Welcome back to Words That Burn, the poetry podcast taking a closer look at poetry. In this episode, host Benjamin Collopy offers a close reading of Kaveh Akbar's "Famous Americans and Why They Were Wrong", from his 2021 collection Pilgrim Bell.

The poem runs to seven couplets and moves from a ribbon tied around an oak tree to a wish that somebody forgets you today. Benjamin situates Akbar as a poet formed by prayer and by place, tracing the poet's biography from a boy reciting Arabic he could not translate to a writer preoccupied with what empire does to language.

In This Episode, I Explore:

• The Ribbon and the Hostage Crisis: Why the opening image reads so strangely to a non American audience, and how the yellow ribbon curdled from a welcome into a warning after 1979. We follow the poem discussion through the oak's roots sinking into the dirt and the heart that sinks alongside them, and ask what exactly is seeping into whom.
• Akbar's Ghazal: A look at the form, its couplets, its refrains, and the strict rules Akbar declines to follow. The ghazal is famous for what Agha Shahid Ali called its formal disunity, and that disunity turns out to be the literary technique doing the heaviest lifting here. We break down how enjambment carries meaning across couplets that seem unrelated on the page, one of several literary devices worth slowing down for.
• Data at the Centre of a Heart: The sinking library, the architect who forgot the weight of the books, and Akbar's argument that empire uses abstraction to cudgel us into idleness. We look at what the word "data" is doing in a poem that also treats untranslated prayer as a kind of data, and why only one of those is sacred.
• The Mercy of Being Forgotten: Why a poem about erasure ends by wishing for it. Visibility inside an empire is rarely a gift, and Akbar's closing hope is offered in the grammar of prayer, which is to say with no guarantee anyone is listening.

Accessible enough for poetry for beginners and no prior reading required. As always, this poetry interpretation belongs to Benjamin and is very much up for debate. Full script with citations and references on Substack, linked below.

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The Music In This Week's Episode:

'Hydra' by Huda - released under CC-BY 4.0.

Time Stamps:

00:00 Poetry Reading

00:51 Poetry as Prayer

01:43 Kaveh Akbar's Background

03:39 The Iranian Hostage Crisis

05:04 Iranian Identity in America

06:43 Understanding the Title

08:28 Ribbons and Patriotic Symbols

09:50 The Ghazal Form

13:00 Weaponisation of Language

15:25 Data and Dehumanisation

18:52 The Final Couplet

20:58 Empire and Prayer

21:39 Closing Thoughts

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In this episode of Words That Burn, the poetry podcast dedicated to literary analysis and poetic interpretation, I sit down with Belfast poet Matthew Rice to discuss his new collection Plastic: a book-length poem mapped across a single night shift in an invented plastics factory. It's published by Fitzcarraldo Editions.

Born from his PhD at the Seamus Heaney Centre, Queen's University Belfast, Plastic sits at a rare intersection in contemporary poetry: a deeply personal account of fifteen years working factory floors, fused with literary devices and techniques drawn from medieval romance, Gothic literature, and pop culture.

We discuss the historical context behind the collection, tracing Rice's place within a tradition of working-class and "factory poets" like Philip Levine and Larry Levis, and explore how Sir Gawain and the Green Knight becomes a recurring avatar for the speaker's own quest through the night.

This conversation doubles as a poetry education in itself, perfect whether you're new to contemporary poetry or already fluent in poetic analysis.

We chat about:

• How timestamps and form mirror the malleability of plastic itself
• The Gothic undercurrents running through a hyper-modern, industrial setting
• Literary allusion: from Wolverine comics to Kubrick's Gotham to Fassbender's Prometheus, and how pop culture deepens poetic meaning
• The poet biography behind the book: Rice's journey from factory worker to MA and PhD in poetry
• A live reading of two poems from the collection, including the recurring Gawain sequence

Whether you're after rigorous poem discussion, a beginner-friendly entry point into poetry interpretation, or simply want to hear from one of the most original voices in Irish poetry and Global poets writing today, this episode of this poetry podcast offers a rich, accessible deep-dive into a genuinely singular collection.

