Poem text and context: https://www.themarginalian.org/2022/01/03/let-them-not-say-jane-hirshfields/

Photograph: Maria Popova

Music: Claude Debussy "Sonata for Cello and Piano in D minor - I. Prologue" (public domain)

POEM TEXT / CONTEXT

"Let Them Not Say" by Jane Hirshfield, read by Krista Tippett

Poem text and context: https://www.themarginalian.org/2022/02/01/for-warmth-thich-nhat-hanh

Excerpted from @onbeing with Krista Tippett.

POEM TEXT/CONTEXT

"For Warmth" by Thich Nhat Hanh

In this episode of The Poetry Exchange, poet Rowena Knight talks with us about the poem that has been a friend to her: 'Grief' by Matthew Dickman. 

Rowena visited us in Durham and is in conversation with Andrea Witzke Slot and Michael Shaeffer. We are hugely grateful to her for sharing her story of connection with Matthew Dickman's poem.

Rowena Knight’s poetry is influenced by her identity as a queer feminist and her childhood in New Zealand. Her poems have appeared in various publications, including Butcher’s Dog, Magma, The Rialto, and The Emma Press Anthology of Love. She was shortlisted for the 2018 Bridport Prize and commended in the 2019 Winchester Poetry Prize. Her first pamphlet, All the Footprints I Left Were Red, was published with Valley Press in 2016. You can find her on Twitter @purple_feminist and Instagram @purple_feminist_

You can discover more of Matthew Dickman's stunning, reverberating poetry at www.matthewdickmanpoetry.com. 'Grief' can be found in the collection 'Mayakovsky's Revolver' from W.W. Norton & Company, 2012.

The reading of 'Grief' is by Andrea Witzke Slot.

*********

Grief
by Matthew Dickman

When grief comes to you as a purple gorilla
you must count yourself lucky.
You must offer her what’s left
of your dinner, the book you were trying to finish
you must put aside
and make her a place to sit at the foot of your bed,
her eyes moving from the clock
to the television and back again.
I am not afraid. She has been here before
and now I can recognize her gait
as she approaches the house.
Some nights, when I know she’s coming,
I unlock the door, lie down on my back,
and count her steps
from the street to the porch.
Tonight she brings a pencil and a ream of paper,
tells me to write down
everyone I have ever known,
and we separate them between the living and the dead
so she can pick each name at random.
I play her favorite Willie Nelson album
because she misses Texas
but I don’t ask why.
She hums a little,
the way my brother does when he gardens.
We sit for an hour
while she tells me how unreasonable I’ve been,
crying in the check-out line,
refusing to eat, refusing to shower,
all the smoking and all the drinking.
Eventually she puts one of her heavy
purple arms around me, leans
her head against mine,
and all of a sudden things are feeling romantic.
So I tell her,
things are feeling romantic.
She pulls another name, this time
from the dead,
and turns to me in that way that parents do
so you feel embarrassed or ashamed of something.
Romantic? She says,
reading the name out loud, slowly
so I am aware of each syllable, each vowel
wrapping around the bones like new muscle,
the sound of that person’s body
and how reckless it is,
how careless that his name is in one pile and not the other.

Copyright: Matthew Dickman. 'Grief' by Matthew Dickman, from 'Mayakovsky's Revolver', W.W. Norton & Company, 2012.

Subscribe

77. Grief by Matthew Dickman - A Friend to Rowena Knight

Hosted by Lois P. Jones
Produced by Marlena Bond
Originally broadcast on KPFK 90.7 FM 7/19/23

Elena Secota was born in Transylvania, Romania, and graduated from The Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art, London. Amongst her favorite roles are: Antigone in Sophocle’s Antigone at Theatre Technis, London; Sophie Oresanu Oreshanu) in the BBC/ Masterpiece Theatre, Fortunes of War with Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh, and the Empress in Lost in Siberia, with Anthony Andrews, filmed on location in Moscow and Uzbekistan. Recently, she played the role of Ioana, in the feature film, Sounds of Silence. 

Elena’s CD, Poems, Songs and the Sea, was released and produced by Steve McCormick. https://www.elenasecota.com  
https://elenasecota.bandcamp.com

Elena Secota - Poets Cafe KPFK 07/19/23

In this episode of our podcast, you will hear the brilliant poet and theatre-maker Hafsah Bashir talking about the poem that has been a friend to her: ’On Children' by Kahlil Gibran.

