant (Unbound 2016). Godden has had several volumes of poetry published including Under The Pier (Nasty Little Press 2011) Fishing in the Aftermath: Poems 1994-2014 (Burning Eye Books 2014), plus also a childhood memoir, Springfield Road (Unbound 2014).

After hearing this episode, you will also want to seek out and read as much as you can of Kim Addonizio's work.

*********

You Don't Know What Love Is

by Kim Addonizio

You don't know what love is

but you know how to raise it in me

like a dead girl winched up from a river. How to

wash off the sludge, the stench of our past.

How to start clean. This love even sits up

and blinks; amazed, she takes a few shaky steps.

Any day now she'll try to eat solid food. She'll want

to get into a fast car, one low to the ground, and drive

to some cinderblock shithole in the desert

where she can drink and get sick and then

dance in nothing but her underwear. You know

where she's headed, you know she'll wake up

with an ache she can't locate and no money

and a terrible thirst. So to hell

with your warm hands sliding inside my shirt

and your tongue down my throat

like an oxygen tube. Cover me

in black plastic. Let the mourners through.

From 'What Is This Thing Called Love' by Kim Addonizio (2005, W.W. Norton & Co.)

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

In this episode, poet, radio host and editor Lois P. Jones talks about the poem that has been a friend to her: 'What Survives' by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by A. Poulin Jr.

Lois P. Jones is a luminous poet, radio host and editor, living in California. She won the 2023 Alpine Fellowship which this year takes place in Fjällnäs, Sweden. She was a finalist in the annual Mslexia Poetry Competition judged by Helen Mort and will be published in Spring 2023. In 2022 her work was a finalist for both the Best Spiritual Literature Award in Poetry from Orison Books and the Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest. Lois' first collection, 'Night Ladder' was published by Glass Lyre Press in 2017 and was a finalist for the Julie Suk Award and the Lascaux Poetry Prize for a poetry collection. Since 2007, has hosted KPFK’s Poets Café, co-produced the Moonday Poetry Series and acted as poetry editor for Pushcart and Utne prize-winning Kyoto Journal.

'What Survives' was published in The Complete French Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by A. Poulin, Jr, by Graywolf Press in 2002.

Lois P. Jones is in conversation with The Poetry Exchange hosts Fiona Bennett and Michael Shaeffer.

The 'gift' reading of 'What Survives' is by Fiona and Michael.

*********

What Survives

by Rainer Maria Rilke

translated by A. Poulin, Jr.

Who says that all must vanish?

Who knows, perhaps the flight

of the bird you wound remains,

and perhaps flowers survive

our caresses, in their ground.

It isn't the gesture that lasts,

but it dresses you again in gold

armor--from breast to knees—

and the battle was so pure

may an Angel wear it after you.

From The Complete French Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by A. Poulin, Jr. (Graywolf Press, 2002).

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

In this latest episode, writer Rosie Garland talks to us about the poem that has been a friend to her: 'My Dark Horses' by Jodie Hollander.

Writer and singer with post-punk band The March Violets, Rosie Garland has a passion for language nurtured by public libraries. Her poetry collection ‘What Girls do the Dark’ (Nine Arches Press) was shortlisted for the Polari Prize 2021, & her novel The Night Brother was described by The Times as “a delight...with shades of Angela Carter.” Val McDermid has named her one of the UK’s most compelling LGBT writers. http://www.rosiegarland.com

Jodie Hollander, originally from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was raised in a family of classical musicians. She studied poetry in England, and her poems have appeared in journals such as The Poetry Review, The Yale Review and The Dark Horse. Her debut full-length collection, My Dark Horses, was published with Liverpool University Press (Pavilion Poetry) in 2017. Her second collection, Nocturne, was published with Liverpool & Oxford University Press in the spring of 2023. https://www.jodiehollander.com

Rosie Garland is in conversation with The Poetry Exchange team members Sally Anglesea and John Prebble.

In the introduction, Fiona also mentions Glyn Maxwell's extraordinary new collection, 'The Big Calls', which was published by Live Canon in March 2023.

We hope you enjoy being with all the poems featured in this episode!

*********

My Dark Horses

by Jodie Hollander

If only I were more like my dark horses,

I wouldn’t have to worry all the time

that I was running too little and resting too much.

