Podcasts about Arts Council England

Listening Works | Rehearsing Governance is a three-episode podcast exploring listening as an institutional practice. Developed through Stella Sideli's Research Curator residency at FACT Liverpool (2024-2025), the series documents a set of live, artist-led interventions that reimagined how boards and organisations meet, speak and make decisions. It blends sound, conversation and reflection, offering an intimate look at governance as a shared, embodied and creative process. It is for artists, cultural workers, researchers, trustees and anyone interested in equity, participation and new models of institutional change.Stella's residency is generously supported by the John Ellerman Foundation. At FACT, we believe curatorial knowledge is crucial for understanding the significance and potential of artistic practice and making it accessible to a wide audience. Now in its third year, our resident curators—each at different stages of their careers—have become invaluable contributors. They lead research initiatives and help enrich FACT's cultural landscape. Ep 1: Listening Works | Rehearsing Governance (Problem)What happens when artists enter the boardroom? Three interventions unsettle governance, revealing how listening is shaped by rhythm, space and attention.With thanks to FACT Liverpool staff and trustees, Olivia Graham, Vivienne Griffin, Lola de la Mata, Adi Lerer, Xiaowen Zhu, Laura Cugusi, Rob Taliesin Owen, Valerio Mirone.The residency was made possible through funding from the John Ellerman Foundation, which has supported FACT's multi-year curatorial development programme for curators at different stages of their careers. FACT is funded by Arts Council England, Liverpool City Council and Culture Liverpool. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Listening Works | Rehearsing Governance is a three-episode podcast exploring listening as an institutional practice. Developed through Stella Sideli's Research Curator residency at FACT Liverpool (2024-2025), the series documents a set of live, artist-led interventions that reimagined how boards and organisations meet, speak and make decisions. It blends sound, conversation and reflection, offering an intimate look at governance as a shared, embodied and creative process. It is for artists, cultural workers, researchers, trustees and anyone interested in equity, participation and new models of institutional change.Stella's residency is generously supported by the John Ellerman Foundation. At FACT, we believe curatorial knowledge is crucial for understanding the significance and potential of artistic practice and making it accessible to a wide audience. Now in its third year, our resident curators—each at different stages of their careers—have become invaluable contributors. They lead research initiatives and help enrich FACT's cultural landscape. Ep 2: Listening Works | Rehearsing Governance (Practice)What happens when listening becomes a shared public encounter? A live event explores listening as a collective, embodied practice.With thanks to FACT Liverpool staff and trustees, Olivia Graham, Vivienne Griffin, Lola de la Mata, Adi Lerer, Xiaowen Zhu, Laura Cugusi, Rob Taliesin Owen, Valerio Mirone.The residency was made possible through funding from the John Ellerman Foundation, which has supported FACT's multi-year curatorial development programme for curators at different stages of their careers. FACT is funded by Arts Council England, Liverpool City Council and Culture Liverpool. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Listening Works | Rehearsing Governance is a three-episode podcast exploring listening as an institutional practice. Developed through Stella Sideli's Research Curator residency at FACT Liverpool (2024-2025), the series documents a set of live, artist-led interventions that reimagined how boards and organisations meet, speak and make decisions. It blends sound, conversation and reflection, offering an intimate look at governance as a shared, embodied and creative process. It is for artists, cultural workers, researchers, trustees and anyone interested in equity, participation and new models of institutional change.Stella's residency is generously supported by the John Ellerman Foundation. At FACT, we believe curatorial knowledge is crucial for understanding the significance and potential of artistic practice and making it accessible to a wide audience. Now in its third year, our resident curators—each at different stages of their careers—have become invaluable contributors. They lead research initiatives and help enrich FACT's cultural landscape. Ep 3: Listening Works | Rehearsing Governance (Method)What begins to shift when listening becomes a condition of how institutions operate? This episode introduces SCORE, a framework for rethinking listening across governance, staff culture and public practice.With thanks to FACT Liverpool staff and trustees, Olivia Graham, Vivienne Griffin, Lola de la Mata, Adi Lerer, Xiaowen Zhu, Laura Cugusi, Rob Taliesin Owen, Valerio Mirone.The residency was made possible through funding from the John Ellerman Foundation, which has supported FACT's multi-year curatorial development programme for curators at different stages of their careers. FACT is funded by Arts Council England, Liverpool City Council and Culture Liverpool. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Thank you for listening to Write On! Audio, the podcast for writers everywhere brought to you by Pen to Print. Our listener contribution for June is a short story written and performed by Sarah Frideswide.  Sarah is a lifelong writer with a First Class Honours degree in Literature and Creative Writing. Her poetry has been published by OSP Review and Dust Poetry. She was selected for the 2025 Poetry School/TLC Free Reads Scheme and shortlisted for the 2025 Malorie Blackman Scholarship. She is working on her first novel and first poetry collection. The short story is called ‘Tactical Advance To Battle' and it has a content warning for strong language and some sexual references.  Find out more about Sarah Frideswide by following her on Instagram here https://www.instagram.com/sarahfrideswide/ You can read Sarah's Write On! showcase from February here https://pentoprint.org/showcase-words-true-love-stories-castles-air/ All content associated with this podcast in audio and in print is protected and may not be copied or used for any purposes including generative AI/AI training. We're always delighted to read your contributions so if you'd like to see your words in Write On! or hear them on this podcast please get in touch. Please submit to: https://pentoprint.org/get-involved/submit-to-write-on/ Thank you for listening to Write On! Audio.  This edition has been presented and produced by Chris Gregory.  Write On! Audio is an Alternative Stories production for Pen to Print. This podcast is produced using public funding from Arts Council England.

Since Labour returned to power in the 2024 UK General Election, announcing their landslide victory with a speech at the Tate Modern, little has been made of their cultural policy. In this free episode, Juliet talks to Dr David Hesmondhalgh – Professor of Media, Music and Culture at the University of Leeds, and the author of Culture, Economy and Politics: The Case of New Labour (2015) and five editions of The Cultural Industries – about Labour's approach to art and culture, looking at their policies and the ideology behind them. Looking primarily at England as cultural policy is devolved in the rest of the UK, Juliet and David discussed the move away from Jeremy Corbyn's arts policies; Labour's Plan for the Arts, Culture and Creative Industries and the 2024 manifesto; the centrality of local government and education to cultural policy; Margaret Hodge's review of Arts Council England; the timidity of Labour's approach and the limits of their idea of ‘creative industries'; how this has differed (or not) from the Conservative and New Labour governments before them; and the need to shift the emphasis from financial returns to the intrinsic social and cultural importance of the arts. Subscribe to us on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/c/suite212 for £3.50 per month to get a full list of references from this episode, as well as bonus episodes, Juliet's archived articles, and more.

Tom Sutcliffe is joined by writer Alexander Larman and critic Arifa Akbar to discuss:A new production of High Society, Cole Porter's musical showcase at London's Barbican, starring Call the Midwife's Helen George in the role of the amorously vexed Long Island socialite Tracy Lord who finds her heart pulled in every which direction. Also starring Freddie Fox and Felicity Kendal.The film Savage House starring Richard E. Grant and Claire Foy, a dark satire telling a cautionary tale of greed and social climbing, set against the backdrop of 18th century England, a Pox outbreak and Jacobite Uprising. And Fiona Mozley's new book about memory, Awake Awake, in which protagonist Mary is struggling to decipher whether her recollections are fact or fiction. We also speak to the CEO of Arts Council England about their new direction.

Thank you for listening to Write On! Audio, the podcast for writers everywhere brought to you by Pen to Print. Our writing tips this month come from Matt Trinetti and Parul Bavishi from the London Writer's Salon, an organisation promoting and fostering writers by establishing communities and promoting mental health across London and beyond.  Matt and Parul were alongside writer Sarah Frideswide for this chat which offers several useful pieces of advice for authors. Find out more about The London Writer's Salon and join by following this link https://londonwriterssalon.com/ Find out more about Sarah Frideswide by following her on Instagram here https://www.instagram.com/sarahfrideswide/ All content associated with this podcast in audio and in print is protected and may not be copied or used for any purposes including generative AI/AI training. We're always delighted to read your contributions so if you'd like to see your words in Write On! or hear them on this podcast please get in touch. Please submit to: https://pentoprint.org/get-involved/submit-to-write-on/ Thank you for listening to Write On! Audio.  This edition has been presented and produced by Chris Gregory.  Write On! Audio is an Alternative Stories production for Pen to Print. This podcast is produced using public funding from Arts Council England.

Thank you for listening to Write On! Audio, the podcast for writers everywhere brought to you by Pen to Print.Our Write On! Audio And Friends episode for May is an audio drama from The Spec Fic Radio Theatre Podcast written by Belgian writer and folklorist Signe Maene.  ‘Selkie' is inspired by stories from Scottish folklore and made by Alternative Stories.In Selkie by Signe Maene you can hear;Sophie Macnair as The SelkieLewie Watson as AndrewSimone Low as Andrew's MotherKelsey Griffin as a Selkie and singer of Ae Fond KissStevie Skinner as a SelkieThe music is arranged and performed by John Spiers based on the traditional folk tune "The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry""Ae Fond Kiss" (trad. with lyrics by Robert Burns) is performed by Kelsey GriffinAdditional music and soundscapes are by Chris Gregory. You can listen to more from The Spec Fic Radio Theatre Podcast by searching for it in your favourite podcast app or follow this link https://pod.link/1812026298 Find out more about writer Signe Maene here https://signemaene.com/  All content associated with this podcast in audio and in print is protected and may not be copied or used for any purposes including generative AI/AI training. We're always delighted to read your contributions so if you'd like to see your words in Write On! or hear them on this podcast please get in touch. Please submit to: https://pentoprint.org/get-involved/submit-to-write-on/ Thank you for listening to Write On! Audio.  This edition has been presented and produced by Chris Gregory.  Write On! Audio is an Alternative Stories production for Pen to Print. This podcast is produced using public funding from Arts Council England. 

Tom Bailey is a Bristol-based theatremaker and artist, and creative director of Herald Angel award-winning company MECHANIMAL, whose work — described by New Scientist as "extraordinary… moving and enlightening" — has toured to over 15 countries and explores humanity's relationship to a changing planet. We caught up with Tom from a remote shack in northern Norway, where he is currently midway through *Threshold – A Wild New Border Journey*: a 600km ultra-slow expedition by ski, sled, foot and boat across the Arctic borderlands of Norway, Finland and Sweden. Beginning on 10 March 2026 at Barents Spektakel, the two-month journey travels westwards through the Russia–Finland–Norway border region before concluding at Stamsund International Theatre Festival in the Lofoten Islands in May 2026. Along the way, Tom is meeting local communities, artists and researchers to document the lived realities of life in a fast-changing Arctic — with a new performance piece set to premiere in 2027. Threshold builds on a body of work that has consistently used endurance and landscape as artistic material. In 2024 Tom walked 1,000 kilometres solo as a tribute to lost species, research that fed directly into *Wild Thing!* — his most recent Edinburgh Fringe production, in which he attempts to embody 48,000 endangered species. Supported by Arts Council England, Arts Council Norway and the Danish Arts Foundation, his practice remains one of the most distinctive and committed voices in ecological theatre.Tom Bailey is our guest in episode 586 of My Time Capsule and he chats to Michael Fenton Stevens about the five things he'd like to put in a time capsule; four he'd like to preserve and one he'd like to bury and never have to think about again .To find out more about Tom's theatre visit - https://mechanimal.co.uk .Follow Tom Bailey's theatre company on Instagram: @_mechanimal_ .Visit our website! - https://mytimecapsulepodcast.com .Follow My Time Capsule on Instagram: @mytimecapsulepodcast & Twitter/X & Facebook: @MyTCpod .Follow Michael Fenton Stevens on Twitter/X: @fentonstevens & Instagram @mikefentonstevens .Produced and edited by John Fenton-Stevens for Cast Off Productions .Music by Pass The Peas Music .Artwork by matthewboxall.com .This podcast is proud to be associated with the charity Viva! Providing theatrical opportunities for hundreds of young people .To support this podcast and get all episodes ad-free, please sign up here - https://mytimecapsule.supercast.com. All money goes straight into the making of the podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A £3,500 grant award from Museum Development South West, with thanks to Arts Council England., means the Museum and Art Gallery can convert the coffee shop are into a creative space for the community to work in differing ways and media. Sue, the Learning and Community Development Officer, speaking to Mike Waddington, talks abut the space, how it will be used and also describes some of the equipment there too sample arts and crafts, very much in the tradition of Flora Twort and her workshop. Sue also talks about the Sketch Club - also an idea from Flora Twort's own work - which has been a big success. They also have half term events next week in the Studio too! MOre at Home | Petersfield Museum See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Thank you for listening to Write On! Audio, the podcast for writers everywhere brought to you by Pen to Print. Our poem of the month for May is “Homelands ” by Eric Ngalle Charles.  Eric was born in the West African state of Cameroon but now lives in Wales. This poem and Eric's introduction were originally broadcast on The Seren Poetry Podcast which you can listen to here https://pod.link/1642711694 You can find out more about Eris Ngalle Charles and “Homelands” on the Seren website here https://www.serenbooks.com/book/homelands/ All content associated with this podcast in audio and in print is protected and may not be copied or used for any purposes including generative AI/AI training. We're always delighted to read your contributions so if you'd like to see your words in Write On! or hear them on this podcast please get in touch. Please submit to: https://pentoprint.org/get-involved/submit-to-write-on/ Thank you for listening to Write On! Audio.  This edition has been presented and produced by Chris Gregory.  Write On! Audio is an Alternative Stories production for Pen to Print. This podcast is produced using public funding from Arts Council England. 

Thank you for listening to Write On! Audio, the podcast for writers everywhere brought to you by Pen to Print. Our listener contribution for May comes from science fiction author and poet Brian Terence who will be sharing some short stories and poems with us today. A writer of a wide range of science fiction stories, both full novels and short stories, Brian's work covers subjects such as Humour; Post-apocalyptic; Space Adventures; Mysteries; Paranormal; Alien Invasion; Time Travel; & Robots. Some are humorous, and others are more poignant and thought-provoking.  Brian lives in East Anglia. You can find out more about Brian Terence and his work by visiting his Goodreads page here https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/52410012.Brian_Terence You can follow Brian on Bluesky here  https://bsky.app/profile/brianterence.co.uk All content associated with this podcast in audio and in print is protected and may not be copied or used for any purposes including generative AI/AI training. We're always delighted to read your contributions so if you'd like to see your words in Write On! or hear them on this podcast please get in touch. Please submit to: https://pentoprint.org/get-involved/submit-to-write-on/ Thank you for listening to Write On! Audio.  This edition has been presented and produced by Chris Gregory.  Write On! Audio is an Alternative Stories production for Pen to Print. This podcast is produced using public funding from Arts Council England.

