The Two-Way Poetry Podcast

By: Chris Jones
Listen for free

  • Summary

  • In each episode Chris Jones invites a poet to introduce a poem by an author who has influenced his, her or their own approach to writing. The poet discusses the importance of this work, and goes on to talk in depth about a poem they have written in response to this original piece.
    Copyright 2023 All rights reserved.
    Show More Show Less
Art Literary History & Criticism
Show More Show Less
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2
Episodes
  • David Swann on Tony Hoagland's poem 'The Neglected Art of Description' and his own poem 'The Last Day of Summer'

    David Swann on Tony Hoagland's poem 'The Neglected Art of Description' and his own poem 'The Last Day of Summer'
    Nov 25 2024
    In this episode, I spend time with Dave Swann (on his, and his wife, Ange's allotment) as we reflect on Tony Hoagland's poem 'The Neglected Art of Description' and his own poem 'The Last Day of Summer'. In the podcast, Dave talks about meeting Tony Hoagland at a poetry reading in London. He discusses how he got over balancing his work life and writing life by going on writing courses. He mentions how, on one of these residencies, he met the poet Mimi Khalvati who introduced him to the idea of schwa vowels, and how this made him view his poetry in a different light. He talks about the importance of description, professional noticing, and daydreaming. He then goes on to discuss Tony Hoagland's 'plate spinning', the technical 'tight-rope act' he enacts from poem to poem. He talks at length about 'The Neglected Art of Description', how it hovers around those different points of describing detail through 'sleights of hand' and rhetorical flourishes (and Zen Buddhism). How it can only go so far. He goes on a detour - focusing for a while on the descriptive power of Mark Doty's poem 'Two Ruined Boats'. He then goes on to explore his own poem 'The Last Day of Summer' and the choices of language he made in this piece. What is poetry supposed to do in the world? He talks about sleights of hand in his own poetry, how and why he focuses on the film Paths of Glory, and on the case of a political prisoner (Reyhaneh Jabbari) being executed for her own beliefs. He talks at length about the technical decisions that he makes in the poem. He explores the idea of being 'bombarded' by news and information, and how as individuals (and writers) we have to negotiate this stream of words in our lives. How do we sift out the words that are important to us? He discusses the importance of poetry in people's lives too. Finally, he explores the different (prose and poetry) collections he is currently writing for publication - including his allotment poems. Tony Hoagland's poem 'The Neglected Art of Description' can be found in Application for the Release from the Dream (Bloodaxe, 2015). Dave also reads from 'Two Ruined Boats' from Mark Doty's collection Atlantis (Cape, 1996). Dave also mentions in the podcast Hoagland's book Real Sofistikashun: Essays on Poetry and Craft (Graywolf Press, 2006). David Swann began his writing life as a reporter for the local newspaper in Accrington. After working in nightclubs, warehouses, and magazines in Amsterdam, he became the writer in residence in a prison. A book based on those experiences, The Privilege of Rain (Waterloo Press, 2009) was shortlisted for The Ted Hughes Award. Dave's stories and poems have been widely published and won many awards, including eleven successes at the Bridport Prize and two in The National Poetry Competition. His novella Season of Bright Sorrow (also available from Ad Hoc Fiction), won the 2021 Bath Novella-in-Flash Competition. David's own poem, 'The Last Day of Summer', comes from his last published poetry collection, Gratitude on the Coast of Death (Waterloo Press, 2017). You can follow me on X - @cwjoneschris or on Bluesky - @cwjoneschris.bsky.social for more updates on future episodes. The Last Day of Summer If the clock-radio wasn't chanting its old lament I'd spend the summer's finale under our duvet but the year's last light is falling, and, here, it's all war, famine, Ebola. And Iran has hanged Reyhaneh Jabbari. There's a better place than this, but I can't find it anywhere in our house, so I carry my tea into the yard and listen while a neighbour's child calls to her vanished cat. 'Gucci!' she cries, on the brink of tears. 'Gucci, where are you, dear?' The mallow's crazy bloom has dimmed now and the sunflowers have lost interest in the sky. I follow their hunched gaze to where indestructible snails lumber like tanks over the paving stones, and think of that moment in Paths of Glory when cockroaches scuttle through a cell. Tomorrow, when's he dead, those things will continue to live, the condemned man tells his jailers, unable to imagine the world bearing his absence. Around me: a citadel of living spiders. They have strung their cables over our tiny lawn. The grass has gone on growing and these cobwebs are thicker than I've known. Global warming? Upstairs, the clock-radio drones while a child's voice rises through its scales. 'Gucci,' she sings. 'Come home now, Gucci!' Our words have travelled vast distances, that's what I tell the kids I teach. They have come to us on journeys and their bags are full of secrets. Rose, for instance. Or musk. Or path. Or assassin. These words are from Farsi, words from the land that has hanged Reyhaneh Jabbari. For two months she was held alone, beyond reach of lawyers and family, and she went to her death still protecting the name of the man who saved her from rape by the government agent. These are not the words of a poem and that is not the name of a cat. Let me sit here with ...
    Show More Show Less
    1 hr and 23 mins
  • Robert Hamberger on John Clare's poem 'The Field Mouse's Nest' and his own poem 'Herb Robert'