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Time Stamps:

00:00 Welcome and Guest Intro

00:40 Inside the Book Plastic

02:17 Factory Poetry Gap

03:40 Molds and Poetic Form

06:05 Long Poem in Sections

07:38 Poetry as Escape

11:23 Dream Time and Imagination

12:34 Mapping Time on Shift

16:19 Gawain on the Factory Floor

19:47 Reading a Gawain Poem

21:00 Reviews and New Meanings

22:55 Pop Culture Allusions

24:14 Fosse One Sentence Novel

25:05 Wolverine And Prometheus

27:37 Factory As Monster

29:31 Kubrick City Character

31:28 Flesh Meets Machine

36:01 Gothic Hauntings And Swift

38:12 Gotham Politics And Capital

42:12 Prologue Ritual And Verbing

45:54 Hidden Easter Egg Poem

47:44 Final Thoughts And Thanks

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Welcome back to Words That Burn, the poetry podcast where host Benjamin Collopy takes a closer look at the verse that shapes our world.

Whether you're here to deepen your poetry appreciation or are simply looking for accessible poetry for beginners, the goal is to make poetry education engaging for everyone.

In this episode, Ben sits down for an in-depth poem discussion with Mark Ward, an incredible voice in modern Irish poetry. They explore Mark's compelling poet biography; from his early days writing in Dublin to his work as a playwright, before jumping into a full poem deep dive of his brand-new collection, Real Estate ( from Salmon Poetry).

Listeners will get the mechanics of Mark's poetry explained by the poet himself. Through thoughtful poetry analysis, Ben and Mark unpack the evocative literary devices used to capture everything from the collapse of a relationship to the profound grief of losing a beloved pet.

• The Architecture of Verse: Why Mark considers every line of a poem to be "prime real estate" and the importance of leaning into subjects that scare you.
• Grief and the Physical World: A close look at the sequence Nine Lives, dedicated to Mark's cat, Carbon, which beautifully captures the tactile realities of caregiving and loss.
• Body Horror & Metaphor: Exploring the complex imagery and literary devices in the poem Hunger, where inner anxieties warp physical, domestic spaces.
• Documenting Queer History: How poetry serves as an alternative lineage, with a focus on 1992, a piece that memorializes Dublin's 1980s and 1990s gay culture.
• Subverting Expectations: A reading and analysis of Slow Evening, a joyful and tender poem that acts as a poignant rebuke to the tragic "Bury Your Gays" narrative trope.

Mark Ward is a poet, playwright, and short story writer based in Dublin. He is the author of two full-length collections with Salmon Poetry: Nightlight (2023) and his latest release, Real Estate. His diverse body of work also includes six chapbooks ranging from sonnets to queer ekphrastic verse, and his plays have been staged at the International Dublin Gay Theatre Festival.

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Time Stamps:

00:00 Welcome and Guest Intro

01:01 What Real Estate Means

03:04 Building Poem Sequences

05:00 Revisiting Old Work

06:29 Writing Breakup Darkness

11:05 Nine Lives and Pet Grief

13:16 Reading Carer Aloud

14:44 Desire and Physicality

17:41 Hunger Image Craft

20:43 Reading Hunger Aloud

22:35 Desire Versus Self

24:15 Writing From Observation

26:04 Finding Poetry Mentors

28:14 Ekphrasis And Queer Lineage

31:42 Poetry As Cultural Memory

36:18 Reading Poem 1992

38:24 Slow Evening And Gay Joy

42:47 Closing Thanks

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Welcome back to Words That Burn, the podcast taking a closer look at poetry. In this episode, host Benjamin Collopy offers a close reading of Mary Ruefle’s four-line masterpiece, “Deconstruction.”

This brief but devastating poem masterfully bridges ancient myth with the unbearable weight of modern existence. Benjamin situates Ruefle as a master storyteller and meticulous "sentence maker," breaking down how four short lines can bend time, space, and human memory.

• The Sirens & The Metatextual Turn: How Ruefle uses Homer’s The Odyssey to force us to look inward. The poem presents a brilliant metatextual idea: that the Sirens actually sang The Odyssey itself, seducing listeners with the terrible, irresistible story of their own lives. We explore how the poem’s subtle shift from “I” to “we” invites shared introspection about how we remember, retell, and mythologise ourselves.
• Erasure vs. Found Poetry: Using Ruefle's own remarks, we distinguish her specific practice of erasure (or blackout) poetry from standard found poetry, highlighting the intent and precision required to carve a poem out of an existing text.
• Erasure as Survival: We connect "Deconstruction" to Ruefle’s broader lectures on reading, memory, and survival. Discover why picking apart existing texts isn't just an artistic choice, but a vital coping mechanism for processing life’s overwhelming excess.