Thank you for listening to Write On! Audio, the podcast for writers everywhere brought to you by Pen to Print. Our writing tips for May come from Alysoun Owen.  With 25 years of experience in the publishing industry most recently as editor of The Writers' & Artists' Yearbook and the Children's Writers' & Artists' Yearbook, Alyson also runs her own consultancy company, Alysoun Owen Consulting which offers strategic advice and support to organisations in the publishing industry. You can visit the website of Alysoun Owen Consulting herehttps://www.alysounowen.com/ And read more about Alysoun's work as editor of the Writers' & Artists' Yearbook from Write On! here https://pentoprint.org/as-a-epa-alysoun-owen/ All content associated with this podcast in audio and in print is protected and may not be copied or used for any purposes including generative AI/AI training. We're always delighted to read your contributions so if you'd like to see your words in Write On! or hear them on this podcast please get in touch. Please submit to: https://pentoprint.org/get-involved/submit-to-write-on/ Thank you for listening to Write On! Audio.  This edition has been presented and produced by Chris Gregory.  Write On! Audio is an Alternative Stories production for Pen to Print. This podcast is produced using public funding from Arts Council England.

Thank you for listening to Write On! Audio, the podcast for writers everywhere brought to you by Pen to Print.Our April interview is with author and historian Alison Weir.  With 39 published works to her name, Alison writes both historical fiction and historical biographies often focussing on royal women and their families and historical settings.  For this episode, Alison was in conversation with Niema  Bohrayba and Write On! Editor Madeleine White. You can read more about Alison Weir in the latest edition of Write On! Magazine here https://pentoprint.org/product/see-write-on-issue-26-here/ You can visit Alison's website here:https://www.alisonweir.org.uk/ All content associated with this podcast in audio and in print is protected and may not be copied or used for any purposes including generative AI/AI training. We're always delighted to read your contributions so if you'd like to see your words in Write On! or hear them on this podcast please get in touch. Please submit to: https://pentoprint.org/get-involved/submit-to-write-on/ Thank you for listening to Write On! Audio.  This edition has been presented and produced by Chris Gregory.  Write On! Audio is an Alternative Stories production for Pen to Print. This podcast is produced using public funding from Arts Council England.

Something quietly marvellous has happened. A lost episode of the Morecambe and Wise Show has turned up, not with trumpets exactly, more like a slightly dusty miracle pulled from a cupboard somewhere, and it has done what very few things manage now. It has made people genuinely pleased. Not outraged, not divided, just pleased, which is almost suspicious in itself.This rediscovered piece of classic British comedy has stirred up a wider conversation about whether we still make things like this, or whether we mostly remember them and sigh. And into that gentle cultural moment steps Arts Council England, now considering increased investment in comedy. Yes, comedy. Funded. Which sounds either like a very good idea or the beginning of something unintentionally hilarious.The facts are straightforward enough. The episode was long thought lost, another casualty of archival neglect or, perhaps more accurately, the old habit of taping over things that would later turn out to matter rather a lot. Its recovery highlights both the fragility and the stubborn endurance of cultural memory. Meanwhile, Arts Council England already supports aspects of live and written comedy, but there is talk, still forming, of expanding that support in a more deliberate way.And here is the slightly awkward question sitting underneath it all. Can you fund humour into existence? Or does it slip away the moment it is managed too carefully, like a joke explained twice.

Thank you for listening to Write On! Audio, the podcast for writers everywhere brought to you by Pen to Print. This week we're bringing you another Write On! Audio and Friends episode.  This time we're featuring the Write Away Afterparty hosted by Nic and Cath, that's authors NC Murphy and Cath Rathbone.   The show is a video podcast which can be found on YouTube but we're sharing it in audio only.   The episode we're featuring today deals with the issue of writers' block and the ways in which authors can overcome it. You can subscribe to the Write Away Afterparty on YouTube here https://youtube.com/@thewriteawayafterparty?si=NM9bwc2mtHiMPc3z All content associated with this podcast in audio and in print is protected and may not be copied or used for any purposes including generative AI/AI training. We're always delighted to read your contributions so if you'd like to see your words in Write On! or hear them on this podcast please get in touch. Please submit to: https://pentoprint.org/get-involved/submit-to-write-on/ Thank you for listening to Write On! Audio.  This edition has been presented and produced by Chris Gregory.  Write On! Audio is an Alternative Stories production for Pen to Print. This podcast is produced using public funding from Arts Council England.

Thank you for listening to Write On! Audio, the podcast for writers everywhere brought to you by Pen to Print. Our April Listener Contribution comes from poet, tutor, Write On! team member and Thoughtful Tuesday Editor, Eithne Cullen.  Eithne has recorded a selection of her poems for this contribution.  You can find out more about Eithne and her work by following her on Instagram here https://www.instagram.com/eithnecullen57/And you can read Eithne's Thoughtful Tuesdays posts here https://pentoprint.org/thoughtful-tuesdays/  All content associated with this podcast in audio and in print is protected and may not be copied or used for any purposes including generative AI/AI training. We're always delighted to read your contributions so if you'd like to see your words in Write On! or hear them on this podcast please get in touch. Please submit to: https://pentoprint.org/get-involved/submit-to-write-on/ Thank you for listening to Write On! Audio.  This edition has been presented and produced by Chris Gregory.  Write On! Audio is an Alternative Stories production for Pen to Print. This podcast is produced using public funding from Arts Council England.

Thank you for listening to Write On! Audio, the podcast for writers everywhere brought to you by Pen to Print. For our April Writing Tips we're chatting with academic and author, Daisy Fancourt,  professor of psychobiology and epidemiology at University College London.  For her latest book 'Art Cure: How the Arts Can Transform Your Health and Help You Live Longer' she has undertaken extensive research into the health and well-being benefits of participation in the arts and looked at the ways in which artists and writers can maximise benefits to both themselves and those who engage with their work.  For this recording, Daisy was in conversation with playwright Lucy Kaufman and Write On! Editor Madeleine White. You can find out more about Professor Daisy Fancourt and her work by visiting her University College London profile page https://profiles.ucl.ac.uk/44526-daisy-fancourt Read more about Daisy's book ‘Art Cure: How the Arts Can Transform Your Health and Help You Live Longer' ands order a copy from Penguin here https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/462340/art-cure-by-fancourt-daisy/9781529935530 All content associated with this podcast in audio and in print is protected and may not be copied or used for any purposes including generative AI/AI training. We're always delighted to read your contributions so if you'd like to see your words in Write On! or hear them on this podcast please get in touch. Please submit to: https://pentoprint.org/get-involved/submit-to-write-on/ Thank you for listening to Write On! Audio.  This edition has been presented and produced by Chris Gregory.  Write On! Audio is an Alternative Stories production for Pen to Print. This podcast is produced using public funding from Arts Council England. 

What does it mean to amplify a collective voice through collective performance? How do traditions like bell ringing persist, evolve, or disappear, and what do strange histories reveal about their cultural significance?Emily Roderick is the fourth and final guest of our ‘as a chorus' mini series, sharing personal anecdotes, recordings, and sounds inside bell towers from her ongoing project Can You Call A Touch.In this episode, we focus on her research around bell ringing, a deeply social, intergenerational practice that sits somewhere between music, ritual and public communication.Interwoven with familial conversation, and sounds of the ascent of bells being rung up, and the resonant unwinding of ringing down, the conversation considers broader questions around collective expression using bell ringing as both a personal inheritance and a collective language. We hear how the practice functions as a “village voice,” marking time, signalling events, and shaping a shared sense of place, while also operating as a close-knit, sometimes opaque community.Bell ringers:Steve RoderickSue RoderickLynsey RoderickDave Peacock Emily RoderickWith thanks to Martin and Louise Green at St Michael's Church, Bishops Itchington. This work was made with support via DYCP from Arts Council England.Bio:Emily Roderick is an artist, producer, and facilitator, teetering between 'the serious' and 'the silly'. Based in Berlin, her creative and often collaborative outputs include performance, film, workshops, walks and writing. Curiosity and questions drive her practice across its different lines of enquiry, exploring social space and interaction with non-art audiences and community contexts, using art to create conversation and exchange. Removing barriers to the arts is also a big part of her production work, with a focus on developing accessible and inclusive projects.Artist @emilyhrodders Host @influential_bro @_rebecca.edwards @niamhschmidtke Music @joemoss1 @jtre_vBroadcast through @rtm.fm

