The Poetry Exchange

In this episode, Yasmin talks about the poem that has been a friend to her – ‘The Guest House' by Rumi.

You can find ‘The Guest House’ in SELECTED POEMS by Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks (Penguin Classics, 2004). We would like to thank Coleman Barks for granting us permission to share the poem in this way.

Yasmin visited The Poetry Exchange at Manchester Central Library, as part of the celebrations of International Mother Languages Day in the city.

Many thanks to our partners Manchester Libraries, Archives Plus, The Manchester Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University and Manchester UNESCO City of Literature.

Yasmin is the Founder and Editor in chief of Halcyon: a creative space aimed at empowering Muslim women.

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

Fiona reads the gift reading of 'The Guest House'.

*****

The Guest House

by Rumi

This being human is a guest house.

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,

some momentary awareness comes

as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweep your house

empty of its furniture,

still, treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out

for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,

meet them at the door laughing,

and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,

because each has been sent

as a guide from beyond.

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In this episode, poet John McAuliffe talks about the poem that has been a friend to him – 'Mathios Paskalis Among The Roses' by George Seferis.

John McAuliffe was born in 1973 and grew up in Listowel, County Kerry. He has published six collections with The Gallery Press. His first, A Better Life (2002), was shortlisted for a Forward Prize. His fifth collection, The Kabul Olympics, was published in April 2020 and was an Observer Poetry Book of the Month. John McAuliffe’s Selected Poems was published in October 2021.

John McAuliffe is Professor of Poetry at the University of Manchester’s Centre for New Writing and Associate Publisher at Carcanet Press. He co-edits PN Review and The Manchester Review, as well as writing for other publications, and he previously worked as chief poetry critic at the Irish Times and as Deputy Chair of the Irish Arts Council.

You can find “Mathios Paskalis Among the Roses” from GEORGE SEFERIS: Collected Poems 1924-1955. Bilingual edition, translated, edited, and introduced by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. Copyright © 1967, renewed 1995 by Princeton University Press.

John is in conversation with The Poetry Exchange team members, Fiona Bennett and Al Snell.

*****

Mathios Paskalis Among The Roses

by George Seferis

I've been smoking steadily all morning

if I stop the roses will embrace me

they'll choke me with thorns and fallen petals

they grow crookedly, each with the same rose colour

they gaze, expecting to see someone go by; no one goes by.

Behind the smoke of my pipe I watch them

scentless on their weary stems.

In the other life a woman said to me: 'You can touch this

hand,

and this rose is yours, it's yours, you can take it

now or later, whenever you like'.

I go down the steps smoking still,

and the roses follow me down excited

and in their manner there's something of that voice

at the root of a cry, there where one starts shouting

'mother' or 'help'

or the small white cries of love.

It's a small white garden full of roses

a few square yards descending with me

as I go down the steps, without the sky;

and her aunt would say to her: 'Antigone, you forgot your

exercises today,

at your age I never wore corsets, not in my time.'

Her aunt was a pitiful creature: veins in relief,

wrinkles all around her ears, a nose ready to die; 

but her words were always full of prudence.

One day I saw her touching Antigone's breast

like a small child stealing an apple.

Is it possible that I'll meet the old woman now as I go down?

She said to me as I left: 'Who knows when we''ll meet

again?'

And then I read of her death in old newspapers

of Antigone's marriage and the marriage of Antigone's

daughter

without the steps coming to an end or my tobacco

which leaves on my lips the taste of a haunted ship

with a mermaid crucified to the wheel while she was still

beautiful.

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In this episode, Hannah talks about the poem that has been a friend to her – ‘Of Mutability’ by Jo Shapcott.

We’re delighted to feature ‘Of Mutability’ in this episode and would like to thank Faber & Faber for granting us permission to share the poem in this way. You can find ‘Of Mutability’ in OF MUTABILITY by Jo Shapcott (Faber & Faber, 2011).

Hannah visited The Poetry Exchange at Manchester Central Library, as part of the celebrations of International Mother Languages Day in the city.

Many thanks to our partners Manchester Libraries, Archives Plus, The Manchester Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University and Manchester UNESCO City of Literature.

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

*********

Of Mutability

by Jo Shapcott

Too many of the best cells in my body

are itching, feeling jagged, turning raw

in this spring chill. It’s two thousand and four

and I don’t know a soul who doesn’t feel small

among the numbers. Razor small.