Hafsah visited The Poetry Exchange at John Rylands Library in May 2016. We’re very grateful to John Rylands Library for hosting The Poetry Exchange. Do visit them for further inspiration:

www.library.manchester.ac.uk/rylands/

Hafsah is a writer and you can follow her work here: hafsahaneelabashir.wordpress.com

Hafsah is in conversation with The Poetry Exchange team members, Fiona Lesley Bennett and Michael Schaeffer.

’On Children' is read by Fiona Bennett.

*****

'On Children' (from 'The Prophet') by Kahlil Gibran

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

12. On Children (from 'The Prophet') by Kahlil Gibran - A Friend to Hafsah

In this episode you will hear Jonathan talking about the poem that has been a friend to him - 'Love (III)' by George Herbert.

Jonathan visited us at Wise Words Festival in Canterbury. For the first time, we held The Poetry Exchange in a public space, amongst the poetry books at Waterstones, Rose Lane, Canterbury. We are very grateful to both Waterstones and to Wise Words for hosting The Poetry Exchange so warmly.

www.wisewordsfestival.co.uk
www.waterstones.com/events/search/shop/canterbury-rose-lane

Jonathan is in conversation with The Poetry Exchange team members Victoria Field and John Prebble.

*****

Love (III)

Love bade me welcome. Yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lacked anything.

‘A guest,’ I answered, ‘worthy to be here.’
Love said, ‘You shall be he.’
‘I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee.’
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
‘Who made the eyes but I?’

‘Truth Lord; but I have marred them; let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.’
‘And know you not,’ says Love, ‘who bore the blame?’
‘My dear, then I will serve.’
‘You must sit down,’ says Love, ‘and taste my meat:’
So I did sit and eat.

15. Love by George Herbert - A Friend To Jonathan

In this episode you will hear Lisa talking about the poem that has been a friend to her - 'How Surely Gravity's Law' by Rainer Maria Rilke.

Lisa visited us at John Ryland's Library in Manchester and is in conversation with The Poetry Exchange team members Fiona Bennett and Michael Schaeffer.

'How Surely Gravity's Law' is read by Fiona Bennett.

*****

How Surely Gravity's Law
by Rainer Maria Rilke

How surely gravity’s law,
strong as an ocean current,
takes hold of the smallest thing
and pulls it toward the heart of the world.

Each thing—
each stone, blossom, child —
is held in place.
Only we, in our arrogance,
push out beyond what we each belong to
for some empty freedom.

If we surrendered
to earth’s intelligence
we could rise up rooted, like trees.

Instead we entangle ourselves
in knots of our own making
and struggle, lonely and confused.

So like children, we begin again
to learn from the things,
because they are in God’s heart;
they have never left him.

This is what the things can teach us:
to fall,
patiently to trust our heaviness.
Even a bird has to do that
before he can fly.

21. How Surely Gravity's Law by Rainer Maria Rilke - A Friend to Lisa

In this episode, we will be reading and discussing “To March” by Emily Dickinson as well as a discussion of personification.

Episode 6: "To March"by Emily Dickinson

In this episode of our podcast, you will hear Jackie talk about the poem that has been a friend to her: 'Last Post' by Carol Ann Duffy.

We are delighted to feature 'Last Post' in this episode and would like to thank Carol Ann Duffy and Peter Strauss at Rogers, Coleridge & White for allowing us to use it in this way. 

Carol Ann Duffy has just published a collection of poems written over the course of her laureateship, entitled 'Sincerity', which is available from Picador:

https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/carol-ann-duffy/sincerity/9781509893423

She has also edited an anthology, 'Armistice' - A Laureate's Choice of Poems of War and Peace, available from Faber & Faber:

https://www.faber.co.uk/9780571347070-armistice.html

Jackie visited The Poetry Exchange at St Chad's College Chapel in Durham, during Durham Book Festival, in association with Durham University Foundation Programme. We’re very grateful to all our Durham partners for hosting us so warmly.

http://durhambookfestival.com
https://www.dur.ac.uk/foundation.programme/
https://www.stchads.ac.uk

Jackie is in conversation with The Poetry Exchange team members, Andrea Witzke-Slot and John Prebble.

'Last Post' is read by John Prebble.

*****

Last Post
By Carol Ann Duffy

'In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.'