The UK government last week issued a response to a report ostensibly exploring the future of the funding body Arts Council England but containing an idea that has prompted much debate: that the government should consider changing its policy of free admission for all to national museums in England, and charge tourists an entry fee. Ben Luke discusses the report and the charging issue with Gareth Harris, The Art Newspaper's chief contributing editor, and one of our London-based correspondents, Dale Berning Sawa. Last weekend in New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art opened Raphael: Sublime Poetry, amazingly the first full career survey of the Italian Renaissance master in the United States. Seven years in the making, it explores Raphael's remarkable output across his short life, from his earliest years in his native Urbino to his work for two Popes in Rome, where he died aged just 37 in 1520. We talk to the show's curator, Carmen Bambach. And this episode's Work of the Week is Senga Nengudi's Performance Piece (1977), a series of three photographs depicting one of the iterations of the US artist's landmark sculpture and performance work RSVP. The photographs are part of a small exhibition focusing on Nengudi's performances at the Whitechapel Gallery in London, and Ben talks to the exhibition's curator Hannah Woods.Raphael: Sublime Poetry, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, until 28 June.Senga Nengudi: Performance Works 1972-1982, Whitechapel Gallery, London, until 14 June. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode 90 Letter to My Mother by Suzannah V. Evans   Suzannah V. Evans reads ‘Letter to My Mother' and discusses the poem with Mark McGuinness. https://media.blubrry.com/amouthfulofair/media.blubrry.com/amouthfulofair/content.blubrry.com/amouthfulofair/90_Letter_to_My_Mother_by_Suzannah_V_Evans.mp3 This poem is from: Under the Blue Available from: Under the Blue is available from: The publisher: Bloomsbury Poetry Amazon: UK | US Bookshop.org: UK   Letter to My Mother by Suzannah V. Evans You, pedalling your armsabove your head in bed,that bad arm suddenlymobile and flexible.You, meeting me at school,feeling something stir, sprinting across the grass . . . the two of us laughing, Mr. Tarpin peeringquizzically from the gate.You, with your bright lipstick.You, with your hands like mine.You, with your floppy hat.You, with your easy laugh.You, with the ellipsesof your emails. Your strongfront crawl. Your assertivegestures as you motionthrough talk. Now, when I swim, the movement of my armsis for you. A high arc,fingertips cleaving bright.Shuddering kick of legs.The sea pool in Seixalis for you. Craggy rocksand my head dipped to blue.Grey crabs line the rocks:I think of the limpets that spot McClure's paintingwith the reading woman,sun hat, white paper sheaf.Memory of last summer,absorbed in Woolf outside.A sudden rush of windcaused the parasol to liftand your own hat to spin right up from your head – where it hovered longerthan seemed possible, black ribbon flapping. Porto Moniz   Interview transcript Mark: Suzannah, where did this poem come from? Suzannah: So this poem emerged towards the end of my writing process for writing the poems in Under the Blue which is my first poetry collection. And the first two parts of the book… The book is a triptych of sequences, sort of playing with epistolary forms, so postcards and letters. The first two parts of the book are playing quite specifically with the form of the postcard, and the poems are quite private poems, in some ways. And I was interested in using the postcard form because it is a form which is both private and, in a sense, public in that, when you're writing a postcard, you're writing it to an individual. But a postie can turn that postcard over and read what's on the back. Anyone can read what's on the back. And with this third section in the book, I wanted to directly address some of the earlier figures who had appeared in the first two sections, and I suppose, to address them and to kind of write directly to people. So this poem is written to my mother, and it's in the form of a letter. And I'd say that the writing of this particular poem, this section of the book, was much more deliberate in some ways than the first two sections, which kind of emerged. And then, once I'd written those sections, I had sort of most of a manuscript, and these letters were really kind of, for me, kind of sealing and sending the manuscript off and kind of finishing it in that sense. Mark: Okay. It's really interesting to know that, the postcards come first in the book, and they're all prose poems, aren't they? Suzannah: Yeah. Mark: So they look like postcards on the page. And then, at the end, you've got the sequence of letters, which are kind of long and thin, maybe, to me, suggesting letters are longer than postcards. So, how did you start writing postcards, to begin with? And then we'll move on to the letters. Suzannah: That's a good question. So the postcards, I think I'm always looking for formal inspiration in the things around me. So I am a formal poet in the sense that I've written sonnets. I've written rondels, a lot of rondels. And I'm very interested in traditional form, but I'm also interested in the way that the world can provide forms for the poet. And I was on holiday, visiting my partner's father, when… So this is the first postcard in the book, although it's not sort of titled as a postcard. It's called ‘Under the Blue'. It's the title poem. And that sort of was drawn from a roughly real-life event, where sort of there was this incident with a kayak. My partner was swept off his feet, and it really just brought back to me an earlier experience of actually witnessing a seizure. And that was an experience which had really, really shocked me, and it had come completely out of the blue, really just out of nowhere. And I don't know why, but I had wanted to write about it. Maybe that's a kind of processing thing, or maybe it's just a way to kind of hold close different things that happen in your life. But I'd known for a while that I'd wanted to write about it, and this was years and years later. But seeing this figure being kind of knocked over and sort of just being sort of buffeted in that way really took me back to that night with the seizure. And I felt like these two events were kind of doubled, and I could kind of see both of them at the same time. So it started off with writing about that. And it was, because I was on holiday, a postcard seemed like an apt way to write about that. And so I suppose, kind of, it really started with that first poem. And it's quite subtle, I think, the moment with the seizure. It sort of comes towards the end of the poem. You can sort of read it almost without thinking about the seizure too much. But it does. I think, sort of, that event refracts across the collection. So even though there are moments sort of later in the book where the word seizures is used, someone seizes someone else's wrist in that sort of, a kind of reference back, there's a lot of falling over in the book, a lot of stumbling. And yeah, so I think the impetus for the postcards, kind of, it came from that first section. And actually, they were literal postcards, because I sent some of them. I kind of printed them off and sent them to friends in the post. Because I love…I'm a big letter writer. I send a lot of postcards. Like, postcards are really a big…it sounds weird to say that postcards are a big part of my life, but they kind of are. Like, I really love postcards. I like to collect them from galleries. And so it's partly a homage to my love of the postcard. And I think, also, with postcards, you have the art or the image on the postcard as well. And there's a few kind of ekphrastic moments in the book. So, kind of, all of that is woven in, I think. And the idea of what you can't say in a postcard, I think that's what the middle section of the book, for me, kind of turns the form on its head a little bit more to kind of write about things that maybe you actually wouldn't necessarily write in a postcard. So, to me, I kind of think of them as anti-postcards, almost. Yeah. Mark: So, the form is actually rooted in your life, that you do send postcards. It's not just a conceit for you. Suzannah: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Mark: And of course, when a poem is framed as a postcard or a letter, there is a sense of it feels personal. You know, ‘I' and ‘you' are always… Quite often, there can be quite a lot of ambiguity about who the I is and who the you is. But if you signal it as a letter, like last month, I did Alexander Pope's Essay on Man, which was four verse epistles to Viscount Bolingbroke. And so that puts a different frame on it when you know that he's addressing, ‘My Lord,' and we're kind of overhearing that. Suzannah: Yeah. Mark: There's a sense that this is a personal communication, that maybe there's a real relationship underpinning. Suzannah: Yes. And I think that's something that the whole collection kind of plays with in a way. When I teach poetry, I'm always very adamant, or sort of something that I talk about with students is this idea that you never really can conflate the I of the poem with the poet. Even when there is autobiographical kind of crossover, I think there's something that happens. When you write a poem, it becomes an art object. It becomes something that is changed. I almost want to say it's not a photograph, but I think photographs are kind of complex as well in the way that they capture reality. So I think, for me, there is a real distinction between the first and second sections and the third section of the book. But something that I kind of have been thinking about as well is there's a poem that T.S. Eliot wrote to his wife, and he says something, like, ‘These are private words addressed to you in public.' And so I think this idea of what is private and what is public is really…it makes it quite hard for me to talk about the book sometimes, I think, but it's really at the crux of what it is, the sense of sort of letting the reader into some kind of quite private spaces and the importance of doing that as well, how the private is political. Just all of those things are kind of in there. But I think, in particular, the letters are really public declarations of love and trust, and they are very felt poems that are intended to honour particular people. And the collection ends with a letter to my father, who… The father figure is sort of less present in the earlier sections of the book, but it sort of attributes to my dad. That is an autobiographical kind of poem at the end of the book, which is in thanks really for everything that he does to hold up the people who are in earlier parts of the book and to kind of celebrate his role, to celebrate what he does as a carer, but also just to kind of… I think the letters are just…they're like praise poems really. They're just intended to celebrate these people. Mark: That's a nice idea, isn't it? The praise poem. That should maybe be more prominent, shouldn't it? Suzannah: Yeah. Mark: So with this one, specifically, what could you say about your intention in writing the letter to your mother? Suzannah: I think that this was one of the letters that I found more difficult to write, because the figure of the mother…and again, I won't say my mother because I think, for me, there's still this distinction between, even while the book draws on lived experience, it's not a direct reflection of that. But I think because of the earlier sections of the book, which are, at times, quite stark, I really wanted to write a poem that, I don't know, that sort of dwelled on movement and closeness and joy, I guess, just the delight, the sheer kind of delight of someone moving how they want to move. I think that I was kind of looking at this poem again before, thinking that we were going to talk about it. And that movement, to me, there's a shift after all the sort of you, you, you parts of the poem, which sort of have more kind of…the lines sort of go more to the end of the line. And then, when it starts talking about swimming, there are sort of full stops towards the middle of the lines. And I sort of wanted there to be almost like a kind of pull through those lines, as if someone is swimming through those lines, and you feel the arm going down, your strong front crawl, pause, your assertive gestures as you motion through talk. So kind of like having that pulling movement as swimming in the poem. And my mum, who is disabled, she was diagnosed with a neurological illness when I was 12. She used to be a really keen swimmer. And I remember as a child seeing her do front crawl and being, like, ‘Wow.' I actually only learned to do front crawl properly when I was in my late twenties. And I now love… I really love doing front crawl. I absolutely love it. And again, I swim in celebration of my mum. So if I swim front crawl, I'll always do a length for my mum and kind of dedicate that length to her. So all of those things, again, they're kind of these quite private things that are kind of in the poem, but not fully in the poem. But I think that if you have those kind of reverberations of these kind of memories or feelings, even if you don't write about them directly, they're kind of pulled into the poem through the energy of the language that you do decide to use. Mark: And interestingly, as you talk about the relationship between the real person and the person in the poem, I guess another effect, for me, at least, as a reader, is when I read this, it just makes me think, Oh yeah, people do have their different ways of moving and opening a book or eating a salad, or whatever it may be. That's their kind of signature style in life. Or the little quirks in the way they punctuate their emails. Suzannah: Yeah, yeah. Mark: And so there's the thing of it's very specific, but it's also very suggestive, I think, that we easily identify with a relationship like this, even if the circumstances are different. Suzannah: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I like what you say about movement, though. And I feel like every person has their own kind of form, like, if we're thinking about form in poetry. It's what I think about when I watch people run a lot of the time. I'm thinking about, ‘Wow.' Really, really, really different form, really different ways of moving, even though that repetitive motion is very… There are only so many ways that you can run, and yet it is so different for everyone. And I think, with this poem as well, something that I was interested in doing was kind of going back to an earlier point, kind of. So, that ‘You, meeting me at school,' kind of thinking about earlier times as well. And again, the ‘sprinting across the grass' kind of goes back in a way to that opening epigraph to the book, which is from Virginia Woolf's novel, To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf being a modernist writer. And it's… Oh, not Virginia Woolf, sorry, what am I saying? It does go back to that, but I'm actually thinking of Charles Baudelaire, who talks about ‘the ecstasy and horror of life'. Mark: He's great, isn't he? Suzannah: Yeah, really. But this idea of the kind of sprinting across the grass, it was just such a joyful thing, such an incredibly out-of-the-blue, again, to go back to that phrase, sudden burst of energy and motion. And I think we were laughing, but also probably crying, so we probably looked pretty strange. And again, I think the book is really interested in those kind of doubled states where maybe there's sort of deep despair, but also real joy, or anger, but delight. So kind of there's a sense of these cyclical movements through those different states, different emotions, or even a kind of merging of those two things together at the same time. Mark: And can I pick up on the Virginia Woolf reference, because that…I mean, in your writing, there's a lot of summer seaside imagery, and you've got the epigraph from To the Lighthouse. So, I would bet that the person reading Woolf outside was reading To the Lighthouse in this poem. And of course, that's a novel with a mother very much at the centre of it. I mean, it's clearly artfully placed in the poem. So I was curious about, what was your decision to put that in? Suzannah: Yeah. I mean, I think it's a very sort of associative poem. It kind of goes from the reference to Daphne McClure, who is an artist, and she has this wonderful, kind of quite humorous painting of a woman reading. And then it kind of goes to actual reading. Mark: Yes. Suzannah: But then it kind of goes back to McClure as well, because in the painting, this woman is reading, she's got this big sheaf of papers or this big kind of white book paper that she's reading. And then the poem kind of has that in mind. And then, when the hat lifts at the end of the poem, sort of, you've got all of it there. So it's kind of going back to that visual image and making its own kind of different visual image at the end of the poem. And I really love, in Woolf's novel, there's this idea of, like, Lily, the painter, and she's thinking about sort of making her mark. And how do you make a mark? How do you begin? How do you create? How do you have a vision? So I suppose that's part of it. And then the epigraph to the book is really just my favourite sort of thing, and it's this idea that Woolf is writing about that if you're watching, if you're looking at waves from far off, kind of, they look very symmetrical, and they look very regular. But if your perspective changes and you're suddenly the swimmer in those waves, it's completely different. You're having this entirely other experience where, you know, how a painter might paint those waves from far off, these lovely, kind of, they're all the same size, they're kind of coming regularly. And then, to be that swimmer, who is having to kind of arch over each wave or sort of get over each wave, and relentlessly, just wave after wave, and each one is different, you know. So again, there's that kind of repetition idea in there, but also this idea of scale and perspective, and the idea that you might kind of look at something from far away, and it seems very orderly, and it seems very symmetrical, and it seems very easy to deal with, essentially. But if you are the swimmer, that's not the case. And each thing requires a lot of consideration. And that's really what the middle section of the book is interested in, sort of how to write about care and how to write about things, which are just very different, I think, when you're in the midst of them, and every particular thing is something that needs to be negotiated in that way. So the image of waves in the Woolf novel is very important, and also the idea of, in the novel, obviously, the lighthouse is this kind of ever-present, sort of, almost like a character. And I wanted the sea to have that role in this book. So a lot of my earlier writing has been about the sea. And this book is less directly about the sea, but the sea is always present, and I wanted it to be heard and felt, even when it's not kind of being described in detail. Mark: That's a very interesting point about different perspectives, because I think we experience that throughout the book. So some of the postcards are very much about the more difficult aspects of care, caring for a parent. So we read this one in the light of that, and vice versa, and so this is, if you like, the praise poem, the joy, the celebratory. Suzannah: Yes. And I think I'm very, very interested in the relationship between prose… I was going to say prose poetry and line-broken poetry, but also just poetry and prose. And a lot of my influences for writing are quite prose-y, often. I'm interested in prose writers, and I'm interested in where that line is between this idea of what makes a prose poem a poem. And I think if you give a reader a kind of extensive amount of prose, and that sets up a particular kind of rhythm, a particular kind of feel, but then, to follow that with very short-lined poems, line-broken poems, it's a different kind of… I think I wanted it to be almost like a kind of lift at the end of the book, where you've kind of had this kind of, I don't want to say denser, but definitely starker prose. And then there's kind of a much shorter section at the end of the letters, it's very short, but it's kind of just a movement into a different kind of writing. And I wanted that to be a noticeable kind of contrast. Mark: Yeah, definitely. I mean, even visually on the page, the prose looks denser, whereas these, I don't know, it feels like you pick your way a bit more nimbly through these. How did you arrive at that as the solution to how you represent a letter on a page? And was this one of the later ones? So in a sense, the form was predetermined, but it's like you're writing a sonnet sequence, and then you know that there's going to be another one like that. Suzannah: Yeah. So I really do like a sequence. A huge amount of my writing involves sequences, and I think there's something about, if you do something one time and you like it, I think it's worth doing it again. So my first pamphlet is a sequence of poems about the British surrealist artist Eileen Agar. And I often just keep going. If I'm writing something, kind of, I keep going with that. So yes, this was part of an earlier sequence in the sense that the first letter in the book is the first letter that I wrote, and I think, in that sense, the form was kind of set out. And then, in terms of it being kind of, like, a longer shorter-lined poem, I was thinking a little bit about how if you unfold a letter from an envelope, you would have to do that with this poem. Mark: Oh, yes, I remember that. Suzannah: Yeah. And it can be quite tricky, actually. I find it quite tricky to fold letters so they fit correctly in their envelope. But yeah, there's something about that. Whereas the postcard poems, they are, like, poems that you could almost kind of fit to the back of a postcard. But the ones that kind of escape from that or kind of defy that form, I think, are also…that's interesting to me as well, kind of, to flip that. So, for example, I think the most…the postcard that, to me, is the crux of the middle section is the postcard on Christmas night, which is one that I had thought that I would not ever really want to read out loud because it's quite an intense poem. But I did read that one at the London launch for my book at Burley Fisher Books because I was kind of surrounded by people that I knew, and it felt right. But that poem is a much longer postcard. And again, I like the idea of a postcard where you're defying the amount of space that you have to write in. And again, I think that prose poems also do that, because there's a similar kind of sense of overspill in a prose poem, because you're tipping over that line end, and that's quite defiant as well. So I think, if you then tip over the form of the postcard, it's kind of a doubly defiant, formally, kind of way of writing. Mark: Thank you, Suzannah, for sharing such a personal and beautiful poem today and a joyful one. And I would encourage listeners to go and check out the rest of the book and see how it fits into the sequence, because this is really one of those books where the parts really do make up something bigger than the whole. So let's have another lesson to ‘Letter to My Mother'. Suzannah: Thank you.   Letter to My Mother by Suzannah V. Evans You, pedalling your armsabove your head in bed,that bad arm suddenlymobile and flexible.You, meeting me at school,feeling something stir, sprinting across the grass . . . the two of us laughing, Mr. Tarpin peeringquizzically from the gate.You, with your bright lipstick.You, with your hands like mine.You, with your floppy hat.You, with your easy laugh.You, with the ellipsesof your emails. Your strongfront crawl. Your assertivegestures as you motionthrough talk. Now, when I swim, the movement of my armsis for you. A high arc,fingertips cleaving bright.Shuddering kick of legs.The sea pool in Seixalis for you. Craggy rocksand my head dipped to blue.Grey crabs line the rocks:I think of the limpets that spot McClure's paintingwith the reading woman,sun hat, white paper sheaf.Memory of last summer,absorbed in Woolf outside.A sudden rush of windcaused the parasol to liftand your own hat to spin right up from your head – where it hovered longerthan seemed possible, black ribbon flapping. Porto Moniz   Under the Blue ‘Letter to My Mother' is from Under the Blue, published by Bloomsbury Poetry. Available from: Under the Blue is available from: The publisher: Bloomsbury Poetry Amazon: UK | US Bookshop.org: UK   Suzannah V. Evans Suzannah V. Evans is a poet, researcher, and educator. Her debut collection Under the Blue is shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize, and her work has received the Ivan Juritz Prize and a Northern Writers' Award. Her poetry pamphlets are Brightwork and Marine Objects / Some Language. She teaches poetry in adult education and works with Poetry By Heart. suzannahvevans.com Photograph by Naomi Woddis   A Mouthful of Air – the podcast This is a transcript of an episode of A Mouthful of Air – a poetry podcast hosted by Mark McGuinness. New episodes are released every other Tuesday. You can hear every episode of the podcast via Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts or your favourite app. You can have a full transcript of every new episode sent to you via email. The music and soundscapes for the show are created by Javier Weyler. Sound production is by Breaking Waves and visual identity by Irene Hoffman. A Mouthful of Air is produced by The 21st Century Creative, with support from Arts Council England via a National Lottery Project Grant. Listen to the show You can listen and subscribe to A Mouthful of Air on all the main podcast platforms Related Episodes Letter to My Mother by Suzannah V. Evans Episode 90 Letter to My Mother by Suzannah V. Evans  Suzannah V. Evans reads ‘Letter to My Mother' and discusses the poem with Mark McGuinness.This poem is from: Under the BlueAvailable from: Under the Blue is available from: The publisher: Bloomsbury Poetry... From An Essay on Man by Alexander Pope Episode 89 From An Essay on Man by Alexander Pope Mark McGuinness reads and discusses an excerpt from Epistle II of An Essay on Man by Alexander Pope.Poet Alexander PopeReading and commentary by Mark McGuinnessFrom An Essay on Man Epistle II By Alexander Pope Know... Occupied by Tim Rich Episode 88 Occupied by Tim Rich  Tim Rich reads ‘Occupied' and discusses the poem with Mark McGuinness.This poem is from: Dark Angels: Three Contemporary PoetsAvailable from: Dark Angels is available from: The publisher: Paekakariki Press Amazon: UK...