    Robert Hamberger on John Clare's poem 'The Field Mouse's Nest' and his own poem 'Herb Robert'
    Nov 11 2024

    In this episode, I talk to Robert Hamberger about John Clare’s poem 'The Field Mouse’s Nest' and his own poem 'Herb Robert'.

    In our conversation, Robert talks about how his art teacher introduced to him to the works of Sylvia Plath and John Clare (among others). He discusses the 'everyday' language he uses in his poetry and how (through this 'political act') he doesn’t want to exclude his readers. He goes on to explore the idea of the sonnet - how can you find your voice inside the given ‘rules’ of the fourteen-line poem - the rhyme scheme, the weight of tradition: ‘a lovely challenge’. Robert then elaborates on Clare’s background - his prodigious output of poetry (even when he was incarcerated) and from this reflects on how important it is to separate writing from publishing (to see them as two separate activities). Robert then discusses 'The Field Mouse's Nest'. He explores punctuated and unpunctuated versions of this sonnet, and Clare's use of dialect, reading from Seamus Heaney's essay ‘John Clare’s Prog’. He touches on the idea of Clare as an ecopoet.

    He then goes on to illuminate the evolution of his memoir A Length of Road: Finding Myself in the Footsteps of John Clare from 1995 onward - and how the poem 'Herb Robert' fits into the larger scheme of the book. He talks about 'Herb Robert' as a queer poem, and from this insight, shows how the relationship between himself and Clare - and his understanding of himself developed as he drafted and redrafted the work. He then goes on to talk at length about the hold the sonnet has had on him over his writing life, and how this poem, in particular, fitted in as one of his 'form-testing' poems.

    You can read John Clare's Northborough Sonnets (mentioned in the podcast) in this edition from Carcanet Press. Seamus Heaney's essay on John Clare comes from his collection of essays The Redress of Poetry (Faber, 2002). Here is a version of 'The Field Mouse's Nest' from the Poetry Archive (with 'cesspools' instead of 'sexpools' in the final line).

    Robert Hamberger has been shortlisted and highly commended for Forward prizes, appearing in the Forward Book of Poetry 2020. He won The London Magazine Poetry Prize 2023 and has been awarded a Hawthornden Fellowship. His poetry has featured as the Guardian Poem of the Week and in British, American, Irish and Japanese anthologies. He has published six poetry pamphlets and four full-length collections. Blue Wallpaper (Waterloo Press) was shortlisted for the 2020 Polari Prize. His prose memoir with poems A Length of Road: finding myself in the footsteps of John Clare was published by John Murray in 2021. His fifth collection Nude Against A Rock from Waterloo Press was published in October 2024.

    You can find Robert Hamberger's website here.

    You can follow me on X - @cwjoneschris or on Bluesky - @cwjoneschris.bsky.social for more updates on future episodes.

    Herb Robert

    What flavour of man is this, whose tips unpeel into flowers? His arrows blossom. Five petals top each blood-line that dips and lifts through the breeze. I've seen him hide by the creaky bridge where lattice-water dabbles a trout's tail while bubbles rise. His leaves mimic ferns, his colour campion. How can he be less than he is? He lives his name. Two bulbs branch from every stem, until I catch him taking over the wood-side. A hundred buds swarm their messages on the air. If I eat his breath will it heal me? Stroke him across my temples quietly, quietly.
    Show More Show Less
    1 hr and 19 mins
  • David Harmer on Dylan Thomas's 'Poem in October' and his own poetry sequence 'White Peak Histories'