I’d spend my hours grazing in the sunlight,

taking long naps in the vast pastures.

And when it was time to move along I’d know;

I’d spend some time with all those that I’d loved,

then disappear into a gathering of trees.

If only I were more like my dark horses,

I wouldn’t be so frightened of the storms;

instead, when the clouds began to gather and fill

I’d make my way calmly to the shed,

and stand close to all the other horses.

Together, we’d let the rain fall round us,

knowing as darkness passes overhead

that above all, this is the time to be still.

From 'My Dark Horses' by Jodie Hollander, Liverpool University Press, 2017.

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

In this latest episode of The Poetry Exchange, we revisit our conversation with the extraordinary poet & artist Rachel Eliza Griffiths about the poem that has been a friend to her: 'Remember' by Joy Harjo.

This beautiful and transformative conversation was originally released in 2020 and has been a friend to many of our listeners so far. We felt it was one to bring into the light all over again!

We are hugely grateful to Rachel Eliza Griffiths for sharing her profound story of connection with Joy Harjo's life-filled poem, and to Joy Harjo and her publisher W.W. Norton & Co. for giving us their blessing to share it with you in this way.

Rachel Eliza Griffiths is an American poet, novelist, photographer and visual artist, who is the author of five published collections of poems. In her recent book, Seeing the Body (2020), she "pairs poetry with photography, exploring memory, Black womanhood, the American landscape, and rebirth." (Sarah Herrington, Los Angeles Review of Books). Seeing the Body was the winner of the 2021 Hurston/Wright Foundation Legacy Award in Poetry, the winner of the 2021 Paterson Poetry Prize, and nominated for a 2020 NAACP Image award. Rachel Eliza's debut novel, Promise, was published by Penguin Random House in July 2023.

Joy Harjo is an internationally renowned performer and writer of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. She served three terms as the 23rd Poet Laureate of the United States from 2019-2022 and is the author of ten books of poetry, including the highly acclaimed, Weaving Sundown in a Scarlet Light: Fifty Poems for Fifty Years. Her many honors include the National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, the Academy of American Poets Wallace Stevens Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. You can find out more about Joy Harjo's work at: www.joyharjo.com.

Two poems by John Clare also feature in this episode: 'All Nature has a Feeling' and 'A Spring Morning'.

*********

Remember

by Joy Harjo

Remember the sky that you were born under,

know each of the star's stories.

Remember the moon, know who she is.

Remember the sun's birth at dawn, that is the

strongest point of time. Remember sundown

and the giving away to night.

Remember your birth, how your mother struggled

to give you form and breath. You are evidence of

her life, and her mother's, and hers.

Remember your father. He is your life, also.

Remember the earth whose skin you are:

red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth

brown earth, we are earth.

Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their

tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,

listen to them. They are alive poems.

Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the

origin of this universe.

Remember you are all people and all people

are you.

Remember you are this universe and this

universe is you.

Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.

Remember language comes from this.

Remember the dance language is, that life is.

Remember.

'Remember' reproduced from She Had Some Horses: Poems by Joy Harjo (c) 2008 by Joy Harjo. Used with permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.

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

In this latest episode of The Poetry Exchange, we revisit our conversation about 'Poem (Lana Turner Has Collapsed)' by Frank O'Hara - A Friend to Harry Jelly.

This gorgeous conversation was originally released in 2016 and has been a friend to many of our listeners so far. We felt it was one to lift up and enjoy all over again!

We are hugely grateful to Harry for sharing his story of connection with Frank O'Hara's wonderful poem, and to the John Rylands Library for hosting this conversation back in 2016.

This is the second of a trio of episodes revisiting previously released conversations - specially chosen and introduced by Fiona and Michael.

*********

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 latest episode of The Poetry Exchange, we revisit our conversation about 'The force that through the green fuse drives the flower' by Dylan Thomas - A Friend to Angela.

This extraordinary and beautiful conversation was originally released in 2019 and has been a friend to many of our listeners so far. We felt it was one to lift up and revisit again in this moment.

We are hugely grateful to Angela for sharing her story of connection with Dylan Thomas's poem, and to Manchester Central Library for hosting this conversation.

This is the first of a trio of episodes revisiting previously released conversations - specially chosen and introduced by Fiona and Michael.