Thank you for listening to Write On! Audio, the podcast for writers everywhere brought to you by Pen to Print. Our Write On Audio and Friends episode for March features the Alternative Stories and Fake Realities Podcast and an audio drama by playwright Jane Walker ."Theatre Workshop or The Ballad of Ewan and Joan" celebrates and tells the story of Theatre Workshop, the innovative theatre company founded by Ewan MacColl and Joan Littlewood in Manchester in the 1930s.  Producing hugely popular plays such as "A Taste of Honey" by Shelagh Delaney and Joan Littlewood's "Oh What A Lovely War" and relocating to The Theatre Royal Stratford East in East London in the 1960s. We hope you enjoy the story. In 'Theatre Workshop or The Ballad of Ewan and Joan' by Jane Walker you can hearMichael Ashtiany as Ewan MaccollFrancesca Anderson as Joan LittlewoodCharlie Richards as Newsboy and Kenneth TynanTom Rope as Archie Harding and Gerry RafflesKathryn Georghiou as Shelagh Delaney and Rosalie WilliamsRebecca Bugeja as Jean Newlove and Avis BunnageJane Walker as Womanand Chris Gregory as Colonel PennymanOther voices were played by members of the cast 'Theatre Workshop or the Ballad of Ewan and Joan' was directed by Chris Gregory and Jane Walker.  It was recorded at Orpheus Studio in London by Richard "Orpheus" Campbell.Production, sound design and editing were by Chris Gregory for Alternative StoriesCasting was by Chris Gregory and Jane Walker Most of the characters depicted in this play are based on real people who played important roles in the Theatre Workshop story. This play however, is a work of fiction and the conversations you heard are imagined based on real events and do not purport to accurately represent actual conversations or interactions between individuals.The excerpts from Agit-prop and Theatre Workshop plays were used with the permission of Manchester University Press and performed by members of the cast. 'Dirty Old Town' was used with the permission of Proper Records Ltd'Scarborough Fair' is a traditional song performed by members of the cast'Fare Thee Well" is a traditional song performed by members of the castOther music used in this production is copyright free and sourced from Epidemic Sounds. The script for 'Theatre Workshop or The Ballad of Ewan and Joan' is copyright Jane Walker and may not be used in whole or part except with the permission of the author.To find out more about Jane Walker and her work please visit her website https://www.enajwrites.co.ukYou can find out more about Theatre Workshop and its history by following this link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theatre_Workshop  All content associated with this podcast in audio and in print is protected and may not be copied or used for any purposes including generative AI/AI training. We're always delighted to read your contributions so if you'd like to see your words in Write On! or hear them on this podcast please get in touch. Please submit to: https://pentoprint.org/get-involved/submit-to-write-on/ Thank you for listening to Write On! Audio.  This edition has been presented and produced by Chris Gregory.  Write On! Audio is an Alternative Stories production for Pen to Print. This podcast is produced using public funding from Arts Council England.

Thank you for listening to Write On! Audio, the podcast for writers everywhere brought to you by Pen to Print. This month's Poem Of The Month episode features poet and former vet, Ilse Pedler and two poems from her Seren Books collection ‘Auscultation'  These poems were originally featured on the Seren Poetry Podcast and you can listen to the full episode here https://pod.link/1642711694/episode/QnV6enNwcm91dC0xMTQ4NTg4NgFind out more about Ilse Pedler and her work here https://ilsepedler.com/And find out more about Seren and purchase their books here https://www.serenbooks.com/ All content associated with this podcast in audio and in print is protected and may not be copied or used for any purposes including generative AI/AI training. We're always delighted to read your contributions so if you'd like to see your words in Write On! or hear them on this podcast please get in touch. Please submit to:  https://pentoprint.org/get-involved/submit-to-write-on/ Thank you for listening to Write On! Audio.  This edition has been presented and produced by Chris Gregory.  Write On! Audio is an Alternative Stories production for Pen to Print. This podcast is produced using public funding from Arts Council England.

"Can You Hear Us?" is a Creative Island six-week, Arts Council England-funded cultural program running from September 11 to October 24, 2026, across the Isle of Wight. 

"Can You Hear Us?" is a Creative Island six-week, Arts Council England-funded cultural program running from September 11 to October 24, 2026, across the Isle of Wight. 

"Can You Hear Us?" is a Creative Island six-week, Arts Council England-funded cultural program running from September 11 to October 24, 2026, across the Isle of Wight. 

"Can You Hear Us?" is a Creative Island six-week, Arts Council England-funded cultural program running from September 11 to October 24, 2026, across the Isle of Wight. 

"Can You Hear Us?" is a Creative Island six-week, Arts Council England-funded cultural program running from September 11 to October 24, 2026, across the Isle of Wight. 

"Can You Hear Us?" is a Creative Island six-week, Arts Council England-funded cultural program running from September 11 to October 24, 2026, across the Isle of Wight. 

"Can You Hear Us?" is a Creative Island six-week, Arts Council England-funded cultural program running from September 11 to October 24, 2026, across the Isle of Wight. 

"Can You Hear Us?" is a Creative Island six-week, Arts Council England-funded cultural program running from September 11 to October 24, 2026, across the Isle of Wight. 

"Can You Hear Us?" is a Creative Island six-week, Arts Council England-funded cultural program running from September 11 to October 24, 2026, across the Isle of Wight. 

Thank you for listening to Write On! Audio, the podcast for writers everywhere brought to you by Pen to Print. Our listener contribution for March comes from TAK Erzinger an American/Swiss poet and artist with a Colombian background.  She is also an alumni of Boston University.Her poetry has been featured by journals at the Latino Book Review, Indiana University, Cornell University, McMaster University, the University of Baltimore and more.  Erzinger's poetry collection At The Foot Of The Mountain, (Floricanto Press 2021), won the University of Indianapolis, Etchings Press Whirling Prize for 2021 for best nature poetry book and is a two-time finalist. Her second poetry collection Tourist (Sea Crow Press 2023) is also a two-time finalist at the International Book Awards and the Eyelands Book Awards. Erzinger was an artist-in-residence at the Art Centre Padula Residency Programme Italy, summer 2023, at Brisons Veor Residency Cornwall, fall 2024 and The Eutopia Artist Residence Greece, spring 2025. Most recently her first children's picture book, At The Queen Of The Mountain won five awards in 2025 including book of the year.  TAK's new poetry collection  A Woman Like That will be published at the end of March.   She lives in the foothills of the Alps in Switzerland with her husband and two cats.Find out more about TAK and her work by visiting her website herehttps://takerzinger.wixsite.com/poetAnd visit TAK's page at Grey Borders Books, TAK's Canadian publisher herehttps://greybordersbooks.jigsy.com/tak-erzinger All content associated with this podcast in audio and in print is protected and may not be copied or used for any purposes including generative AI/AI training. We're always delighted to read your contributions so if you'd like to see your words in Write On! or hear them on this podcast please get in touch. Please submit to: https://pentoprint.org/get-involved/submit-to-write-on/ Thank you for listening to Write On! Audio.  This edition has been presented and produced by Chris Gregory.  Write On! Audio is an Alternative Stories production for Pen to Print. This podcast is produced using public funding from Arts Council England.

Thank you for listening to Write On! Audio, the podcast for writers everywhere brought to you by Pen to Print. Our writing tips for March come from Write On! Associate Editor Clare Cooper.   Working in magazine publishing for over 45 years, the last 29 of which were spent very happily embedded in the Fiction Department of Woman's Weekly Magazine, Clare is now a regular contributor and competition judge for Pen to Print.  Her writing advice focusses on the skills that writers need to write short fiction aimed at publication in magazines. You can find out more about Clare and her work by following the link below https://pentoprint.org/write-on-interviews-writer-clare-cooper/   All content associated with this podcast in audio and in print is protected and may not be copied or used for any purposes including generative AI/AI training. We're always delighted to read your contributions so if you'd like to see your words in Write On! or hear them on this podcast please get in touch. Please submit to: https://pentoprint.org/get-involved/submit-to-write-on/ Thank you for listening to Write On! Audio.  This edition has been presented and produced by Chris Gregory.  Write On! Audio is an Alternative Stories production for Pen to Print. This podcast is produced using public funding from Arts Council England. 