    David Harmer on Dylan Thomas's 'Poem in October' and his own poetry sequence 'White Peak Histories'
    Oct 28 2024
    In this episode, I talk to the poet David Harmer about Dylan Thomas’s ‘Poem in October’ and his own sequence ‘White Peak Histories.’ In our conversation, David discusses his connections with Thomas. He explains why ‘Poem in October’ (and ‘late Thomas’) appeals to him in particular. He talks about the shape and feel of the poem, its aural qualities, its preoccupation with birds and the seasons. David follows Thomas from the shore and climbs high up, ending his journey looking out over the water. He goes on to reflect on what ‘the border’ could mean in the context of this poem. David then goes on to explore the background to his poetry sequence ‘White Peak Histories’. He thinks about the lines he can draw between his own work and Thomas’s effusive language, Thomas’s verbal ‘swagger’. He delves into the geography of the White Peak and how this feeds into its histories in terms of both leisure and labour. David Harmer lives in Doncaster and is best known as a children’s writer with publications from McMillans Children’s Books, Frances Lincoln and recently, Small Donkey Press. A lot of his work for the Grown Ups is published in magazines. He also performs with Ray Globe as The Glummer Twins, often at the Edinburgh Fringe. Here's a little window into David's writing for children (his book It's Behind You) from the Pan McMillan Site. And here's the details of David's most recent book from Small Donkey Press. We mention the poetry magazine Tears in the Fence during our conversation. You can find out more about this poetry journal here. We also mention W S Graham's poem 'The Thermal Stair' (for the painter Peter Lanyon) which you can listen to - and read - on the Poetry Archive. Owen Sheers discusses Dylan Thomas with Matthew Paris on the BBC Radio 4 programme Great Lives here. You can read Dylan Thomas's 'Poem in October' at this website. You can follow me on X - @cwjoneschris or on Bluesky - @cwjoneschris.bsky.social for more updates on future episodes. White Peak Histories Rhienster Rock Once Raenstor Crag, the haunt of ravens hræfn; harbingers of wisdom, of slaughter, guardians of the Duke’s old coach road that twists beneath this sudden rise of limestone where the Bradford narrows near Hollow Farm a slow drift, thick with sedge and celandine. The ravens are long-gone, no hoarse ghost cries over burial bones or carrion chatter, no close councils and conspiracies. Shifted into tricksters and thieves, they left their reef-knoll condemned as vermin, an abrupt unkindness bringing despair. Two shot in Youlgrave churchyard fetched eight pennies, four birds a shilling, held by their legs, their smashed skulls open. Trackways Half-lost, eroded like rumours whispered beneath the skin of maps the tracks of travellers, pack-horse carters, cattle drovers, cloth merchants, drifts of malt-horses lie abandoned under new-sprung roads, uprooted farms and tarmac. But here at Robin Hood’s Stride, the mock-beggar’s hall high above Bradford Dale, jumbled rocks protect the Portway, guide it past the Nine Stones Circle down to Broad Meadow Farm where Saxon ridges rise like waves to push the causeway straight over the river at Hollow Bridge then up Dark Lane. The path still beats below our footfall, it flowed before settlers on Castle Hill Ring brewed their iron or buried their dead in the heaped barrows and tumuli and when we walk it their voices clamour through the rain, eager to point out the way ahead. Portway flood, 1718 Winter unleashed a deluge of waters, the ford at Alport scoured out by river-force Bradford and Lathkill locked in a tumult of pell-mell, white-flecked land-soak. Monk’s Hall up to its haunches, inundated, thick ropes of stream-melt, cattle pushed up breakneck banking, dams burst foaming like the mouths of dead horses. A gang of carriers faced the flooded Portway. How to travel to the north of Old Town? How to cross this fury of water? They tried to push through. It hurled them away, ankles tumbled over their heads, mouths gaped, breath failed them, limbs flailing and snatching at quick grasps of rock, branches, horse-gear. Their bales and bundles, leather goods, baubles dragged to the mill-race, the broken wheel reluctant to offer any hand hold. Instead they drowned crying out for a bridge, found their souls sodden in Derbyshire rain-drench, unprotected by ravens. And as the waters had not yet dried from the earth no dry ground rose to cover the corpses.
    Show More Show Less
    1 hr and 2 mins

What listeners say about The Two-Way Poetry Podcast

Average customer ratings

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Audible.co.uk reviews

Amazon reviews
No Reviews are Available