In this episode, poet Katharine Towers discusses Elizabeth Bishop’s poems ‘Sandpiper’ and ‘Jerónimo’s House’ and her own poem ‘Elizabeth Bishop’s Sad Epitaph.’

In the interview, Katharine explains how she went from being a prose writer to a poet in part from reading Elizabeth Bishop’s poems. She examines the qualities of Bishop’s writing through an extended reading of ‘Sandpiper’, focusing in particular on line lengths, repetitions and rhymes. Katharine highlights the three things that Bishop strived for in her work — accuracy, spontaneity and mystery which she goes on to reflect on in both 'Sandpiper' and 'Jerónimo's House'. With regards to ‘Jeronimo’s House’, Katharine delves into her own interest in solitude when looking at this piece. She considers the idea that Jerónimo’s house is a ‘love nest’: unpicking this notion through various ways of reading this phrase. She explores the idea that Bishop (or her subjects) are often looking for a refuge or somewhere to hide away.

Katharine then goes on to illuminate her own poem ‘Elizabeth Bishop’s Sad Epitaph’. She talks about how she was inspired by Bishop’s comment to Robert Lowell about being the loneliest person who ever lived. Katharine sees this work as being a part of a sequence of first-person poems in the voice of various 'alone' women - and the ways in which aloneness was important to them. She reflects on the poem’s slant, the language of the work, the perspective (and possible feelings) of the narrator.

There are various editions of Elizabeth Bishop’s Collected Poems - the one I have is Complete Poems (Chatto, 1991). You can read ‘Sandpiper’ here.

As well as the Bishop poems highlighted we also touch on ‘The Moose’, ‘The End of March’, ‘The Bight’ and ‘The Fish’ in our conversation.

Katharine Towers has published three collections with Picador, most recently Oak which was a Poetry Book of the Month in The Guardian. The Floating Man (2010) won the Seamus Heaney Centre Prize and The Remedies (2016) was shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize and was a Poetry Book of the Month in The Observer. A fourth collection is forthcoming from Picador in 2026. A pamphlet 'let him bring a shrubbe' exploring the life and work of the twentieth-century English composer Gerald Finzi was published by The Maker’s Press in 2023. In 2019 HappenStance Press published another pamphlet The Violin Forest.

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

'Elizabeth Bishop’s Sad Epitaph' by Katharine Towers In my fairy palace I am as lonely as I could wish. The ivy has grown up and over, and cosily inside there’s just little me reading or sitting. I could be on the moon or I could be in a Hans Christian Andersen story or I could be a girl getting over a love affair. The first room has two beds, so one will always be empty. The second room has two chairs, so I can see where I will sit tomorrow. The third room has two notebooks, so there will always be blank pages. At night I listen to flamenco on the radio. As I snap my fingers and click my heels I feel tremendously Spanish, or I feel a sultry empty weary joy. Covering the windows are the ivy’s mathematical hands. Daylight pokes through when it can, making of the worn-out floorboards a map of bright dots.

In this episode, poet Mark Pullinger discusses Shinkichi Takahashi’s poem ‘Sparrow in Winter’ (translated by Lucien Stryk) and two of Mark’s poems: ‘Magus' and ‘Untitled’. In the interview, we talk about Mark’s introduction to Zen poetry - and Zen haiku in particular - through his discovery of Shinkichi Takahashi’s work. We examine the multifaceted qualities of Takahashi’s poem ‘Sparrow in Winter’, which adopts simple language to create nuanced and complex associations around consciousness, the void, how the narrator and sparrow ‘mesh' with each other. We then go on to explore Mark’s approaches to writing through focusing on ‘Magus’ and ‘Untitled’. Mark talks in some depth - drawing on the specifics of these two pieces - about how his poetry has evolved over the past decade since the publication of his thesis.

You can find Takahashi’s poem ‘Sparrow in Winter’ in his collection Triumph of the Sparrow: Zen Poems by Shinkichi Takahashi - translated by Lucien Stryk (Grove Press, 1986). I picked up a digital copy of the book.

Mark Pullinger lives in the Dearne Valley, walking distance to RSPB Old Moor and its satellite sites, where he walks with his wife daily. The philosophy outlined in this interview was conceived for his PhD thesis, The Speaking World, available on Loughborough University’s Institutional Repository. He has recently completed a poetry collection on Kafka and the natural world, making a style shift from his thesis, but still expressing the same worldview. The Speaking World is available at https://repository.lboro.ac.uk/articles/thesis/The_speaking_world

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

Sparrow in Winter by Shinkichi Takahashi translated by Lucien Stryk Breastdown fluttering in the breeze, The sparrow’s full of air holes. Let the winds of winter blow, Let them crack a wing, two, The sparrow doesn’t care. The air streams through him, free, easy, Scattering feathers, bending legs. He hops calmly, from branch to empty branch In an absolutely spaceless world. I’d catch, skewer, broil you, But my every shot misses: you’re impossible. All at once there’s the sound Of breaking glass, and houses begin To crumple. Rising quickly, An atomic submarine nudges past your belly.