Episode 89 From An Essay on Man by Alexander Pope  Mark McGuinness reads and discusses an excerpt from Epistle II of An Essay on Man by Alexander Pope. https://media.blubrry.com/amouthfulofair/media.blubrry.com/amouthfulofair/content.blubrry.com/amouthfulofair/89_From_An_Essay_on_Man_by_Alexander_Pope.mp3 Poet Alexander Pope Reading and commentary by Mark McGuinness From An Essay on Man Epistle II By Alexander Pope Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;The proper study of mankind is man.Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,A being darkly wise, and rudely great:With too much knowledge for the sceptic side,With too much weakness for the stoic's pride,He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest;In doubt to deem himself a god, or beast;In doubt his mind or body to prefer;Born but to die, and reasoning but to err;Alike in ignorance, his reason such,Whether he thinks too little, or too much:Chaos of thought and passion, all confused;Still by himself abused, or disabused;Created half to rise, and half to fall;Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled:The glory, jest, and riddle of the world! Go, wondrous creature! mount where science guides,Go, measure earth, weigh air, and state the tides;Instruct the planets in what orbs to run,Correct old time, and regulate the sun;Go, soar with Plato to th' empyreal sphere,To the first good, first perfect, and first fair;Or tread the mazy round his followers trod,And quitting sense call imitating God;As Eastern priests in giddy circles run,And turn their heads to imitate the sun.Go, teach Eternal Wisdom how to rule –Then drop into thyself, and be a fool!   Podcast Transcript In the early 18th century, Alexander Pope's poetry was known to every cultured person in England. He was a fashionable, successful, wealthy writer and the preeminent poet of his age. He was also a canny businessman who published his translations of Homer via subscription, an early form of crowdfunding, and they sold so well he built himself, an extravagantly large villa in Twickenham – and its famous subterranean grotto still exists today. His political satires were so sharp and topical that he was rumoured to carry a pair of loaded pistols when going for a walk, in case one of his targets took violent exception. Phrases from his poetry are still proverbial: ‘hope springs eternal', ‘Fools rush in where angels fear to tread', ‘a little learning is a dangerous thing', ‘To err is human; to forgive divine', ‘What oft was thought but ne'er so well expressed', and also the title of the movie, ‘eternal sunshine of the spotless mind'. But these days, Pope has really fallen out of fashion. He's seen as archaic and artificial. In an age when formal poetry is out of fashion, for many people he represents the worst kind of formal poetry: his very regular metre and full rhymes sound clunky to our ears. His rhyming couplets are undoubtedly clever, but that's part of the problem, because these days we associate poetry with emotions and self-expression, so cleverness is seen as a little suspect and somehow inauthentic. And I'll be honest, for a long time, I had that image of Pope. He represented everything the Romantics rebelled against at the end of the 18th century, and as a young poet I was on the side of the Romantics, so I had no interest in Pope. However, a few years ago, I challenged myself to have another look at his work, and what I discovered was a really sharp and thought-provoking and witty and formidably skilful poet, who in certain moods, is an absolute pleasure to read. And he doesn't fit every mood, but then there aren't many poets who do. So turning to today's poem, An Essay on Man is one of Pope's major works, it's about 1,300 lines long. As the title suggests it's a meditation on the nature of what he called mankind, and we call humankind, we have to make allowance for the historic focus on the male as representative of the species. It's also a didactic poem, he's not just reflecting on the subject, he is telling us what we should think about it. Which again, is a deeply unfashionable stance for poets these days, at least when they are on the side of a conservative or establishment position. And he does this in the form of a series of verse epistles, verse letters, which are addressed to Henry St John, Viscount Bolingbroke. The epistle form also means that the poem addresses the reader in a very direct manner, as you would expect in a letter. His basic stance, which we find in many of his poems, is of a reasonable man writing for a group of like-minded people, trying to establish some sort of common sense, shared ideas and principles, in a world where these need to be debated and defined and defended. This was the world of the coffee house and the salon, where people came together to debate, sometimes in very robust fashion. It came to be known as the Augustan age in English literature, by comparison with the satirical and political poetry of the age of Augustus Caesar. OK looking more closely at the poem itself, the excerpt I just read is from the second Epistle, and one of the first things we notice is what Milton would have called the ‘jingling' rhymes: Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of mankind is man. Placed on this isthmus of a middle state, A being darkly wise, and rudely great: With too much knowledge for the sceptic side, With too much weakness for the stoic’s pride, It's pretty unmistakeable isn't it? One pair of rhymes after another. And in case you're wondering, yes, these rhyming couplets do go on all the way through the poem, and indeed all the way through most of Pope's work. And not just in Pope: for over a century, from about 1650 to 1780, this was a hugely popular verse form. They are known as heroic couplets because they are associated with epic narrative poems, such as John Dryden's translations of Virgil and Pope's translations of Homer. Each line is in iambic pentameter, the familiar ti TUM ti TUM ti TUm ti TUM ti TUM, with two lines next to each other forming couplets, and the poem proceeding with one couplet after another. The form can be traced back to Chaucer, who used rhyming couplets for many of his narrative poems. But by the time of Dryden and Pope it had evolved into a tighter couplet form, described as closed couplets, meaning that they were typically self contained, with a sentence, or a discrete part of a sentence, beginning and ending inside the couplet. For instance: Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of mankind is man. That stands on its own as a single thought, a unit of sense, ending with a full stop. And the full rhyme of ‘scan' and ‘man' means the couplet snaps shut at the end – this is the closed couplet effect we associate with heroic couplets. In the next couplet he introduces the idea of man as a creature of ‘middle state': Placed on this isthmus of a middle state, A being darkly wise, and rudely great: And then another couplet elaborates on the sense of being pulled in different directions: With too much knowledge for the sceptic side, With too much weakness for the stoic's pride, So the poem proceeds one unit of sense at a time. The couplets are like Lego bricks, and Pope used them to build just about anything he wanted: literary and philosophical discourse here in the Essay on Man and in his Essay on Criticism; mock-heroic social comedy in The Rape of the Lock; actual epic in his translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey; and satire in The Dunciad. It's easy to see how this could become monotonous, and in the work of most poets of the time, it did. But Pope's great achievement was to take this established form and perfect it, sticking very strictly to the formal pattern, while varying the syntax, the grammatical patterns, with great subtlety and complexity, to keep the reader on their toes. Let's take another look at the first couplet. Notice the little pause in the middle of the first line, after ‘thyself': Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; This divides the line into two parts, conveying the dramatic tension in Pope's argument: he's saying that humans are ambitious for knowledge, they want to ‘scan' God, to examine him, but they should really focus on self-knowledge. This tension between opposites is known as antithesis, it's a rhetorical pattern we looked at back in episode 58 about one of Sir Philip Sidney's sonnets, and it's very common in Pope. And the tension is resolved in the next line, which is all one phrase, with no pause: The proper study of mankind is man. Have another listen to the couplet, to hear how the tension is established and then released: Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of mankind is man. So when all of this comes together, the tension and release, the regular rhythm of the metre and the full rhymes clinching the couplet, it has the effect of making the words sound truer than true. The following couplet picks up on the antithesis, and extends it into paradox: Placed on this isthmus of a middle state, A being darkly wise, and rudely great: An isthmus is a narrow strip of land between two bodies of water, so standing on it, you could easily feel precarious and threatened. ‘Darkly wise' means ‘dimly wise', possessing a little knowledge, but not enough for full understanding. And ‘rudely great' means ‘powerful but coarse and unfinished'. And I think we can recognise what Pope is saying from our own experience – that sense of knowing enough to know how little we really know; of having great potential, but struggling to fulfil it. And isn't it delightful how Pope compresses all those feelings into these neat little paradoxes: ‘darkly wise and rudely great'. In another famous line, he describes true eloquence as ‘What oft was thought but ne'er so well expressed', which is exactly what he achieves here. We can also note that ‘darkly wise' and ‘rudely great' are not only antitheses expressed as paradoxes, they are also an example of another rhetorical pattern: parallelism, where similar structures are repeated with variation. In this case ‘darkly' and ‘rudely' are both adverbs and ‘wise' and ‘great' are both adjectives, so grammatically they are identical, which suggests both similarity and difference in mankind's relationship to knowledge and power. The next couplet uses a more elaborate parallelism: With too much knowledge for the sceptic side, With too much weakness for the stoic's pride, So both lines say ‘With too much something for the something else'. It's hard to miss the pattern, isn't it? And notice how the couplet form is perfect for laying out two ideas that seem to counterbalance each other perfectly. So we're only six lines in and Pope has put his finger on a central conundrum in human existence, and conveyed it with at least three rhetorical patterns nested inside each other – antithesis, paradox and parallelism. Not only that, he's handled the metre and rhyme with great skill, wrapping each thought up in the neat little bow of a rhyming couplet. And if your mind is starting to boggle, welcome to the world of Pope's verse: elegant, authoritative and very, very clever. When we look closely, there's a lot going on inside every single couplet. He's like a watchmaker, working at a tiny scale, making an instrument with great precision and balance, that keeps perfect time, and chimes beautifully. And Pope's contemporaries would have found it easier to follow the sense than we do, because they were used to reading this kind of stuff. But I'm sure the poetry would often have given them pause, even if only for a moment, as they read. And my guess is that they would have enjoyed this slight difficulty, and the pleasure of making out the sense, with the little dopamine hit of understanding. Like unwrapping a sweet before you can pop it in your mouth and taste it. So I hope we're starting to see why Pope is the undisputed master of the heroic couplet. Even T. S. Eliot had to admit defeat, when he wrote a passage in this style for The Waste Land, only for Ezra Pound to point out tactfully that he couldn't compete with Pope, and draw the red pencil through it. But the form is more than simply one couplet after another. When he stacks them together, they create verse paragraphs, longer units of thought, that function very like paragraphs in prose. So having established the idea of man caught between opposing forces, he goes on to elaborate on the theme to dazzling effect: He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest; In doubt to deem himself a god, or beast; In doubt his mind or body to prefer; Born but to die, and reasoning but to err; Alike in ignorance, his reason such, Whether he thinks too little, or too much: The couplets are individually brilliant, and cumulatively overwhelming, both in terms of the mental effort required to tease out their meanings, and the tension between action and inaction, divine and bestial impulses, mind and body, birth and death, reason and error. And I think that's why I find this line so funny: Whether he thinks too little, or too much: It feels like he's throwing his arms up and laughing and admitting that he's overthinking it all. The verse paragraph ends with three more couplets, where he sums up the nature of man: Chaos of thought and passion, all confused; Still by himself abused, or disabused; Created half to rise, and half to fall; Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all; Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled: The glory, jest, and riddle of the world! Although Pope is describing a ‘chaos of thought', his own thinking is always sharp, however convoluted his argument becomes. So he sticks to the themes of power and knowledge, undercutting man's pretension by saying he is ‘Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all', and ‘Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled'. And he ends this paragraph with another rhetorical device, the tricolon, which uses three parallel elements to build to a conclusion: The glory, jest, and riddle of the world! We're familiar with this pattern in famous quotes from Julius Caesar, ‘I came, I saw, I conquered', the US Declaration of Independence, ‘Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness', and Shakespeare: ‘Friends, Romans, countrymen!' Here, Pope uses it with typical precision, since if someone is both the ‘glory… of the world' and it's ‘jest', i.e. the butt of its jokes, then that makes that person a ‘riddle': The glory, jest, and riddle of the world! So this sums up the nature of man, and sets up the jesting irony of the next verse paragraph: Go, wondrous creature! mount where science guides, Go, measure earth, weigh air, and state the tides; Instruct the planets in what orbs to run, Correct old time, and regulate the sun; If this were the start of the poem, we might be forgiven for taking Pope's words at face value, but in the light of what has gone before, it's pretty clear that ‘wondrous creature' is a mocking criticism. He was writing this in an age where Newtonian physics was in the ascendancy and people were full of enthusiasm about the new discoveries in science and the possibility of understanding and mastering the physical world. And given that we are still living in a so-called age of reason, I think his criticisms of scientific overreach are still relevant, and the joke is still funny, when he talks about instructing the planets in what orbits to follow, correcting time and regulating the sun. As if measuring were full understanding, let alone complete power. But Pope doesn't confine his criticism to scientists. He also has philosophers in his sight: Go, soar with Plato to th' empyreal sphere, To the first good, first perfect, and first fair; Or tread the mazy round his followers trod, And quitting sense call imitating God; He clearly doesn't have a lot of time for Plato's first principles. Neither is he impressed by the contemporary vogue for what we would call Orientalism: As Eastern priests in giddy circles run, And turn their heads to imitate the sun. It's possible that he had in mind the whirling dervishes of Persia, or maybe this is just a caricature of his idea of ‘Eastern priests'. So obviously this is a joke that hasn't aged so well. OK he ends this verse paragraph with a final jab, which restates the idea from the opening couplet in bluntly comic fashion: Go, teach Eternal Wisdom how to rule – Then drop into thyself, and be a fool! It's hard to imagine a more apt image of intellectual presumption than trying to teach Eternal Wisdom a thing or two, but just in case we miss the point, Pope rams it home with relish: Then drop into thyself, and be a fool! And this is another characteristic aspect of Augustan poetry, particularly the satirical kind, that it can be very crude and direct, with a passage of sophisticated argument followed by a line or two where the mask drops and the insult is laid bare. And no, it's not big or clever, but let's face it, sometimes it can be deeply satisfying. One more little detail, which I can't help wondering about: notice how both of these couplets, conveying the same basic idea in very different tones, both hinge on the word ‘thyself': Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of mankind is man. Go, teach Eternal Wisdom how to rule – Then drop into thyself, and be a fool! So that word ‘thyself' could be used to refer to various individuals, and knowing Pope, I wouldn't be surprised if he intended all of them at once. Firstly, the phrasing sounds proverbial, in which case each couplet is an injunction to mankind at large. Secondly, it could refer to the reader, any reader, of the poem, whether Viscount Bolingbroke, an 18th-century wit, or you and me, reading the poem together on this podcast. It could also refer to the specific targets of Pope's criticism, such as the overreaching scientists or philosophers. I think Pope may also have had in mind a target nearer to home: himself. W. B. Yeats wrote in one of his essays, ‘We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry'. And it's entirely possible that Pope is doing both at once: we've seen the brilliance of his rhetoric, in puncturing the pretensions of his fellow men and women. Yet by making poetry as well as rhetoric, he is arguably arguing with himself as well. It was of course be entirely right and proper and expected for a Christian such as Pope to admonish himself as well as others, for the many and various sins he describes in An Essay on Man. So from a moral viewpoint, I think I'm on pretty safe ground in suggesting that ‘thyself' includes Pope. But I would go further, and say that the idea of a brilliant mind that is not quite brilliant enough to fully understand itself may have been a deeply personal subject for Pope. Because what we have here is an extremely clever warning about taking cleverness to extremes. Maybe the irony was not lost on Pope. As he wrote in another poem, An Essay on Criticism, ‘A little learning is a dangerous thing'. So perhaps as we hear this passage again, and enjoy the sparkling wit and scurrilous attacks on others, we can also detect a note of self-reflection, and self-accusation, that makes it a little more poignant than it first appears. From An Essay on Man Epistle II By Alexander Pope Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;The proper study of mankind is man.Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,A being darkly wise, and rudely great:With too much knowledge for the sceptic side,With too much weakness for the stoic's pride,He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest;In doubt to deem himself a god, or beast;In doubt his mind or body to prefer;Born but to die, and reasoning but to err;Alike in ignorance, his reason such,Whether he thinks too little, or too much:Chaos of thought and passion, all confused;Still by himself abused, or disabused;Created half to rise, and half to fall;Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled:The glory, jest, and riddle of the world! Go, wondrous creature! mount where science guides,Go, measure earth, weigh air, and state the tides;Instruct the planets in what orbs to run,Correct old time, and regulate the sun;Go, soar with Plato to th' empyreal sphere,To the first good, first perfect, and first fair;Or tread the mazy round his followers trod,And quitting sense call imitating God;As Eastern priests in giddy circles run,And turn their heads to imitate the sun.Go, teach Eternal Wisdom how to rule –Then drop into thyself, and be a fool!   Alexander Pope Alexander Pope was an English poet and translator who was born in 1688 and died in 1744. As a Catholic he was barred from university and public office, so he educated himself and forged a brilliant literary career, becoming the leading poet of Augustan England, celebrated for his razor-sharp satire and polished heroic couplets. Early success came with An Essay on Criticism and The Rape of the Lock, followed by monumental translations of Homer that made him financially independent. His later works, including The Dunciad, attacked dullness and corruption. In An Essay on Man, he explored human nature, providence, and moral order with epigrammatic clarity. He lived at Twickenham, where he created a famous garden and grotto.   A Mouthful of Air – the podcast This is a transcript of an episode of A Mouthful of Air – a poetry podcast hosted by Mark McGuinness. New episodes are released every other Tuesday. You can hear every episode of the podcast via Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts or your favourite app. You can have a full transcript of every new episode sent to you via email. The music and soundscapes for the show are created by Javier Weyler. Sound production is by Breaking Waves and visual identity by Irene Hoffman. A Mouthful of Air is produced by The 21st Century Creative, with support from Arts Council England via a National Lottery Project Grant. Listen to the show You can listen and subscribe to A Mouthful of Air on all the main podcast platforms Related Episodes From An Essay on Man by Alexander Pope Episode 89 From An Essay on Man by Alexander Pope Mark McGuinness reads and discusses an excerpt from Epistle II of An Essay on Man by Alexander Pope.Poet Alexander PopeReading and commentary by Mark McGuinnessFrom An Essay on Man Epistle II By Alexander Pope Know... Occupied by Tim Rich Episode 88 Occupied by Tim Rich  Tim Rich reads ‘Occupied' and discusses the poem with Mark McGuinness.This poem is from: Dark Angels: Three Contemporary PoetsAvailable from: Dark Angels is available from: The publisher: Paekakariki Press Amazon: UK... Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold Episode 87 Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold  Mark McGuinness reads and discusses ‘Dover Beach' by Matthew Arnold.Poet Matthew ArnoldReading and commentary by Mark McGuinnessDover Beach By Matthew Arnold The sea is calm tonight.The tide is full, the moon lies...

Each year, heritage venues and attractions funded by the National Lottery offer special deals for anyone who can demonstrate they have played the lottery – a single ticket is all it takes. Darren Henley, CEO of Arts Council England and Chair of the National Lottery Forum, has been telling me more about the opportunities.This podcast is free, as is Independent Travel's weekly newsletter. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Thank you for listening to Write On! Audio, the podcast for writers everywhere brought to you by Pen to Print. For our February Write On! Audio and Friends episode we are bringing you an audio drama from the Spec Fic Radio Theatre Podcast.   As the deadline for entries for the Pen To Print audio play competition draws closer - your entries need to be in by noon on 23rd march - we hope that this play will inspire you to have a go at writing some audio drama and perhaps to explore more radio plays. The Spec Fic Radio Theatre podcast is a speculative fiction anthology sharing dramas that fall into the genres of fantasy, science fiction and folklore.  It's produced by my production company, Alternative Stories and each story features a cast of professional actors performing a script written by a different writer.   The drama we're sharing today is a fantasy story based on Scottish folklore written by Edinburgh based novelist and short fiction writer, Lyndsey Croal.  We hope you enjoy ‘Daughter of Fire and Water'. If you're inspired to enter the Pen to Print audio play competition you can find a link here https://pentoprint.org/get-involved/competitions/To listen to more episodes of the Spec Fic Radio Theatre Podcast please follow this linkhttps://pod.link/1812026298To find out more about Lyndsey Coral, the writer of ‘Daughter Of Fire And Water' you can follow this link https://lyndseycroal.co.uk/…and to listen to more drama from Alternative Stories please click this link https://linktr.ee/AlternativeStories All content associated with this podcast in audio and in print is protected and may not be copied or used for any purposes including generative AI/AI training. We're always delighted to read your contributions so if you'd like to see your words in Write On! or hear them on this podcast please get in touch. Please submit to: https://pentoprint.org/get-involved/submit-to-write-on/ Thank you for listening to Write On! Audio.  This edition has been presented and produced by Chris Gregory.  Write On! Audio is an Alternative Stories production for Pen to Print. This podcast is produced using public funding from Arts Council England. 