Look down these days to see your feet

mistrust the pavement and your blood tests

turn the doctor’s expression grave.

Look up to catch eclipses, gold leaf, comets,

angels, chandeliers, out of the corner of your eye,

join them if you like, learn astrophysics, or

learn folksong, human sacrifice, mortality,

flying, fishing, sex without touching much.

Don’t trouble, though, to head anywhere but the sky.

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In this episode, Angela talks about the poem that has been a friend to her – ‘The force that through the green fuse drives the flower' by Dylan Thomas.

We’re delighted to feature ‘The force that through the green fuse drives the flower’ in this episode and would like to thank Weidenfeld and Nicolson for granting us permission to share the poem in this way.

You can find ‘The force that through the green fuse drives the flower’ in The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas: the Centenary Edition, published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson, copyright holder The Dylan Thomas Trust.

Angela visited The Poetry Exchange at Manchester Central Library, as part of the celebrations of International Mother Languages Day in the city.

Many thanks to our partners Manchester Libraries, Archives Plus, The Manchester Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University and Manchester UNESCO City of Literature.

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

*********

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.

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In this episode, Mark talks about the poem that has been a friend to him – ‘Barcarole' by Pablo Neruda - translated by Robert Hass.

We’re delighted to feature ‘Barcarole’ in this episode and would like to thank Agencia Literaria Carmen Balcells, City Lights Books and Frederick Courtright for granting us permission to share the poem in this way.

You can find ‘Barcarole’ in ‘The Essential Neruda’ - Selected Poems - edited by Mark Eisner, published by Bloodaxe Books in the UK and City Lights Books in the US.

*****

Barcarole

by Pablo Neruda

If only you would touch my heart,

if only you were to put your mouth to my heart,

your delicate mouth, your teeth,

if you were to put your tongue like a red arrow

there where my dusty heart is beating,

if you were to blow on my heart near the sea, weeping,

it would make a dark noise, like the drowsy sound of

train wheels,

like the indecision of waters,

like autumn in full leaf,

like blood,

with a noise of damp flames burning the sky,

with a sound like dreams or branches or the rain,

or foghorns in some dismal port,

if you were to blow on my heart near the sea,

like a white ghost,

in the spume of the wave,

in the middle of the wind,

like a ghost unleashed, at the seashore, weeping.

Like a long absence, like a sudden bell,

the sea doles out the sound of the heart,

raining, darkening at sundown, on a lonely coast:

no question that night falls

and its mournful blue of the flags of shipwrecks

peoples itself with planets of throaty silver.

And the heart sounds like a sour conch

calls, oh sea, oh lament, oh molten panic,

scattered in the unlucky and dishevelled waves:

The sea reports sonorously

on its languid shadows, its green poppies.

If you existed, suddenly, on a mournful coast,

surrounded by the dead day,

facing into a new night,

filled with waves,

and if you were to blow on my cold and frightened heart,

if you were to blow on the lonely blood of my heart,

if you were to blow on its motion of doves in flame,

its black syllables of blood would ring out,

its incessant red waters would come to flood,

and it would ring out, ring out with shadows,

ring out like death,

cry out like a tube filled with wind or weeping,

like a shaken bottle spurting fear.

So that's how it is, and the lightning would glint in your braids

and the rain would come in through your open eyes

to ready the weeping you shut up dumbly

and the black wings of the sea would wheel round you,

with its great talons and its rush and its cawing.

Do you want to be the solitary ghost blowing,

by the sea its sad instrument?

If only you would call,

a long sound, a bewitching whistle,

a sequence of wounded waves,

maybe some one would come,

(someone would come,)

from the peaks of the islands, from the red depths of the sea,

someone would come, someone would come.

Someone would come, blow fiercely,

so that it sounds like a siren of some battered ship,

like lamentation,

like neighing in the midst of the foam and blood,

like ferocious water gnashing and sounding.

In the marine season

its conch of shadow spirals like a shout,

the seabirds ignore it and fly off,

its roll call of sounds, its mournful rings

rise on the shores of the lonely sea.

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In this episode, Katharine talks about the poem that has been a friend to her – ‘Dich’ / ‘You’ by Erich Fried.

We are delighted to feature ‘Dich’ / ‘You’ in this episode and would like to thank Verlag Klaus Wagenbach for allowing us to use it in this way.

Katharine visited The Poetry Exchange at St Chad's College Chapel in Durham, during Durham Book Festival, in association with Durham University Foundation Programme. We’re very grateful to all our Durham partners for hosting us so warmly.

