The Poetry Review Podcasts

In a searching, wide-ranging and often very funny exchange, Selima Hill talks to Review editor Emily Berry about being both a prolific writer and a private person, about secrecy and rebellion, embodiedness and encodedness. Her writing process is, she says, less about cutting (“which sounds so violent”) and rather like “lifting your hair – loosen, loosen, then tighten, tighten, tighten – spread it as far as you can, then tighten”. They discuss relationships with family, men, audiences, Eastern European literature and animals, including Hill’s pet giant land snail. She also describes how her diagnosis of Asperger’s Syndrome, her experiences in psychiatric hospital, and periods of muteness have affected her writing. Hill gives vivid readings of all of her poems published in the winter 2020 issue of The Poetry Review, including ‘Standing on his doorstep’, ‘Jelly’ and ‘Berries’, which will appear in Men Who Feed Pigeons, published by Bloodaxe this September.

Selima Hill talks to Emily Berry

In the latest Poetry Review podcast, Gail McConnell talks to Emily Berry about loss, parenthood and the resource of language in her debut collection The Sun is Open. Published this September, the book works with archival material related to the life and death of McConnell's father, who was murdered by the IRA outside their home in Belfast in 1984. “Language does the work if you let it,” she observes of this "fraught undertaking". Together they discuss poetry form and performance – typography, breath, sound and “the event of the poem” – and the poets and thinkers who have influenced McConnell’s thinking: Bob Scanlan of The Poets’ Theatre, Jay Bernard, Raymond Antrobus, Denise Riley, Ciaran Carson, D.W. Winnicott and others. McConnell gives astonishing readings of her poems published in the Review: excerpts from ‘The Sun is Open’ and ‘Untitled / Villanelle’.

Gail McConnell talks to Emily Berry

In their funny and thought-provoking conversation by telephone, celebrated American poet Mary Ruefle and Review editor Emily Berry discuss starting poems and first lines; working to commission and no longer facing the blank page; writing letters, writing prose, humour and sadness and not being afraid of the latter; pins, paper clips, swimming and getting comfortable with what we don't know... Poetry is to be experienced as a phenomenon on earth, Ruefle says, “[it] is not be understood… it’s a little scary but it’s a matter of letting go”. She gives wonderful readings of her poems in the Review summer 2021 issue: ‘Lament’, ‘Conflict’, ‘My Life as a Scholar’ and ‘Empathy of Cod’.

Mary Ruefle talks to Emily Berry

Spend 30 engrossing minutes in the company of the award-winning US poet Shane McCrae and Review editor Emily Berry as they discuss Sylvia Plath’s ‘Lady Lazarus’ as the trigger, when he was just 15, of McCrae’s poetry career; John Keats and the Gothic; George Herbert; and McCrae's conversion from free verse to metrical verse. ‘I can only recommend that everyone abandon the way they’ve been writing and see what happens if they write in a different way,’ he says. Fascinating on the ‘productive panic’ of building a collection, McCrae also gives wonderful readings of his poems published in the autumn 2021 issue of The Poetry Review: 'Explaining My Appearance in Certain Pictures', 'The Fungus Called Dead Man’s Fingers' and 'The Dead Negro in the Modernist Long Poem'.

Shane McCrae talks to Emily Berry

This poem was specially commissioned by the British Museum, London, in partnership with the Poetry Society. It was inspired by the exhibition, 'Germany Divided: Baselitz & his generation', at the British Museum, London, 2014. http://www.britishmuseum.org/whats_on/exhibitions/germany_divided.aspx

Michael Hofmann reads 'Baselitz and his Generation'

Enjoy a 9 minute (OK, 8 mins 42 seconds) guided taster tour of Vestry House Musem with our Assistant Curator, Gary Heales.

Listen at home if you're not in London or, for the full interactive experience, simply download the file to your phone and start just outside the main door to Vestry House from where Gary will guide you inside, telling you all kinds of fascinating facts about Vestry House's history as the workhouse for Walthamstow. You'll also learn what 'oakum' is and why the Royal Navy was so desperate for it. And finally you can discover how the Bremer car got a number plate decades after it was built.

Recorded & edited by Matt Taylor.


Vestry House Museum: Audio Tour (with Gary Heales)

A recording from The National Poetry Library's Special Edition series. Hear odes to the beloved River Thames from some of London's freshest spoken word artists and poets: Jeremiah Brown, Erin Bolens, Toby Campion and Rachel Nwokoro, chaired by Kat Francois. Recorded in The National Poetry Library on Wednesday 6 September 2017. This event was a Thames Festival Trust commission and part of Totally Thames 2017.

Special Edition

Boat Poets Thames Takeover

Wilderness By Astra Papachristodoulou

'Pond' by Harry Gilonis read by Astra Papachristodoulou. 'Pond' by Harry Gilonis appears in the collection 'Rough Breathing' published by Carcanet in 2018. A transcript can be found at https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2018/may/14/poem-of-the-week-a-small-alba-by-harry-gilonis More from Astra Papachristodoulou can be found at https://www.astranaut.co.uk

Pond by Harry Gilonis read by Astra Papachristodoulou

Will Harris and Nick Makoha, prizewinning poets both, talk about Nick’s poems in the spring 2020 issue of The Poetry Review and how these poems exemplify his interest in song, story and myth, the parameters of self, reconfiguring the problem of the white lens, and how the act of writing poems produces unlooked-for discoveries. Nick gives electrifying readings of his poems ‘Codex 1’ and Codex 2, both published in the Review, and ‘Bird In Flames’ from his Forward-shortlisted debut Kingdom of Gravity.

Nick Makoha talks to Will Harris

Publication in Poetry Review is generally a cause for celebration and fanfare. So how did Esther Morgan and Moniza Alvi. Guest Editors of the spring 2013 issue, 'The Anonymous Invitation', persuade eight established poets to publish their work without a credit? Was it liberating or unnerving for those who took part? And what does it tell us about our assumptions as readers? The fascinating conversation between Esther and Moniza was recorded at Keats House, London, on 18 April.

Moniza Alvi & Esther Morgan talk anonymity in this Poetry Society podcast

Join Review editor Emily Berry and poet and novelist Luke Kennard, for an exhilarating unravelling of the prophetic voice and its uses for poetry, the liberating restriction of the poem sequence, and prose poetry as “a space in which to be convolutedly honest” – with passing references to Baudelaire, Chekhov, Ted Hughes, James Tait, Anne Carson and Maggie Nelson, contemporary morality, and anger as a motivating force. Luke also reads his three poems in the autumn 2020 issue of The Poetry Review, from his future project inspired by the Book of Jonah.

Luke Kennard talks to Emily Berry

The Poetry Society was founded in 1909 to promote "a more general recognition and appreciation of poetry". Since then, it has grown into one of Britain's most dynamic arts organisations, representing British poetry both nationally and internationally. Today it has more than 4000 members worldwide and publishes the leading poetry magazine, The Poetry Review.

With innovative education and commissioning programmes and a packed calendar of performances, readings and competitions, the Poetry Society champions poetry for all ages. 

"The Poetry Society is the heart and hands of poetry in the UK – a centre which pours out energy to all parts of the poetry-body, and a dexterous set of operations which arrange and organise poetry's various manifestations. It has a long distinguished history, and has never been so vital, or so vitalizing as it is now." Sir Andrew Motion

Nick Makoha talks to Will Harris

The Poetry Society

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