If poetry could tell it backwards, true, begin
that moment shrapnel scythed you to the stinking mud…
but you get up, amazed, watch bled bad blood
run upwards from the slime into its wounds;
see lines and lines of British boys rewind
back to their trenches, kiss the photographs from home-
mothers, sweethearts, sisters, younger brothers
not entering the story now
to die and die and die.
Dulce- No- Decorum- No- Pro patria mori.
You walk away.  

You walk away; drop your gun (fixed bayonet)
like all your mates do too-
Harry, Tommy, Wilfred, Edward, Bert-
and light a cigarette.
There's coffee in the square,
warm French bread
and all those thousands dead
are shaking dried mud from their hair
and queuing up for home. Freshly alive,
a lad plays Tipperary to the crowd, released
from History; the glistening, healthy horses fit for heroes, kings. 

You lean against a wall,
your several million lives still possible
and crammed with love, work, children, talent, English beer, good food.
You see the poet tuck away his pocket-book and smile.
If poetry could truly tell it backwards,
then it would.

© Carol Ann Duffy 2009

29. Last Post By Carol Ann Duffy - A Friend To Jackie

companions is a series of poetry readings organized by Christopher Kirubi. Originally conceived as a series of live events, each reading involves several poets whose readings are set alongside one another, drawing from their own writing as well as the writing of other poets whose work has developed their understanding and sense of pleasure in poetry.

To be accompanied is to understand that we do not stand in this world alone, that we have the right to move and navigate towards our goals, dreams and desires in the safety and the emotional recognition that comes with being in the company of others . To accompany someone allows us to bear witness to their needs and to stand with them, to hold space for difference in motion together, it is to play the harmony out loud so the melody need not sound out alone.

This series of readings seeks to bring together and magnify the moments where words, practices and lives can both slip together and  produce friction and, by operating through the archetype of the pair, invoke the openness of intimate conversation whilst allowing us to bear witness to the accumulation of many layers of voices, thoughts and feelings.

The poets participating in the companions series are Chloe Filani, Deborah Findlater, Rhoda Boateng, Ebun Sodipo, Esther Heller and Maxine Sibihwana.

The project is supported by Arts Council England Grants for the Arts.

http://almanacprojects.com/public-programme/companions-episode-1

companions - episode 1

Hosted by Lois P. Jones
Produced by Marlena Bond

Katrina Naomi received an Authors’ Foundation award from the Society of Authors for work on her third collection, Wild Persistence. She has a PhD in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths College. Katrina’s recent work has been broadcast on Radio 4’s Front Row, Poetry Please, BBC TV Spotlight and on Poems on the Underground. Her second poetry collection, The Way the Crocodile Taught Me, published by Seren, was chosen by Foyles Bookshop as one of its Foyles’ Five for Poetry. She was the first writer-in-residence at the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth, W Yorks. Her most recent pamphlet, following an Arts Council-funded trip to Japan, was published by Verve Poetry Press, entitled Typhoon Etiquette. She was highly commended in the 2017 Forward Prize for Poetry. Katrina has been writer-in-residence at Gladstone’s Library in North Wales where she wrote a sequence on the Suffragettes, published by Rack Press as Hooligans. Her debut collection The Girl with the Cactus Handshake received an Arts Council Award and was shortlisted for the London New Poetry Award. Her pamphlet Lunch at the Elephant & Castle won the 2008 Templar Poetry Pamphlet Competition and her pamphlet Charlotte Brontë’s Corset was published to acclaim by the Brontë Society. She is a Hawthornden Fellow, a tutor for Arvon and Ty Newydd, and runs Poetry Surgeries for the Poetry Society. She is published by The TLS, The Spectator, The Poetry Review and Poetry Wales. She received an award from the Royal Literary Fund in 2014 for her writing. She enjoys performing her poetry and collaborating with visual artists, musicians and film-makers. She recently had an exhibition at London’s Poetry Café entitled ‘The Argument: Art V Poetry’, following a collaboration with the visual artist, Tim Ridley. She is originally from Margate and lives in Cornwall.

Katrina Naomi - Poets Cafe KPFK 9/20/2020

The Poetry Exchange talks to people about the poem that has been a friend to them.

In each episode you will hear a guest talking about their chosen poem and the part it has played in their life, as well as the recording of the poem that we make as a gift for them.

Our podcast features conversations with people from all walks of life, as well a range of special guests.

Join us to discover the power of poetry in people's lives. 

Silver Award Winner for Most Original Podcast at the British Podcast Awards 2018.

21. How Surely Gravity's Law by Rainer Maria Rilke - A Friend to Lisa

The Poetry Exchange

Related tracks