Katharine is in conversation with The Poetry Exchange team members, Michael Shaeffer and Andrea Witzke-Slot.

‘Dich’ / ‘You' is read by Michael Shaeffer.

*****

Dich

By Eric Fried

Dich

dich sein lassen

ganz dich

Sehen, daß du nur du bist

wenn du alles bist

was du bist

das Zarte

und das Wilde

das was sich anschmiegen

und das was sich loßreißen will

Wer nur die Hälfte liebt

der liebt dich nicht halb

sondern gar nicht

der will dich zurechtschneiden

amputieren

verstümmeln

Dich dich sein lassen

ob das schwer oder leicht ist?

Es kommt nicht darauf an mit wieviel

Vorbedacht und Verstand

sondern mit wieviel Liebe und mit wieviel

offener Sehnsucht nach allem –

nach allem

was du ist

Nach der Wärme

und nach der Kälte

nach der Güte

und nach dem Starrsinn

nach deinem Willen

und Unwillen

nach jeder deiner Gebärden

nach deiner Ungebärdigkeit

Unstetigkeit

Stetigkeit

Dann

ist dieses

dich dich sein lassen

vielleicht

gar nicht so schwer

‘Dich’ by Erich Fried from 'Es ist was es ist’ © 1983 Verlag Klaus Wagenbach, Berlin

*********

Below is a translation of the poem, published in ‘Love Poems’ by Erich Fried, trans. Stuart Hood, available from Alma Classics.

You

By Erich Fried

You

to let you be you

all you

To see

that you are only you

when you’re everything

that you are

the tender one

and the wild one

that wants to break free

and wants to come close

Whoever loves the half

loves you not by half

but not at all

wants to cut you to size

to amputate

to maim you

To let you be you

is it hard or easy?

It’s not a matter of how much

forethought and understanding

but of how much love and how much

open longing for everything –

for all

that is you

For the warmth

and the coldness

for the goodness

and obstinacy

for your wilfulness

and unwillingness

for each of your gestures

for your awkwardness

inconstancy

constancy

Then this

letting you be you

maybe isn’t so difficult

after all

Fried, Erich. Love Poems (Alma Classics)

The extract about translation quoted by Fiona on the Intro to this episode is from Kiki Dimoula’s book The Brazen Plagiarist, selected poems translated by Cecile Inglessis Margellos and Rika Lesser published by Yale University Press.

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In this episode of our podcast, you will hear Hannah talk about the poem that has been a friend to her: 'This Be The Verse' by Philip Larkin.

We are delighted to feature 'This Be The Verse' in this episode and would like to thank Faber & Faber for allowing us to use the poem in this way.

Hannah visited The Poetry Exchange at St Chad's College Chapel in Durham, during Durham Book Festival, in association with Durham University Foundation Programme. We’re very grateful to all our Durham partners for hosting us so warmly.

Hannah is in conversation with The Poetry Exchange team members, John Prebble and Michael Shaeffer.

'This Be The Verse' is read by Michael Shaeffer.

*****

This Be The Verse

by Philip Larkin

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.

They may not mean to, but they do.

They fill you with the faults they had

And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn

By fools in old-style hats and coats,

Who half the time were soppy-stern

And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.

It deepens like a coastal shelf.

Get out as early as you can,

And don’t have any kids yourself.

Philip Larkin, "This Be the Verse" from Collected Poems. Copyright © Estate of Philip Larkin. Reproduced by permission of Faber and Faber, Ltd.

Source: The Complete Poems (Faber and Faber, 2014)

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In this episode of our podcast, you will hear Jackie talk about the poem that has been a friend to her: 'Last Post' by Carol Ann Duffy.

We are delighted to feature 'Last Post' in this episode and would like to thank Carol Ann Duffy and Peter Strauss at Rogers, Coleridge & White for allowing us to use it in this way.

Carol Ann Duffy has recently published a collection of poems written over the course of her laureateship, entitled 'Sincerity', which is available from Picador. She has also edited an anthology, 'Armistice' - A Laureate's Choice of Poems of War and Peace, available from Faber & Faber.

Jackie visited The Poetry Exchange at St Chad's College Chapel in Durham, during Durham Book Festival, in association with Durham University Foundation Programme. We’re very grateful to all our Durham partners for hosting us so warmly.

