In this episode, Lydia Allison reflects on Tom Phillips' 'treated' book A Humument and how it influenced her own Metro erasure poems.

In the interview, Lydia talks about going to an event where Tom Phillips talked about his practice as an artist - and about A Humument in particular. She relates how the book came about and describes its various iterations - the different ‘river’ poems that Phillips came to write using the original text - an obscure Victorian novel entitled A Human Document by W.H. Mallock. Lydia discusses the overall ‘narrative’ of the book, and then focuses on two pages in particular: page 40 and page 305 (which you find and can click on below). 

Lydia then goes on to explain where, why and how she developed her own Metro Horoscope-page found poems.  She talks about the rules that she follows in the making of these works, how she distributes them on social media, and what sort of reactions she has got from printing these versions. We then go on to explore a series of poems, looking in particular at how she uses punctuation and word choices to create her original pieces. 

Lydia Allison is a poet, writing facilitator, creative mentor, and tutor. She has been involved in a number of projects and collaborations, including Stevie Ronnie’s ‘A Diary of Windows and Small Things’, Doncaster Arts’ activity books for lockdown, and ‘Dancing with Words’, a project that paired poets and dancers. Her writing is often inspired by her working life, which spans from bridal consultancy to teaching overseas. 

She is interested in approaching writing in an experimental and playful way. This largely takes the form of blackout poems where she tries to unearth poems hidden in other interesting texts.

She has appeared a number of times in print and online, including The Result Is What You See Today, Introduction X, Surfing the Twilight, Poetry Salzburg Review, PN Review, Feral, and Ink, Sweat & Tears. You can read more at lydiaallison.com, or follow her on twitter/X @lydiarallison 

The Tom Phillips poems that we focus on can be found here:

Page 40 (slideshow):

Page 305 (Slideshow)

You can the book in its entirety here (Tom Phillips also reads one version of the book on the website):

https://www.tomphillips.co.uk/humument

I also mention Nicole Sealey in the podcast. You can find her poem "'Pages 1-4,' An Excerpt from The Ferguson Report: An Erasure'" here.

Lydia Allison's Metro Erasure Poems

grow

/

It's time to

/

come in

/

Are other people

In this episode, I talk to the poet Elizabeth Holloway about how Sharon Olds’ poem 'The Blue Dress’ influenced the writing of her own poem ‘Blue Dress’.

Liz talks about the impact Sharon Olds had on her when her first British collection - The Sign of Saturn - was published (in 1991). She talks about the idea of confessional poetry, and how closely we can connect the author with the narrator of the poem.  She talks about Sharon Olds’ own version  of free verse and how technically skilful she is in terms how she uses uses run-on lines and punctuation to carry the narrative along. Liz also reflects on the different versions of Olds’ persona that are represented in the poem. She talks about the idea of ‘safety’ and disguise in this work, and goes on to discuss the figure of Electra in relation to Olds’ poem too.

Liz talks about how aware she was of Olds’ poem when she was writing her own piece ‘Blue Dress’.  She describes the free verse form she has taken on, then explores the similarities and differences between her poem and Olds’ piece.  Liz talks about the use of blue in other mother-daughter relationships she has written about, then considers the tone of the poem - how both doubt and anxiety play a big part in the making of this work. She goes on to examine the ‘prosy’ quality of her poetry and where she allows herself to tune into more heightened language. She talks about touch and feel, and getting back in touch with someone special who has been missing from the narrator’s own life in the context of Falling Mother.

Blue Dress

In this episode, I talk to the poet Angelina D’Roza about how an extract from Seamus Heaney’s The Cure at Troy, a verse translation of Sophocles' play Philoctetes, influenced the writing of her own poem ‘Correspondences: The Credence of Birds’.

Angelina talks about how Seamus Heaney’s stage directions from The Cure at Troy grabbed her attention, the ‘right thing at the right time.’ She goes on to discuss how she uses this text (and other corresponding texts) as a way in to explore a subject like colonialism, but it’s as much the delight in language at the beginning of the play, apparent in Heaney’s translation, that drew her in. She talks about how she negotiates appropriation of other writer's work in her poetry. Angelina then goes on to expand on all the different influences, alongside Heaney’s stage notes, including the inciting incident from Damon Albarn’s opera Dr Dee, and a poem by Jane Kenyon (on ‘the presence of an absence’) , that worked their way in to her own piece. Angelina develops at length her own processes as a writer, how she draws on exemplary texts from a wide range of sources, a patchwork approach, as a way of an introduction to her own poem ‘Correspondences: The Credence of Birds’. She talks about the play-like quality of this poem, and where it geographically references in the Peak District. She discusses how she doesn’t want to explain all the levels of ambiguity in the poem - to keep those spaces open for herself and the reader. Angelina reflects on bird-lore, and on notions of time before finishing the conversation by discussing how lyrics and songs have influenced her own approach to writing poems.