You will also hear Fiona and Michael read from and discuss Kae Tempest's soul-reaching and truth-speaking book On Connection, as well as the poem 'Tall Nettles' by Edward Thomas.

*********

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower

by Dylan Thomas

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower

Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees

Is my destroyer.

And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose

My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

The force that drives the water through the rocks

Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams

Turns mine to wax.

And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins

How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.

The hand that whirls the water in the pool

Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind

Hauls my shroud sail.

And I am dumb to tell the hanging man

How of my clay is made the hangman’s lime.

The lips of time leech to the fountain head;

Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood

Shall calm her sores.

And I am dumb to tell a weather’s wind

How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.

And I am dumb to tell the lover’s tomb

How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.

Poem © Dylan Thomas. Used by permission of David Higham Associates.

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

In this episode of The Poetry Exchange, poet Rowena Knight talks with us about the poem that has been a friend to her: 'Grief' by Matthew Dickman.

Rowena visited us in Durham and is in conversation with Andrea Witzke Slot and Michael Shaeffer. We are hugely grateful to her for sharing her story of connection with Matthew Dickman's poem.

Rowena Knight’s poetry is influenced by her identity as a queer feminist and her childhood in New Zealand. Her poems have appeared in various publications, including Butcher’s Dog, Magma, The Rialto, and The Emma Press Anthology of Love. She was shortlisted for the 2018 Bridport Prize and commended in the 2019 Winchester Poetry Prize. Her first pamphlet, All the Footprints I Left Were Red, was published with Valley Press in 2016. You can find Rowena on Twitter @purple_feminist and Instagram @purple_feminist_

You can discover more of Matthew Dickman's stunning, reverberating poetry at www.matthewdickmanpoetry.com. 'Grief' can be found in the collection 'Mayakovsky's Revolver' from W.W. Norton & Company, 2012.

The reading of 'Grief' is by Andrea Witzke Slot.

*********

Grief

by Matthew Dickman

When grief comes to you as a purple gorilla

you must count yourself lucky.

You must offer her what’s left

of your dinner, the book you were trying to finish

you must put aside

and make her a place to sit at the foot of your bed,

her eyes moving from the clock

to the television and back again.

I am not afraid. She has been here before

and now I can recognize her gait

as she approaches the house.

Some nights, when I know she’s coming,

I unlock the door, lie down on my back,

and count her steps

from the street to the porch.

Tonight she brings a pencil and a ream of paper,

tells me to write down

everyone I have ever known,

and we separate them between the living and the dead

so she can pick each name at random.

I play her favorite Willie Nelson album

because she misses Texas

but I don’t ask why.

She hums a little,

the way my brother does when he gardens.

We sit for an hour

while she tells me how unreasonable I’ve been,

crying in the check-out line,

refusing to eat, refusing to shower,

all the smoking and all the drinking.

Eventually she puts one of her heavy

purple arms around me, leans

her head against mine,

and all of a sudden things are feeling romantic.

So I tell her,

things are feeling romantic.

She pulls another name, this time

from the dead,

and turns to me in that way that parents do

so you feel embarrassed or ashamed of something.

Romantic? She says,

reading the name out loud, slowly

so I am aware of each syllable, each vowel

wrapping around the bones like new muscle,

the sound of that person’s body

and how reckless it is,

how careless that his name is in one pile and not the other.

Copyright: Matthew Dickman. 'Grief' by Matthew Dickman, from 'Mayakovsky's Revolver', W.W. Norton & Company, 2012.

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

In this episode, poet Ella Frears talks about the poem that has been a friend to her: The The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot.

Ella Frears 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. Her latest pamphlet I AM THE MOTHER CAT written as part of her residency at John Hansard Gallery is out with Rough Trade Books (2021). Ella was recently named Poet in Residence for the Dartington Trust’s grade II listed Gardens, selected by Alice Oswald. She is a trustee and editor for Magma Poetry and has been Poet in Residence for the National Trust, Tate Britain, The John Hansard Gallery, K6 Gallery, SPUD (the Observatory), conservation organisation Back from the Brink, and was poet in residence at Royal Holloway University physics department, writing about the Cassini Space Mission. https://ellafrears.com

Ella is in conversation with The Poetry Exchange hosts Fiona Bennett and Michael Shaeffer.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is read by Michael Shaeffer.

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