Today, I am joined by Marcel Baettig, artist, cultural leader, and founder and CEO of Bow Arts, one of London's most influential arts and education charities. Over three decades, Marcel has quietly built a values-led social enterprise that provides affordable studios and housing for artists, reaches tens of thousands of young people, and continually reinvests in local communities. This conversation isn't just about scale or success. It´s about precarity, why artists need infrastructure as much as inspiration, and how Marcel's own experience of working as an artist shaped Bow Arts. We explore leadership without ego, the long game of cultural change, and why we need to stop treating artists as an afterthought in regeneration. This episode is for anyone who's ever felt the system is stacked against them - and wondered what it looks like to build a different one. KEY TAKEAWAYS We need to stop accepting scarcity as inevitable, to question who systems are really designed for - building a better art world is not a theoretical exercise. It's a daily practice. Sustainable creative lives are built through shared responsibility and leaders who remember what it feels like to be at the kitchen table wondering how the rent will get paid and still choosing to make the work. If we want artists to survive, we must design practical, long-term infrastructure - affordable space, stable income pathways, and owned assets, not just offer prestige moments or short-term opportunities. BEST MOMENTS “Artists thrive when they are trusted, resourced, and rooted in their communities.” “Artists don't just need opportunities. They need conditions. Time. Space. Stability and a sense their contribution to society is not decorative, but essential.”   THE GUEST Marcel Baettig is the Founder and CEO of Bow Arts, a pioneering London charity providing affordable, sustainable spaces for artists to live and work while contributing to their local communities. Originally trained as an artist, he founded Bow Arts in 1994, and it now supports over 1,100 artists across London, runs a major learning programme that reaches tens of thousands of young people, and reinvests significant funds into local cultural life. He is also a founding director of the National Federation of Artist Studio Providers and has advised bodies including the Mayor of London, Arts Council England, and DCMS on creative workspace and cultural regeneration.  https://www.linkedin.com/company/1639152 https://www.facebook.com/bowarts/?locale=en_GB https://bowarts.org/ HOST BIO With over 35 years in the art world, Ceri has worked closely with leading artists and arts professionals, managed public and private galleries and charities, and curated more than 250 exhibitions and events. She has sold artworks to major museums and private collectors and commissioned thousands of works across diverse media, from renowned artists such as John Akomfrah, Pipilotti Rist, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer and Vito Acconci. Now, she wants to share her extensive knowledge with you, so you can excel and achieve your goals. ** Ceri Hand Coaching Membership: Group coaching, live art surgeries, exclusive masterclasses, portfolio reviews, weekly challenges. Access our library of content and resource hub anytime and enjoy special discounts within a vibrant community of peers and professionals. Ready to transform your art career? Join today! https://cerihand.com/membership/ ** Unlock Your Artworld Network Self Study Course Our self-study video course, "Unlock Your Artworld Network," offers a straightforward 5-step framework to help you build valuable relationships effortlessly. Gain the tools and confidence you need to create new opportunities and thrive in the art world today. https://cerihand.com/courses/unlock_your_artworld_network/ ** Book a Discovery Call Today To schedule a personalised 1-2-1 coaching session with Ceri or explore our group coaching options, simply email us at hello@cerihand.com

Episode 88 Occupied by Tim Rich   Tim Rich reads ‘Occupied' and discusses the poem with Mark McGuinness. https://media.blubrry.com/amouthfulofair/media.blubrry.com/amouthfulofair/content.blubrry.com/amouthfulofair/88_Occupied_by_Tim_Rich.mp3 This poem is from: Dark Angels: Three Contemporary Poets Available from: Dark Angels is available from: The publisher: Paekakariki Press Amazon: UK   Occupied by Tim Rich We buttered the cat's pawsand baked bread in borrowed tinsto make the unfamiliar speak of pleasureand our intentions to remain All that first daythe house talked to itselfabout us Later than I expected, light withdrew across our table, unopened cratesback through thin glasstowards tomorrow So the room released its formand we sat among one anothergiving our ears to the conversation:inner doorways muttering behind flat hands; oak floors—masonic in their black treacle gloss—deciding whether to settleunder our presence Later still, in bed, I stared sideways into an unlit universe, absentlymindwalking the bounds,relocking iron door-bolts like an old rifle, drawingdrawn curtains a little closer,charting the evaporating pathbehind that plane's descent In time, each stray thought went to its home, leaving this accommodation to take place: the air held here sighing gently,like contented tortoise breaths; the softening percussion of bodies sleeping; the punctuating crack and hiss as fresh eggs are brokeninto a smoking pan; someoneopening a window   Interview transcript Mark: Tim, where did this poem come from? Tim: So, almost always for me, poems just emerge out of some sort of inner dusk. I'm not someone that can go to their desk with a plan to write about a particular message or topic or piece of content. The poem just presents itself to me. And actually I don't really have any choice in the matter. I'm sort of just forced to be a transcriber in that moment. And I was looking at the sea the other day, and I had this moment when I just thought my poems are a bit like strange sea creatures that live on the seabed. And at a particular point in their life, they decide that they just want to go to the light and they start floating up through the murky water and explode in bubbles on the surface. And, you know, hopefully I'm there sitting in the poet's boat ready to haul them on board. So, that's almost always how poems start for me. And this poem very much began that way. I was at home on a winter's evening, and it just began to come through me, as it were. And the context for that was that after many years of living in the same house, my wife and I were starting to think about the possibility of moving. And, you know, it was a really exciting prospect but also it definitely was stirring up the sediment of my unconscious. I'm someone that really feels the need for a settled home, a settled place, and this unsettled me. So, I think that that was what was giving the raw energy to the content. And there was something else, which is what informed the scenery of the poem, if you like, which is this idea of light withdrawing from a space and what that does within the space. And when I was 11, I was living just with my dad, and he would come home from work later than I would get home from school. So, for the first year or so, he arranged for me to go to some elderly neighbours on the way home from school. So I was, sort of, watched, and we would sit in their front room, and they would load up their coal fire. And through the windows, the sun would set slowly, and they were so calm. They would hardly speak. When they did speak, it was about these, kind of, wonderful domestic details like, you know, what needs to be chopped for dinner, or are there any windfalls in the garden that we can harvest tomorrow? It was very, very calm. And, you know, the coals in the fire were glowing red, but the rest of the room just lost its light. And I remember the shape of their very heavy old furniture, and the picture frames, and the curtains all began to disappear. And that must have just lodged somewhere deep within me, because that's very much, as the poem came out, where I was also taken to in my mind. Mark: So, I like this. So, I mean, to put it bluntly, it's not like you moved into a house and then you wrote this. You were thinking about moving and then a house emerged from your unconscious, from memories of other houses and so on. Tim: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Mark: And I think that's kind of a salutary thing to hear because… And this is a poem that really you read it and you totally believe it. It feels like a first-hand account of, well, we did this and this is what happened. And yet you're, kind of, pulling the rug from under our feet here, which is a nice thing in poetry. I think that you can't necessarily take it literally or face value. Tim: Well, we moved house… Yeah, we moved house about six months after I wrote the poem. So, I went through the experience of living the poem, which seems to be quite a good way around. Mark: Did you conjure the house, Tim? Tim: Actually, it was wonderful because it confirmed to me part of what motivated the poem, which is that I think we can all become a little bit… I don't know. Complacent seems to be too loaded a term, but we get so used to how our houses speak that we stop hearing them. And actually, there's this kind of wonderful symphony going on the whole time, you know, radiators making those strange percussive noises, and the way that the door squeaks, or suddenly, you know, how your staircase gets to a particular temperature in the middle of the night and decides to squeak. And they're constantly making these noises. And when you're living there, you stop hearing them. But when you move to somewhere for the first time, or sometimes if you go and stay in a haunted Airbnb in the woods, that first night particularly, everything's coming to you fresh. So, I think there's a strong sense of what's it like when a person moves into a space for the first time and that space has a character, and an energy, and a being of its own. Mark: So, really it's that state of heightened awareness, isn't it? You know, apparently this is how the mind works. If you've got a constant stimulus, the mind will tune it out. It's that Heaney line, you know, ‘The refrigerator whinnied into silence,' which is just that moment of… You only hear the fridge when it stops. Tim: Yeah. Mark: And what you're describing is the reverse of that. When you're in the house for the first time and everything is new and you're on hyperalert for the voices of the house. Tim: Yeah. And we're listening to our houses right now because there's a 1066 Line train from Hastings that's just gone into the tunnel over there. But we probably can't quite hear it on the microphones, but it's in the air and it's just touching elements of the house. And we're surrounded by this the whole time. And I think it's important to say, as soon as the poem had laid itself out on the page for the first time, it was clear to me that this poem was about people moving into a home for the first time, but it is also quite a vivid description, I think, of what was going through me at the time in terms of that unsettled nature. You know, I was quite surprised by the nature of the metaphors that my unconscious had presented me with. I mean, it's quite a portrait of anxiety to double-check the curtains, to lock a bolt as if it's an old rifle. You know, this is partly a portrait of an unsettled, anxious mind, which is, I think, something that I was going through at the time. Mark: And you've got some great similes, you know, the iron door bolts like an old rifle. And there's this lovely bit where you talk about ‘drawing drawn curtains'. And if you look on the website, then you can see that there's a line break after drawing, so it's drawing, line break, drawn curtains, which really just emphasises it's already drawn. You don't need to do it. This is the OCD kicking in, which really speaks to that anxiety you're describing. And I really love the second section where you say, ‘All that first day, the house talked to itself about us,' which is just a wonderfully unsettling idea that we are the intruders and the house has an opinion. Tim: Yeah, I definitely wasn't being sort of whimsically mystical about infrastructure and materials. It was definitely the feeling that there is an exchange when animals, human and other, come into a space. There's a change in energies and temperatures and sound and smells. And, you know, the dynamism of creatures come into a space that has been unoccupied, which is what generally most houses are, you know, sometimes for days, sometimes for months, and years before the new occupants come in. And I was just really taken with that idea that the house also needs to find its way of settling under these new occupants. And that seemed like a moment of 24 hours of the two parties eyeing each other and listening to each other and wondering about, ‘Who is this that I need to live with for these next years?' Mark: And it's quite a humbling poem, isn't it? Because, you know, when you think of owning the house or occupying the house, it's like you're the one in charge. But this poem just kind of subverts that idea that it's the house that's weighing us up, as in the people in the poem. It made me think of that TV series David Olusoga does, A House Through Time, where he gets an old house, and he goes through the records, and he looks at all the people who lived in the house and tells their story. And there's quite a lot of them, like, much more than I would have expected. You know, each episode goes on and on and on, and you just realise the house is staying there. The house is constant. These people, they're temporary. They might think they're the owners, but we're just passing through. Tim: We are passing through. It is a reminder of our mortality and our houses often way outlive us. Also, in recent years and decades, there's been an increase in the way in which people work from home, but that isn't a new thing. So, I wrote this poem in the house we lived in before, which was built to be a weaver's cottage, a live/work weaver's cottage. And, you know, they would find their living accommodation in quite modest corners of the house because a lot of it, at different times in the process, was given to equipment and storing material and a very intense version of live/work and working from home. And, you know, I think that part of when people suddenly a whole generation through particularly lockdowns but also just this change in working habits are spending much more of their life within the home quite often and what that means in terms of their relationship to the space and how the house relates to that. Tim: I think, just as I'm speaking, it occurs to me that perhaps also part of the influence of the atmosphere in the poem is around some of the fiction that I enjoy. And I haven't thought about this until we were talking now, but I like an M. R. James novel, or, you know, The Haunting of Hill House has just come to mind, and buildings and atmospheres that speak, as sort of some of the atmospheres you get in a Robert Aickman type horror novel. So, some of the classic British horror novels and that type of fiction. And just as we were talking about that, and I was also casting my eyes down the poem, there's some of the dusk that you get with those places, which is in this poem. And it's great, isn't it, coming back to one of your own poems quite a while after you wrote it, and you perhaps see some of the reasons for its being in a slightly different way. Mark: I mean, that's the basic premise of the haunted house is that the house is alive. I mean, you've not gone full Hammer Horror with this one. It's maybe a little more subtle, but you've definitely got some really wonderfully suggestive details. I loved ‘inner doorways muttering behind / flat hands, oak floors – masonic / in their black treacle gloss'. And that's so true. There are so many of these old houses. It's like, what happens to the wood? How does it get to be like treacle? And there's that heaviness and that opacity about it that you convey really well. Tim: Yeah. I was taken with the idea of the house being almost quite an august figure in some ways. It would be wrong to say it's proud of itself, but deciding whether to settle under our presence is quite… Mark: It's not aiming to please, is it? Tim: It's not. It's not easily won over. I mean, you know… Yeah, let's see what these new occupants are like. You know, what do they get up to? What are their tastes? What do we think of the prints that they put up on the wall? Mark: Yeah. Will they get it? Will they behave themselves? So you've got this lovely line in the third paragraph, ‘So the room released its form / and we sat among one another.' Well, thinking about the form of the poem, how close is this to, say, the first draft when you were hauling the sea creature out from the depths over the side of your poetic boat? Tim: Yeah, when the poem came out onto the page, it actually made a demand of me. It said, ‘I don't want you to put me into very organised type measures. I don't want to be sorted into regular stanzas. And also, I want you to be quite careful about any linguistic bells and whistles.' It just was a bit like the house. It had almost a sort of slightly stern feeling to it as a poem. It was very clear, and it was saying each of these stanzas, or scenes maybe, has to be as long as it wants to be. ‘I don't want you to spend time evening things up or creating consistency.' And there are many other poems that I've written where, of course, I'm deliberately very measured, very consistent. At the moment, a lot of the poems I'm writing have a lot of half rhymes but particularly a lot of internal rhymes. And, goodness, audaciously, you know, I even have a rhyming couplet in a poem that I'm working on at the moment. But this poem just said, ‘I don't want any of that.' Now, that's not to say that there aren't some half rhymes or suggestions of rhymes, and certainly some lovely withholding with words at the end of the line that only resolve as you move through into the next line, the enjambment of the word and the meaning falling over into the next line. Definitely that happens. But I tried to edit this into different shapes. I probably tried it five different ways, and each time it just felt wrong quite quickly actually. I tried to give it a consistent number of lines per stanza, and it repulsed me as a poem. It just said, ‘No, I need to be this free form.' And also, I had to accept that it's probably a little bit messier than I normally feel comfortable with. And it was good. I was like, ‘Actually, you know, just stop fighting. Just stop fighting it.' Sometimes your poems can be more irregular, more free, less obviously organised. And I think it has its rhythms that hold it together. It does for me. And listeners will decide, when they hear it, whether those rhythms are actually holding it together. Mark: Well, for me, it feels a bit like one of those old houses where you go in and there's not a right angle in sight. You know, the floors are sloping. The doors have to be a kind of trapezium to open and close, which I think is obviously true to the spirit of the thing. And it's like the house itself. It's not trying too hard. You can read it quite quickly, and it seems quite plain-spoken and spartan. But when you look, you notice the little details. Like, you know, there's the door bolts like a rifle, and the ‘nasonic', a wonderful adjective. And I've just noticed now, as we were talking, in the final verse, ‘In time, each stray thought / went to its home, leaving this / accommodation to take place'. And that's a lovely reframing of ‘accommodation', because the everyday sense is a place where you go and live, but it's an accommodation in the sense of a mutual alignment, almost like a negotiation or getting used to each other, which I think is really delightful. Mark: Okay, Tim, so I have to ask, looking again at the poem, what on earth is going on with buttering the cat's paws at the beginning? Tim: So, buttering the cat's paws is a bit of folk wisdom. And the idea is that when you move to a new house, if you have a cat or cats, that you actually put lovely, creamy butter on their paws and that they, you know, as cats do, will then spend time licking and licking and licking. And it means that more of their scent is put into the floor and the grounds of the place so they feel at home quicker and sooner. So they're sensing the place much more actively sooner. Now, I don't think there's any scientific evidence to suggest it works. But, you know, if anyone has any experience with this, I would love to hear it. But I don't really care, because the whole image of spreading beautiful, creamy butter onto the paws of the cat and that somehow just inviting them to feel that this place is home is more than enough for me. And I'd heard the phrase years and years and years before. And again, I think it was just the very first phrase that came out as the poem emerged. I think it was opening the doorway to the poem, and it felt very natural for it to be the beginning of the poem. I wonder now, looking back, whether there's something to do with the eye opened with an animal spirit. And so much of this poem really has come up from the unconscious. And I'm not starting with a very measured, conscious human, you know, activity or… I'm not saying, you know, ‘we made the decision to move'. It's not a person-led piece in the sense that, okay, we're doing the buttering, but it's the cat that's front and centre in that open line. And that's not something that I particularly thought about consciously at the time. But looking back, I think there's a hint there that we're not just talking about a straightforward human, rational response to living in a place. There are animal spirits too. Mark: Yeah, and it feels like a wonderful piece of folk magic. I mean, cats are magical creatures like witches' familiars. And, you know, maybe there's a magical aspect to that. It's a little ritual, isn't it? Tim: It is. I had a question for you, but it just came out of part of my experience of this poem going out into the world, which is that I've just been surprised, in a wonderful way, by how diverse and often surprising people's responses are to poems, how I can never really tell what it is about a poem someone's going to pick up and come back to you about. You know, for example, someone has given copies of this poem to friends when they move house. Mark: Oh, lovely. Tim: …as a housewarming present, a printed letterpress, which is very, very beautiful. Someone else said that they really loved sort of, what did they say, the soft absurdity around the house being almost this grand piece. And others have responded in different ways. And I think it's one of the wonders of poetry, maybe something that doesn't get talked about quite so much, which is that we interrogate the meaning for ourselves. And if you work with your editor and sometimes reviewers, meaning is discussed. But actually, my experience, when poems go out into the world, is it's just incredible how broad the range of response is and what people pick up on. And I suddenly think, well, is that just my experience? So what's it like for you? Are you constantly surprised by what people pick up and come back to and focus on with your poems? Mark: Yeah, it's a little bit like a Rorschach test, isn't it? People see themselves in it to a degree, or they see something that will resonate for them. And to me, it's the sign of a real poem if it can do that, if different people see different things in it. If it was too obvious and too, you know, two-dimensional, then that's fine, but it's not really a poem. And I think this is part of the magic of why poems can persist over time. Society is shifting all around them. Maybe a few of the houses are constant, but the poem still inhabits the space, and people still relate to it for decades or hundreds or even thousands of years sometimes. Tim: Yeah, I think there's an important point for poets that you have to maintain your confidence in ambiguity and what might feel like potential confusion. Of course, you need to think through how you're writing it and avoid unintended, poor consequences. But there's also a point in which I think you have to protect some of the messiness of meaning and not try to pin things down too much. Of course, there are different types of poets, and some poets need to be very clear and very message-driven. But I'm thinking, for me, there are sometimes moments when I think, ‘Am I just leaving this hanging and ambiguous and a bit dusky in terms of meaning?' And that's the point at which I think, ‘No, quite often just trust that people will find their own way into the poem.' Mark: Yeah, absolutely. And this is something I've seen a lot in classes, and it certainly happened to me very often. You know, the teacher will say you can cut the last line because we already get it. You don't need to underline the message of the poem. Sometimes we feel a bit nervous just leaving it hanging. And you've absolutely had the confidence to do that with the wonderful ending of this, where you talk about ‘the punctuating crack and hiss / as fresh eggs are broken / into a smoking pan. Someone / opening a window' – and that's it. I mean, tell me about that ending. How did you arrive at that? And did you go back and forth? Did you think, ‘Can I leave that window open, that line?' And by the way, listener, there is no full stop either to hang on to at that point! Tim: Yeah. I have to say, I do find myself clearing away more and more of the furniture of the poems. And there is a very deliberate lack of a full stop there. It was all there in the first draft that came out. It wasn't a constructed or reconstructed ending later on. Again, the poem seemed to want to open into something rather than close itself down and make a point. I think that in the action of the poem, we've moved through this dusky night, including a sort of bout of insomnia, of staring into the darkness. And then morning is coming, and it's full of new things. And there is something about that morning of waking up in a new house. What a moment in someone's life that is. Mark: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tim: It's just extraordinary. And there's a natural link there into the egg as a symbol. Something new, something is being born. And yeah, there may be many reasons why that window needed to be open. The smoke from the pan is one thing, which is all about the… Mark: Right, right. Setting the smoke alarm off! Tim: Yeah, it goes off in our kitchen quite often. And of course, the cooking is, again, this thing of humans being in a house and occupying it and all of the energy and dynamics. And how are you most going to make a new home your own? You're going to get out and start cooking and making a mess and eating together and getting things moving. I have no idea who the someone is, and I don't know what their motivation is for opening a window. And I like that. Mark: Okay. Well, let's have another listen to the poem and maybe, you know, each of us, as we listen to this this time, just see what associations come up for you. You know, houses you've lived in, places you've been, memories it conjures up. Thank you very much, Tim. What a lovely space to explore with this poem.   Occupied by Tim Rich We buttered the cat's pawsand baked bread in borrowed tinsto make the unfamiliar speak of pleasureand our intentions to remain All that first daythe house talked to itselfabout us Later than I expected, light withdrew across our table, unopened cratesback through thin glasstowards tomorrow So the room released its formand we sat among one anothergiving our ears to the conversation:inner doorways muttering behind flat hands; oak floors—masonic in their black treacle gloss—deciding whether to settleunder our presence Later still, in bed, I stared sideways into an unlit universe, absentlymindwalking the bounds,relocking iron door-bolts like an old rifle, drawingdrawn curtains a little closer,charting the evaporating pathbehind that plane's descent In time, each stray thought went to its home, leaving this accommodation to take place: the air held here sighing gently,like contented tortoise breaths; the softening percussion of bodies sleeping; the punctuating crack and hiss as fresh eggs are brokeninto a smoking pan; someoneopening a window   Dark Angels: Three Contemporary Poets ‘Occupied' is from Dark Angels: Three Contemporary Poets, published by Paekakariki Press. Available from: Dark Angels is available from: The publisher: Paekakariki Press Amazon: UK     Tim Rich Tim Rich grew up in the woods of Sussex and now lives and writes by the sea in Hastings. His poems have been published in numerous anthologies and journals, including Dark Angels: Three Contemporary Poets (Paekakariki Press) and Poet Town (Moth Light Press). The Landfall series – exhibited at the Bloomsbury Festival, London — brought together his poetry and photography. He has five poems in the anthology Family Matters, a collection of poetry about family, to be published in 2026. Alongside poetry, Tim writes, edits and ghostwrites books.  timrich.com Photograph by Maxine Silver   A Mouthful of Air – the podcast This is a transcript of an episode of A Mouthful of Air – a poetry podcast hosted by Mark McGuinness. New episodes are released every other Tuesday. You can hear every episode of the podcast via Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts or your favourite app. You can have a full transcript of every new episode sent to you via email. The music and soundscapes for the show are created by Javier Weyler. Sound production is by Breaking Waves and visual identity by Irene Hoffman. A Mouthful of Air is produced by The 21st Century Creative, with support from Arts Council England via a National Lottery Project Grant. Listen to the show You can listen and subscribe to A Mouthful of Air on all the main podcast platforms Related Episodes Occupied by Tim Rich Episode 88 Occupied by Tim Rich  Tim Rich reads ‘Occupied' and discusses the poem with Mark McGuinness.This poem is from: Dark Angels: Three Contemporary PoetsAvailable from: Dark Angels is available from: The publisher: Paekakariki Press Amazon: UK... Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold Episode 87 Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold  Mark McGuinness reads and discusses ‘Dover Beach' by Matthew Arnold.Poet Matthew ArnoldReading and commentary by Mark McGuinnessDover Beach By Matthew Arnold The sea is calm tonight.The tide is full, the moon lies... Recalling Brigid by Orna Ross Orna Ross reads and discusses ‘Recalling Brigid’ from Poet Town.