You hear Angelina read an extract from The Cure at Troy, Seamus Heaney’s translation of Sophocles Philoctetes (Faber, 2018).

Correspondences: The Credence of Birds

She:

In this episode, I talk to the poet Matt Clegg about how ‘Back Home Again Chant’ by T'ao Ch'ien  influenced the writing of his own poem ‘'Tzu-Jan as Perfomance Outcome.’

Matt then goes on to talk about his own poem in the light of saying what Tzu-Jan means in relation to Taoism.  Matt talks about ‘walking out’ of the city - about different ideas around ‘productivity’, about drifting, moving between the inner world and outer world. He reflects on walking as an 'anonymous' person - and what this state of being allows him access to as an alert observer. He finishes by discussing his latest collaborative writing project.

Matt read and discussed 'Back Home Again Chant' by T'ao Ch'ien from The Selected Poems of T'ao Ch'ien Translated by David Hinton (Copper Canyon Press, 2000).

Matt Clegg teaches creative writing at the University of Derby. His books include Cazique, The Navigators, & West North East, all published by Longbarrow Press. His current project is Have You always Been Here, a haibun sequence inspired by Kobayashi Issa’s The Spring of My Life. Have You Always Been Here will combine haiku & prose poetry by Matt, and illustrations by P.R. Ruby. It explores the impact of Covid lockdowns on the contemplative life; on what we observe & how it affects us; how we care; & how we try [or fail] to take responsibility.

Tzu-Jan as Performance Outcome

Into every account mail is pinging: ‘we will secure

our long-term future by competing on more fronts.’

Let’s find a glade where a thought might grow.

On Penistone Road, fans have assembled a totem pole shrine

out of teddy-bears, Wednesday shirts, and ever-wilting

bouquets. They are taped to a long redundant road sign,

as if to re-construct a universal grammar. Dear

Performance Review, this is what I’d really aspire to.

From Beeley Wood Road, someone has flung a single

ballet shoe over the river. It curls, like a comma

for the mind. A captain of industry exhales

his strawberry vape and dreams of shedding half his

body fat in a fixable world without depression.

His factory remains a nut-free zone. Permit me

to fast-forward half a mile, as I climb the hard yards

towards Birley Edge. One acre of slope is bitumen black

and seeded with beer cans.  An emerald fly dances Morse

on the hot-pan of a broken slate, but heather

knits in from all sides, its purples blossoming bees.

Elsewhere, narcissists and lamplighters are blagging

their way into the goonlight, but here, just under

the Birley Stone, someone has evoked their late mother

in flowers of violet and mildest blue. I’d love to stop,

but have business in the leafways of Wharncliffe Woods.

I find a tree, violently uprooted in some long blown-out

gale. The crater where it once clutched earth is a pool

fermenting mud-water wine. Reflected light minnows

back and forth, close-reading each crevice in the exposed

roots. Elsewhere, there are directives to create

future-facing partnerships, but I want only to collaborate

with pipits that flirt in and out of bracken tips, all day.

Here I sit reading Ta’ Chien to the trees, knowing little more

of strategy than this. Fresh crops of data are being harvested,

and bright careerists kneel to the metrics, but here,

aphids have printed their green bodies between the lines

of ‘Back Home Again Chant’. A golden Labrador lags far

behind its master, and snuffle-blesses my open book.

In this episode, Pete Green reads and discusses Chapter Eight from Louis MacNeice’s book-length poem Autumn Journal and how it played a part in the writing of their own long poem Sheffield Almanac.

In the programme, Pete talks about their own long relationship with MacNeice’s poem, how it ‘works’ as a poem, stitching together contemporary ‘pinch points’ of late 1930s history and the author's own autobiography.  In a wide-ranging (roaming) conversation Pete talks about how the form of MacNeice’s poem influenced their own approach to Sheffield Almanac. They also explore how MacNiece brings together high and low culture to discuss notions of privilege, politics, and the state of the nation. Pete goes on to reflect on the first and second editions of Sheffield Almanac, and how their own work as a song writer has informed their own poetry writing skills. Pete talks about conflating the personal and political in Sheffield Almanac, and 'the predicament of the city of Sheffield' that is interrogated in this extended lyrical narrative.

The edition that Pete reads from here is Autumn Journal (Faber, 2012).