Mary Ruefle's Erasure Notebooks

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The Music In This Week's Episode:

'Memories Of Stone' by Scott Buckley - released under CC-BY 4.0. www.scottbuckley.com.au

Time Stamps:

00:00 Sirens and Self Story

00:27 Why This Poem

01:28 Mary Ruefle's Style

03:02 Erasure Poetry Explained

04:53 Reading the Poem

05:43 Metatext and Reading

06:50 Sirens in The Odyssey

08:21 Erasure as Survival

11:22 Title Does the Work

12:47 Why It Stays With Us

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In this episode of Words That Burn, I sit down with poet Shannon Kuta Kelly to explore the beautifully haunting landscapes of her debut poetry collection, The Tree is Missing (coming this April from Faber and Faber).

Shannon’s work has been featured in the New England Review, Poetry Ireland Review, and The Irish Times. As a PhD graduate from the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen's University Belfast and a 2025 Ciaran Carson Fellow, she brings a profound depth of knowledge and intuition to her craft. We discuss the tension between the past and present, the eerie realities of urbanisation, and how transient living shapes our identities.

This episode explores:

• The Meaning of "The Tree is Missing": Unpacking the symbolic, ecological, and geographical resonances behind the collection's title.
• Liminality and Urban Sprawl: How manmade borders, transient city living, and the meeting point between nature and concrete influence her writing.
• History’s Phantom Limbs: Grounding the tragic, echoing histories of places like Tarnów, Poland, through human-centric storytelling and everyday images.
• Folklore and Dream Logic: Why poetry and myth are a "match made in heaven," and how Shannon taps into our shared subconscious and collective symbols.
• An Exclusive Reading: Shannon treats us to a reading of her poignant poem, Gost, and discusses the linguistic overlap between "ghosts" and "guests."

Whether you are a writer looking for advice on peeling back the layers of your own poetry or a reader fascinated by the intersection of myth and reality, Shannon’s insights are not to be missed.

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Time Stamps:

00:00 Welcome and Guest Intro

01:05 Why The Tree Is Missing

02:25 Borders Urban Sprawl Erasure

03:33 Liminal Life and POV Shifts

04:49 Observing Strangers and Details

06:00 From Reality to Spare Images

08:43 Tarnov and Haunted History

12:44 Storytelling Women and Three Sisters

15:20 Poetic Truth and Let It Be August

16:58 Endings Claustrophobia and Book Shape

19:58 Editing Influences and Breathing Space

22:28 Decay in Pastoral Scenes

24:56 Folklore and Poetic Logic

26:48 Two Brothers Divided

29:31 Nostalgia and Lost Homes

32:11 Dream Time Symbols

34:45 How Poems Are Collected

36:07 Gost Guests and Ghosts

39:50 Refrain and Repetition

42:05 Advice for other poets

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Celebrate Seachtain na Gaeilge with a closer look at "Oidhreacht" (Heredity), a powerful piece by Irish poet and Gaeilgeoir, Louis De Paor. In this episode of Words That Burn, we explore the complex psychogeography of Ireland and the tension between holding onto the past and embracing the future of the Irish language.

Discover how De Paor captures generational trauma and linguistic lineage through striking metaphors, from an ancient, shouting Ogham stone to a snarled tooth that evokes the myth of the Salmon of Knowledge (Bradán Feasa). We also unpack the cultural tug-of-war that helped shape modern Gaeilge, highlighting how the modernization of the language is not a betrayal, but a necessity.

This episode takes a loot at:

• An in-depth analysis of the poem "Oidhreacht" (Heredity) and its exploration of Irish identity and guilt.
• The history of Innti, a radical 1970s literary journal that brought beat poetry techniques to Irish language literature.
• The historic clash between "old school" Nativists seeking to preserve a pure, pastoral form of Gaeilge and the progressive movement striving for modern European influence.
• How De Paor expertly weaves the folklore of Fionn mac Cumhaill and the Salmon of Knowledge into his modern reflections.

Theo Dorgan Essay

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The Music In This Week's Episode:

'Memories Of Stone' by Scott Buckley - released under CC-BY 4.0. www.scottbuckley.com.au

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Does the constant barrage of global news make you want to turn off the screens and bury your head? You aren’t alone. In a world that feels like a "round puddle of sunless water," how do we keep going?

In this episode of Words That Burn, I analyse Audre Lorde’s powerful poem, "Coping."

Written by the self-described "Black lesbian mother warrior poet," this piece from The Black Unicorn collection offers a vital lesson on resilience, parenting as revolution, and the refusal to drown easily.

We explore Lorde’s legacy as a "bridge builder" and how her seminal philosophies, including The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle The Master's House; inform this seemingly simple image of a boy bailing rainwater from a garden.