Paul Scott in print studio with cut Wild Rose detail Paul Scott (b. 1953, United Kingdom) is a UK-based artist, living and working in Cumbria, with a diverse practice and an international reputation. Creating individual pieces that blur the boundaries between fine art, craft, and design, he is well known for his research into printed vitreous surfaces, as well as his characteristic blue-and-white artworks in glazed ceramic. Scott's artworks can be found in public collections around the globe, including the National Museum, Norway; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK; National Museums Liverpool; the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA; and the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY. Commissioned work can be found in a number of UK museums, as well as in public places in the north of England, including Carlisle, Maryport, Gateshead, and Newcastle upon Tyne. He has also completed large-scale works in Hanoi, Vietnam, and at the Guldagergård public sculpture park in Denmark. A combination of rigorous research, studio practice, curation, writing, and commissioned work ensures that his practice continues to develop. His work is fundamentally concerned with the reanimation of familiar objects, landscape, pattern, and a sense of place. He was professor of ceramics at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts (KHiO) from 2011–2018. Scott received his Bachelor of Art Education and Design from Saint Martin's College and his PhD from the Manchester Institute for Research and Innovation in Art and Design in England. His current research project, New American Scenery, has been supported by an Alturas Foundation artist award, Ferrin Contemporary, and funding from Arts Council England. Cumbrian Blue(s), New American Scenery, Souvenir of Portland OR Black Lives Matter (After Killen & Howard)/Trumpian Campaigne, No.5, 2021. Transfer print collage on partially erased Staffordshire transferware souvenir plate by Rowland & Marsellus, c.190010.25″ Dia. x 1” D Cumbrian Blue(s), New American Scenery, Residual Waste (Texas) No.5/1, 2022Transfer print collage, shell-edged pearlware platter, 13″ H x 17.25″ W x 1.25” D Cumbrian Blue(s), New American Scenery, The Sleep of Reason, Wood Cuts (After Spode’s Woodland/Wild Rose) 2, 2024Transfer print collage on pearlware plate with Kintsugi, 11″ Dia. x 0.5″ D Cumbrian Blue(s), New American Scenery, Sampler Jug, No.7 (After Stubbs), 2021Transfer print collage on pearlware jug, 15″ H x 14″ W x 11.75″ D

 In the latest episode of the TÉKA Podcast, we dive into the world of politics and campaigning with Fleur Elizabeth Meston - writer, political commentator, and seasoned campaigner. Fleur is the co-host of the Bombshells podcast and has led several high-profile campaigns, including the successful effort that compelled Arts Council England to withdraw funding for The Family Sex Show. She also stood as a Conservative candidate in the 2021 local elections.Together, we explore how young people engage with politics today, what makes modern campaigns cut through the noise, and how to communicate in ways that genuinely resonate with the public.If you're interested in making a meaningful impact in public life - and want practical, hard-won insights from someone who's done it - this is an episode you won't want to miss.Host: Georgina Kiss-KozmaAz MCC Podcast adásaiban érdekes emberekkel izgalmas témákról beszélgetünk. Feldolgozzuk a közélet, a gazdaság, a társadalom fontosabb aktuális történéseit, de olyan kérdéseket is napirendre veszünk, mint például a művészet, a család vagy a vallás. Vendégeink között oktatóink, kutatóink, vendégelőadóink kapnak helyet. Mindenkinek kellemes időtöltést és szellemi feltöltődést kívánunk.

Hello listener and welcome to a special podcast brought to you by the Silly History boys show in association with the nice people at the Rubbish Shakespeare Company AND the arts council of England.   These special episodes come from the Story Forge stage show that me (your Dear Uncle Bob Bob) have been performing with Wicked Cousin Lee up and down the country in 2025, thanks to support from the nice people at Arts Council England.   The Story Forge show is a piece of spontaneously sweaty theatre made from mad cap suggestions  from our baying audiences.   Every show has been special but some of the stories that those wild young minds have created  have been so special that we just had to show you! They really could be actual myths…except they're not   So the following tale was created live and sweatily on stage and featured a member of our audience as the titular hero!    So sit back and enjoy…the tale of Marcus…the wide knowing.