Pete Green is a song writer, musician, and poet. They have published two pamphlets with Longbarrow Press - Sheffield Almanac (first edition, 2017 and second edition, 2022), and Hemisphere (2021).  Pete’s first full-length came out with Salt in 2022, entitled The Meanwhile Sites.

             And we were timeless


In this episode, James Caruth discusses Anne Stevenson's ‘North Sea off Carnoustie’ and how reading this work influenced the writing of his own poem ‘Coast Road, North Antrim’.

In the interview, James discusses the importance of workshopping and writing days. He reflects on ideas of the north in both his and Anne Stevenson’s poetry. He also talks about the significance of landscape and the elements in terms of how it affects the world view of individuals in a community. James goes onto discuss ‘North Sea off Carnoustie’ as a touchstone poem.  He explores different ideas of viewpoint or 'stance' by reflecting on his own poem ‘Coast Road, North Antrim.' He reflects on why his early poems were about leaving, and now why he writes about returning to his homeland.

‘Coast Road, North Antrim’ comes from Speechless at Inch.

It holds a narrow course

our Ocean Drive that skirts

Somewhere out there,

Strings of fairy-lights dance

This shore, the edge of all we know.

cautious when the shore birds up and leave

In this episode, Pam Thompson discusses James Schuyler’s ‘Hymn to Life’ and how reading this work influenced the writing of her own poem ‘An Afternoon’.

In the interview, Pam talks about how Schuyler’s life affected what he focused on in his work, and his approach to writing ‘of-the-moment’ poems. She talks about his influences, his interest in diaries, his peripatetic life; how all of this comes through in ‘Hymn to Life’.  Pam then goes on to describe how she came to write her own piece ‘An Afternoon’ after workshopping in Sheffield and online. She reflects on why she wrote a first second and second person version of the poem.  She talks about the afterlife of the painter Edith Spiller. 

Pam has written a blog piece on James Schuyler's poem 'Hymn to Life' for Antony Wilson's website Lifesaving Poems which you can find here 'The Pure Pleasure of / Simply Looking...'

She is on Twitter as @fierydes.

You can find a complete version of James Schuyler’s poem ‘Hymn to Life’ here from his collection Hymn to Life (1974, Random House). The text comes with an audio recording of the piece.

 An afternoon

    where adult lads 

(First person perspective version)

An afternoon

(Second person perspective version)

In this episode, poet Suzannah Evans discusses James Tate’s ‘Making the Best of the Holidays’ and how reading this work influenced the writing of her own poem ‘A Course in Miracles’.

In the interview, Suzannah reflects on the use of form, tone, humour, and the notion of objectionable or challenging narrators as she unpicks James Tate’s piece ‘Making the Best of the Holidays’.  She goes on to discuss her own work ‘A Course in Miracles’, in relation to ideas of faith, encountering different kinds of spiritual or transcendental experiences, and absorbing the sustenance that is on offer.

Suzannah Evans is the author of two collections of poetry, Near Future and Space Baby, both published by Nine Arches Press. Her first pamphlet Confusion Species was a winner in the 2012 Poetry Business Competition, and her second, Green, will be published by Little Betty Press next year. She lives in Sheffield and is a creative director of Sheaf Poetry Festival. 

A Course in Miracles

Making the Best of the Holidays by James Tate (Harper Collins, 2004)

Justine called on Christmas Day to say she

In this episode, poet Rob Hindle discusses William Blake's 'The Sick Rose' and how reading this work influenced the writing of his own poem 'The Sick Rose'. 

You can read a text version of William Blake's (1757-1827) 'The Sick Rose' (with modernized punctuation) here: The Sick Rose (text version).  You can read another version - with accompanying images - here: The Sick Rose (text and image).

You can find out more about Sapo, and buy copies here on The Longbarrow Press website: Sapo (Longbarrow Press)

In this episode, Chris Jones introduces The Two-Way Poetry Podcast, a biweekly series of interviews where he speaks to poets about their own creative inspirations and practice. He says a little about himself, and discusses the background to the show, reflecting on how writers are influenced by the texts they read.

He reflects on the idea that when poets create poems they are often ‘in conversation’ with other writers’ works.  How do poems talk away to other poems? An intriguing prospect if you are eavesdropping on this communication, but also possibly distancing as well if you don’t share the intimate knowledge that is being passed on. This is what the podcast will look to explore in depth: what poets understand about this process of responding to texts, poems that they have read.

In the first upcoming podcast Chris will talk to the poet Rob Hindle about William Blake’s poem ‘The Sick Rose’ and how it influenced, played a part in the writing of his own piece ‘The Sick Rose’ from his collection Sapo (Longbarrow Press).