Jackie is in conversation with The Poetry Exchange team members, Andrea Witzke-Slot and John Prebble.

'Last Post' is read by John Prebble.

*****

Last Post

by Carol Ann Duffy

'In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.'

If poetry could tell it backwards, true, begin

that moment shrapnel scythed you to the stinking mud…

but you get up, amazed, watch bled bad blood

run upwards from the slime into its wounds;

see lines and lines of British boys rewind

back to their trenches, kiss the photographs from home-

mothers, sweethearts, sisters, younger brothers

not entering the story now

to die and die and die.

Dulce- No- Decorum- No- Pro patria mori.

You walk away.

You walk away; drop your gun (fixed bayonet)

like all your mates do too-

Harry, Tommy, Wilfred, Edward, Bert-

and light a cigarette.

There's coffee in the square,

warm French bread

and all those thousands dead

are shaking dried mud from their hair

and queuing up for home. Freshly alive,

a lad plays Tipperary to the crowd, released

from History; the glistening, healthy horses fit for heroes, kings.

You lean against a wall,

your several million lives still possible

and crammed with love, work, children, talent, English beer, good food.

You see the poet tuck away his pocket-book and smile.

If poetry could truly tell it backwards,

then it would.

© Carol Ann Duffy 2009

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In this episode of our podcast, you will hear extraordinary poet Roy Mcfarlane talk about the poem that has been a friend to him: 'The Negro Speaks of Rivers' by Langston Hughes.

Roy McFarlane was born in Birmingham of Jamaican parentage and has spent most of his years living in Wolverhampton - and more recently Brighton. He has held the role of Birmingham’s Poet Laureate, Starbucks’ Poet in Residence and Birmingham & Midland Institute’s Poet in Residence. Roy’s writing has appeared in magazines and anthologies, including Out of Bounds (Bloodaxe, 2012), Filigree (Peepal Tree, 2018) and he is the editor of Celebrate Wha? Ten Black British Poets from the Midlands (Smokestack, 2011). He has three exceptional collections published by Nine Arches Press: Beginning With Your Last Breath (2016), The Healing Next Time (2018), and Living by Troubled Waters (2022). Roy is also a trustee of The Poetry Exhange and in 2023 he was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

We are delighted to feature 'The Negro Speaks of Rivers' in this episode and would like to thank Harold Ober Associates for allowing us to use it in this way. You can find the poem in 'Vintage Hughes' published by Penguin Random House.

Roy visited The Poetry Exchange at the Festival in a Factory at the Emma Bridgewater factory in Stoke-on-Trent. We’re very grateful to Emma Bridgewater for hosting us so warmly.

Roy is in conversation with The Poetry Exchange team members, Fiona Bennett and Al Snell.

'The Negro Speaks of Rivers' is read by Fiona Bennett.

*****

The Negro Speaks of Rivers

By Langston Hughes

I’ve known rivers:

I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the

flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.

I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.

I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.

I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln

went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy

bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I’ve known rivers:

Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

From The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Copyright © 1994 the Estate of Langston Hughes.

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In this episode of our podcast, you will hear Peter talking about the poem that has been a friend to him: 'Continuous' by Tony Harrison.

We are delighted to feature 'Continuous' in this episode and would like to thank both Faber & Faber and Tony Harrison for granting us permission to use the poem in this way. www.faber.co.uk/author/tony-harrison/

Peter visited The Poetry Exchange at BALTIC Contemporary Arts Centre in Gateshead, as part of the Raising The Flag Event. We’re very grateful to BALTIC for hosting The Poetry Exchange so warmly.

Peter is in conversation with The Poetry Exchange team members, John Prebble and Degna Stone.

'Continuous' is read by John Prebble.

*****

Continuous

By Tony Harrison

James Cagney was the one up both our streets.

His was the only art we ever shared.

A gangster film and choc ice were the treats

that showed about as much love as he dared.

He’d be my own age now in ’49!

The hand that glinted with the ring he wore,

his father’s, tipped the cold bar into mine

just as the organist dropped through the floor.

He’s on the platform lowered out of sight

to organ music, this time on looped tape,

into a furnace with a blinding light

where only his father’s ring will keep its shape.

I wear it now to Cagney’s on my own

And sense my father’s hands cupped round my treat –

they feel as though they’ve been chilled to the bone

from holding my ice cream all through White Heat.

From 'Continuous' by Tony Harrison (Rex Collings, 1981).

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