Untitled by Mark Pullinger Polar bear smells life kills spreading through her her cubs extending skies earth’s breath expanding sun’s reign

Magus by Mark Pullinger In a distant desert a lone speck crosses the horizon mumbling, “the desert has dignity moving through it”. Sand drifts across humps, clinging, rolling on.

Heat, like breath, rises, waves reaching skies. Camel’s eyes large distant suns.

In this episode, poet Fay Musselwhite discusses David Jones’s book-length poem In Parenthesis and her own sequence ‘Memoir of a Working River’ from her collection Contraflow.

In the interview, we talk about how Fay came to Jones’s poem - a book that follows soldiers' long trajectory toward the Somme battlefield, but has so much more within it than the subject of war itself. For Fay, it’s ‘the fact that one’s part of the earth,’ and that Jones focuses on ‘class, land and nature’ that makes this such an inspiring and important work for her. We discuss the abundant details, images, hauntings contained in the work - and how war plays out like some violent codified ‘sport’ inflicted on these young men. Fay then goes on to explore the difficulties she encountered trying to write her ‘big river poem’ and how she found ways to embody the Rivelin as it runs through the western Sheffield by giving the river itself a voice and, for a while, the body of a young man. Fay explains why she wanted to make the river a human because she wanted to explore the world of those youthful Rivelin mill-workers. We reflect on the music of her poetry and how important it is to Fay’s project as a poet. The extract that Fay read’s from In Parenthesis covers pp. 165 - 168 from her copy of the book (Faber, 1978).

There's a recording of an extract of the poem on the Poetry Archive website. It includes an introduction by David Jones himself, and actors playing the many voices in the work. It gives you a good sense of the polyphony in the poem. You can listen to the audio here.

You can read more about, and buy a copy of Fay’s very fine collection Contraflow (Longbarrow Press, 2016) here.

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

From 'Memoir of a Working River’

6

Woken by some beast’s nudge then stunned at the incredible stillness of sky, slips in to bathe where the mill-dam overflow cascades slithers out freshened, rises and shivers watches the mud where new droplets nuzzle.

Donkeys trudge by, pressing on, faces low as if the cinder track hears their moan. Follows their swagger-loads sees motion onward driven by the momentum of raw and wrought iron.

Wavers as they near the spark-shed shy of its screaming grind and gritty guffaws but the torture rack, humped on its back in full watery swing, pricks his learning’s gap. Keen to find why the wheel must turn braves the factory door

steps in and into a gusting blur tastes its metal, feels particulates snag in sweat takes a moment to see where he is.

In geometry against nature’s grace humans are caught in a web each slumped over oak, held by spindle and belt to a stone that spits hot grit.

His feet itch.

He swerves a man dragging iron rods and trying to make his free hand speak.

On the river-run some images stick: flashes of crimson through blackened fur shreds on that donkey’s neck, the clench of combat riddled through men’s backs.

Lying on a weir to rinse metal squeals from his hair on the air a tang enthrals the inner juices —

he paces it downstream, tracks the prey to a tufted cove, a pail propped in rocks a man doubled over racked in rasp-spasms. When coughing releases its grip he sits near the man, asks how life is.

Sunk in the chest, not quite sitting up, the man shares his snap and between pneumatic seizure tells how he offers blunt steel to grit till it’s flayed by resistance to its leanest edge how each day he enters the valley more of it enters him.

The man says he’s seen eighteen summers a grinder for three, and nails in a voice hollow-loud what binds the wheel’s turn to that cheese and bread.

Twice the man says — The mus’ave a name. 
Only once — Come wi’ me, if tha needs a crust.

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): A Humument Page 40 (slideshow)

Page 305 (Slideshow) A Humument 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 trees start a home. begin now

/

It's time to help others, reorganising The what and when

The Sun moved to mingle with your life and soul

/

come in for now, get your thoughts sizzling with romance

be logical but very illogical . Be physical and creative and perfect , Gemini

/

Are other people you? the Moon could be . , time time spent beautiful

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 talks about how Chinese poetry has come to increasingly influence his approach to writing over the past ten years. He talks about T’ao Ch’ien’s style - how it conceals depths beneath its apparently simple surface. He talks about different notions of the idea of the body (and body politic), about the choices T’ao Ch’ien made in this regard - turning away from power and influence to live a more 'stripped-down' life - and how these decisions can speak to our own materialistic, consumer culture. Matt goes on to discuss tone in T’ao Ch'ien’s piece - and about coming to this work as a piece of translation.

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.