In this episode, I cover:

• The Poem: A line-by-line analysis of "Coping" and its biblical vs. humanist metaphors.
• The Context: How Lorde’s travels to Benin and her experience with motherhood shaped her activism.
• The Philosophy: Understanding the "architecture of difference" and intersectionality.
• The Takeaway: Why preserving "young seeds" is crucial for the future of society.

If you are feeling the weight of the world, let Audre Lorde’s words be the spark you need to keep doing the work.

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The Music In This Week's Episode:

'Penumbra' by Scott Buckley - released under CC-BY 4.0. www.scottbuckley.com.au

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In the final episode of Words That Burn for 2025, we turn our attention to the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year, and the American poet who captured its delicate balance of darkness and light: W.S. Merwin.

This episode's poem "The Solstice," a work of minimalist verse that explores the intersection of nature, personal vulnerability, and the cyclical nature of time. This episode traces Merwin’s evolution from a rigid formalist to an experimental voice for environmental activism. It looks at how the poet was heavily influenced by the Vietnam War and the ecological fragility of his adopted home in Hawaii.

As we close out a difficult year marked by global conflict and uncertainty, this episode asks: How do we find hope when the days seem at their darkest? Merwin’s work reminds us that even when the sun goes away, it always comes back.

Topics Explored:

• W.S. Merwin’s Evolution: From the classical influence of W.H. Auden to the stark, grounded style of The Lice.
• Ecopoetry & Activism: How the Vietnam War and the destruction of Hawaiian flora (like the ʻōhiʻas and honeycreepers) radicalised Merwin’s work.
• Poetic Analysis: Deconstructing the structure of "The Solstice" and how its shrinking stanzas mimic the dwindling daylight of December 21st.

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The Music In This Week's Episode:

'Penumbra' by Scott Buckley - released under CC-BY 4.0. www.scottbuckley.com.au

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In this episode of Words That Burn, I'm joined by Irish poet Clíodhna Bhreatnach to discuss her debut pamphlet, Pink Roses and Green. Together, we chat about a collection that sits at the intersection of the "nine-to-five grind," Millennial burnout, and a deep, tactile longing for the natural world.

Clíodhna breaks down her unique approach to the "Millennial Lyric"; moving away from the pastoral and into the office kitchenette. We discuss how she navigates the Post-Celtic Tiger landscape, using poetry to document the deformation of human time under late-stage capitalism.

We cover other topics like:

• The Romantic Office: Applying the philosophy of Keats and Wordsworth to photocopiers and Excel spreadsheets.
• Digital Intimacy: Finding beauty in the "randomised screensavers" of Windows desktops.
• The "Sick Addiction to Soft Things": Why tactile textures (paper, nature) are vital in a digital world.
• Writers Groups: The importance of community (specifically the Frustrated Writers Group) in banishing impostor syndrome.

• Bandit Country by James Conor Patterson
• Unstoppable Utopia by Cassandra Moss
• The Perfect Season by Sean Pearson
• The Lover's Discourse by Anahid Nersessian (Criticism on Keats)

About the poet:

Clíodhna Bhreatnach is from Waterford and lives in Dublin. Her poems have appeared in Poetry Ireland Review, The Stinging Fly, and The Forward Book of Poetry 2023. She has recently been awarded a Dublin City Council Arts Bursary for 2025. She is the former poetry editor of Frustrated Writers Group.

Find the book and the poet:

https://cliodhnabhreatnach.com

https://greenbottlepress.com/product/pink-roses-green-by-cliodhna-bhreatnach/

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For Halloween 2025, Words That Burn resurrects one of the most chilling poems in English literature: "This Living Hand" by John Keats. This short, macabre poem wasn't published until 77 years after Keats's death, making it feel like a genuine message from beyond the grave.

In this special episode, we explore the poem's dark, gothic imagery and the terrifying "strange bargain" it offers the reader. We dissect its uncanny duality, its sense of dread, and the horrifying biographical context of Keats's final days; a "posthumous existence" of body horror that forged this masterpiece.

I look at the poem's vampiric mechanism and Keats's desperate plea, not only for a transfusion of life, but for the artistic immortality he feared he'd never achieve.

This episode covers:

• The dark history of Keats's "This Living Hand."
• How Keats's embrace of darkness ("the burden of mystery") set him apart from other Romantic poets.
• A close reading of the poem's body horror, from "earnest grasping" to the "icy silence of the tomb."
• The link between Keats's final, agonising days and the poem's "vampiric" plea for life.
• Why this poem is a perfect, terrifying read for the Halloween season.

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The Music In This Week's Episode:

'Soul Searcher' by Scott Buckley - released under CC-BY 4.0. www.scottbuckley.com.au

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