Episode 87 Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold Mark McGuinness reads and discusses ‘Dover Beach' by Matthew Arnold. https://media.blubrry.com/amouthfulofair/media.blubrry.com/amouthfulofair/content.blubrry.com/amouthfulofair/87_Dover_Beach_by_Matthew_Arnold.mp3 Poet Matthew Arnold Reading and commentary by Mark McGuinness Dover Beach By Matthew Arnold The sea is calm tonight.The tide is full, the moon lies fairUpon the straits; on the French coast the lightGleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!Only, from the long line of sprayWhere the sea meets the moon-blanched land,Listen! you hear the grating roarOf pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,At their return, up the high strand,Begin, and cease, and then again begin,With tremulous cadence slow, and bringThe eternal note of sadness in. Sophocles long agoHeard it on the Aegean, and it broughtInto his mind the turbid ebb and flowOf human misery; weFind also in the sound a thought,Hearing it by this distant northern sea. The Sea of FaithWas once, too, at the full, and round earth's shoreLay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.But now I only hearIts melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,Retreating, to the breathOf the night-wind, down the vast edges drearAnd naked shingles of the world. Ah, love, let us be trueTo one another! for the world, which seemsTo lie before us like a land of dreams,So various, so beautiful, so new,Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;And we are here as on a darkling plainSwept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,Where ignorant armies clash by night. Podcast Transcript This is a magnificent and haunting poem by Matthew Arnold, an eminent Victorian poet. Written and published at the mid-point of the nineteenth century – it was probably written around 1851 and published in 1867 – it is not only a shining example of Victorian poetry at its best, but it also, and not coincidentally, embodies some of the central preoccupations of the Victorian age. The basic scenario is very simple: a man is looking out at the sea at night and thinking deep thoughts. It's something that we've all done, isn't it? The two tend to go hand-in-hand. When you're looking out into the darkness, listening to the sound of the sea, it's hard not to be thinking deep thoughts. If you've been a long time listener to this podcast, it may remind you of another poet who wrote about standing on the shore thinking deep thoughts, looking at the sea, Shakespeare, in his Sonnet 60: Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,So do our minutes hasten to their end; Arnold's poem is not a sonnet but a poem in four verse paragraphs. They're not stanzas, because they're not regular, but if you look at the text on the website, you can clearly see it's divided into four sections. The first part is a description of the sea, as seen from Dover Beach, which is on the shore of the narrowest part of the English channel, making it the closest part of England to France: The sea is calm tonight.The tide is full, the moon lies fairUpon the straits; – on the French coast the lightGleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay. And as you can hear, the poem has a pretty regular and conventional rhythm, based on iambic metre, ti TUM, with the second syllable taking the stress in every metrical unit. But what's slightly unusual is that the lines have varying lengths. By the time we get to the third line: Upon the straits; – on the French coast the light There are five beats. There's a bit of variation in the middle of the line, but it's very recognisable as classic iambic pentameter, which has a baseline pattern going ti TUM, ti TUM, ti TUM, ti TUM, ti TUM. But before we get to the pentameter, we get two short lines: The sea is calm tonight.Only three beats; andThe tide is full, the moon lies fair – four beats. We also start to notice the rhymes: ‘tonight' and ‘light'. And we have an absolutely delightful enjambment, where a phrase spills over the end of one line into the next one: On the French coast the light,Gleams and is gone. Isn't that just fantastic? The light flashes out like a little surprise at the start of the line, just as it's a little surprise for the speaker looking out to sea. OK, once he's set the scene, he makes an invitation: Come to the window, sweet is the night-air! So if there's a window, he must be in a room. There's somebody in the room with him, and given that it's night it could well be a bedroom. So this person could be a lover. It's quite likely that this poem was written on Arnold's honeymoon, which would obviously fit this scenario. But anyway, he's inviting this person to come to the window and listen. And what does this person hear? Well, helpfully, the speaker tells us: Listen! you hear the grating roarOf pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,At their return, up the high strand,Begin, and cease, and then again begin,With tremulous cadence slow, and bringThe eternal note of sadness in. Isn't that just great? The iambic metre is continuing with some more variations, which we needn't go into. And the rhyme is coming more and more to the fore. Just about every line in this section rhymes with another line, but it doesn't have a regular pattern. Some of the rhymes are close together, some are further apart. There's only one line in this paragraph that doesn't rhyme, and that's ‘Listen! You hear the grating roar'. If this kind of shifting rhyme pattern reminds you of something you've heard before, you may be thinking all the way back to Episode 34 where we looked at Coleridge's use of floating rhymes in his magical poem ‘Kubla Khan'. And it's pretty evident that Arnold is also casting a spell, in this case to mimic the rhythm of the waves coming in and going out, as they ‘Begin, and cease, and then again begin,'. And then the wonderful last line of the paragraph, as the waves ‘bring / The eternal note of sadness in'. You know, in the heart of the Victorian Age, when the Romantics were still within living memory, poets were still allowed to do that kind of thing. Try it nowadays of course, and the Poetry Police will be round to kick your front door in at 5am and arrest you. Anyway. The next paragraph is a bit of a jump cut: Sophocles long agoHeard it on the Aegean, and it broughtInto his mind the turbid ebb and flowOf human misery; So Arnold, a classical scholar, is letting us know he knows who Sophocles, the ancient Greek playwright was. And he's establishing a continuity across time of people looking out at the sea and thinking these deep thoughts. At this point, Arnold explicitly links the sea and the thinking:                                     weFind also in the sound a thought,Hearing it by this distant northern sea. And the thought that we hear when we listen to the waves is what Arnold announces in the next verse paragraph, and he announces it with capital letters: The Sea of FaithWas once, too, at the full, and round earth's shoreLay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. And for a modern reader, I think this is the point of greatest peril for Arnold, where he's most at risk of losing us. We may be okay with ‘the eternal note of sadness', but as soon as he starts giving us the Sea of Faith, we start to brace ourselves. Is this going to turn into a horrible religious allegory, like The Pilgrim's Progress? I mean, it's a short step from the Sea of Faith to the Slough of Despond and the City of Destruction. And it doesn't help that Arnold uses the awkwardly rhyming phrase ‘a bright girdle furled' – that's not going to get past the Poetry Police, is it? But fear not; Arnold doesn't go there. What comes next is, I think, the best bit of the poem. So he says the Sea of Faith ‘was once, too, at the full', and then: But now I only hearIts melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,Retreating, to the breathOf the night-wind, down the vast edges drearAnd naked shingles of the world. Well, if you thought the eternal note of sadness was great, this tops it! It's absolutely fantastic. That line, ‘Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,' where the ‘it' is faith, the Sea of Faith. And the significance of the line is underlined by the fact that the word ‘roar' is a repetition – remember, that one line in the first section that didn't rhyme? Listen! you hear the grating roar See what Arnold did there? He left that sound hovering at the back of the mind, without a rhyme, until it came back in this section, a subtle but unmistakeable link between the ‘grating roar' of the actual sea at Dover Beach, and the ‘withdrawing roar' of the Sea of Faith: Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, Isn't that the most Victorian line ever? It encapsulates the despair that accompanied the crisis of faith in 19th century England. This crisis was triggered by the advance of modern science – including the discoveries of fossils, evidence of mass extinction of previous species, and the theory of evolution, with Darwin's Origin of Species published in 1859, in between the writing and publication of ‘Dover Beach'. Richard Holmes, in his wonderful new biography of the young Tennyson, compares this growing awareness of the nature of life on Earth to the modern anxiety over climate change. For the Victorians, he writes, it created a ‘deep and existential terror'. One thing that makes this passage so effective is that Arnold has already cast the spell in the first verse paragraph, hypnotising us with the rhythm and rhyme, and linking it to the movement of the waves. In the second paragraph, he says, ‘we find also in the sound a thought'. And then in the third paragraph, he tells us the thought. And the thought that he attaches to this movement, which we are by now emotionally invested in, is a thought of such horror and profundity – certainly for his Victorian readers – that the retreat of the sea of faith really does feel devastating. It leaves us gazing down at the naked shingles of the world. The speaker is now imaginatively out of the bedroom and down on the beach. This is very relatable; we've all stood on the beach and watched the waves withdrawing beneath our feet and the shingle being left there. It's an incredibly vivid evocation of a pretty abstract concept. Then, in the fourth and final verse paragraph, comes a bit of a surprise: Ah, love, let us be trueTo one another! Well, I for one was not expecting that! From existential despair to an appeal to his beloved. What a delightful, romantic (with a small ‘r') response to the big-picture, existential catastrophe. And for me, it's another little echo of Shakespeare's Sonnet 60, which opens with a poet contemplating the sea and the passing of time and feeling the temptation to despair, yet also ends with an appeal to the consolation of love: And yet to times in hope my verse shall stand,blockquotePraising thy worth, despite his cruel hand. Turning back to Arnold. He says ‘let us be true / To one another'. And then he links their situation to the existential catastrophe, and says this is precisely why they should be true to each other: for the world, which seemsTo lie before us like a land of dreams,So various, so beautiful, so new,Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; It sounds, on the face of it, a pretty unlikely justification for being true to one another in a romantic sense. But actually, this is a very modern stance towards romantic love. It's like the gleam of light that just flashed across the Channel from France – the idea of you and me against an unfeeling world, of love as redemption, or at least consolation, in a meaningless universe. In a world with ‘neither joy, nor love, nor light,' our love becomes all the more poignant and important. Of course, we could easily object that, regardless of religious faith, the world does have joy and love and light. His very declaration of love is evidence of this. But let's face it, we don't always come to poets for logical consistency, do we? And we don't have to agree with Matthew Arnold to find this passage moving; most of us have felt like this at some time when we've looked at the world in what feels like the cold light of reality. He evokes it so vividly and dramatically that I, for one, am quite prepared to go with him on this. Then we get the final three lines of the poem:We are here as on a darkling plainSwept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,Where ignorant armies clash by night. I don't know about you, but I find this a little jarring in the light of what we've just heard. We've had the magnificent description of the sea and its effect on human thought, extending that into the idea of faith receding into illusion, and settling on human love as some kind of consolation for the loss of faith. So why do we need to be transported to a windswept plain where armies are clashing and struggling? It turns out to be another classical reference, to the Greek historian Thucydides' account of the night battle of Epipolae, where the two armies were running around in the dark and some of them ended up fighting their own side in the confusion. I mean, fine, he's a classical scholar. And obviously, it's deeply meaningful to him. But to me, this feels a little bit bolted on. A lot of people love that ending, but to me, it's is not as good as some of the earlier bits, or at least it doesn't quite feel all of a piece with the imagery of the sea. But overall, it is a magnificent poem, and this is a small quibble. Stepping back, I want to have another look at the poem's form, specifically the meter, and even more specifically, the irregularity of the meter, which is quite unusual and actually quite innovative for its time. As I've said, it's in iambic meter, but it's not strictly iambic pentameter. You may recall I did a mini series on the podcast a while ago looking at the evolution of blank verse, unrhymed iambic pentameter, from Christopher Marlowe and Shakespeare's dramatic verse, then Milton's Paradise Lost and finally Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey. ‘Dover Beach' is rhymed, so it's not blank verse, but most of the techniques Arnold uses here are familiar from those other poets, with variations on the basic rhythm, sometimes switching the beats around, and using enjambment and caesura (a break or pause in the middle of the line). But, and – this is quite a big but – not every line has five beats. The lines get longer and shorter in an irregular pattern, apparently according to Arnold's instinct. And this is pretty unusual, certainly for 1851. It's not unique, we could point to bits of Tennyson or Arthur Hugh Clough for metrical experiments in a similar vein, but it's certainly not common practice. And I looked into this, to see what the critics have said about it. And it turns out the scholars are divided. In one camp, the critics say that what Arnold is doing is firmly in the iambic pentameter tradition – it's just one more variation on the pattern. But in the other camp are people who say, ‘No, this is something new; this is freer verse,' and it is anticipating free verse, the non-metrical poetry with no set line lengths that came to be the dominant verse form of the 20th century. Personally, I think you can look back to Wordsworth and see a continuity with his poetic practice. But you could equally look forward, to a link with T. S. Eliot's innovations in ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock' and The Waste Land. Eliot is often described as an innovator in free verse, which is true up to a point, but a lot of his writing in that early period isn't strictly free verse; it's a kind of broken up metrical verse, where he often uses an iambic metre with long and short lines, which he varies with great intuitive skill – in a similar manner to Arnold's ‘Dover Beach'. Interestingly, when ‘Dover Beach' was first published, the reviews didn't really talk about the metre, which is ammunition for the people who say, ‘Well, this is just a kind of iambic pentameter'. Personally, I think what we have here is something like the well-known Duck-Rabbit illusion, where you can look at the same drawing and either see a duck or a rabbit, depending how you look at it. So from one angle, ‘Dover Beach' is clearly continuing the iambic pentameter tradition; from another angle, it anticipates the innovations of free verse. We can draw a line from the regular iambic pentameter of Wordsworth (writing at the turn of the 18th and 19th century) to the fractured iambic verse of Eliot at the start of the 20th century. ‘Dover Beach' is pretty well halfway between them, historically and poetically. And I don't think this is just a dry technical development. There is something going on here in terms of the poet's sense of order and disorder, faith and doubt. Wordsworth, in the regular unfolding of his blank verse, conveys his basic trust in an ordered and meaningful universe. Matthew Arnold is writing very explicitly about the breakup of faith, and we can start to see it in the breakup of the ordered iambic pentameter. By the time we get to the existential despair of Eliot's Waste Land, the meter is really falling apart, like the Waste Land Eliot describes. So overall, I think we can appreciate what a finely balanced poem Arnold has written. It's hard to categorise. You read it the first time and think, ‘Oh, right, another conventional Victorian melancholy lament'. But just when we think he's about to go overboard with the Sea of Faith, he surprises us and with that magnificent central passage. And just as he's about to give in to despair, we get that glimmering spark of love lighting up, and we think, ‘Well, maybe this is a romantic poem after all'. And maybe Arnold might look at me over his spectacles and patiently explain that actually, this is why that final metaphor of the clashing armies is exactly right. Friend and foe are running in first one direction, then another, inadvertently killing the people on the wrong side. So the simile gives us that sense of being caught in the cross-currents of a larger sweep of history. With all of that hovering in our mind, let's go over to the window once more and heed his call to listen to the sound of the Victorian sea at Dover Beach. Dover Beach By Matthew Arnold The sea is calm tonight.The tide is full, the moon lies fairUpon the straits; on the French coast the lightGleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!Only, from the long line of sprayWhere the sea meets the moon-blanched land,Listen! you hear the grating roarOf pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,At their return, up the high strand,Begin, and cease, and then again begin,With tremulous cadence slow, and bringThe eternal note of sadness in. Sophocles long agoHeard it on the Aegean, and it broughtInto his mind the turbid ebb and flowOf human misery; weFind also in the sound a thought,Hearing it by this distant northern sea. The Sea of FaithWas once, too, at the full, and round earth's shoreLay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.But now I only hearIts melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,Retreating, to the breathOf the night-wind, down the vast edges drearAnd naked shingles of the world. Ah, love, let us be trueTo one another! for the world, which seemsTo lie before us like a land of dreams,So various, so beautiful, so new,Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;And we are here as on a darkling plainSwept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,Where ignorant armies clash by night. Matthew Arnold Matthew Arnold was a British poet, critic, and public intellectual who was born in 1822 and died in 1888. His father was Thomas Arnold, the famed headmaster of Rugby School. Arnold studied Classics at Oxford and first became known for lyrical, melancholic poems such as ‘Dover Beach', ‘The Scholar-Gipsy', and ‘Thyrsis', that explore the loss of faith in the modern world. Appointed an inspector of schools, he travelled widely and developed strong views on culture, education, and society. His critical essays, especially Culture and Anarchy, shaped debates about the role of culture in public life. Arnold remains a central figure bridging Romanticism and early modern thought. A Mouthful of Air – the podcast This is a transcript of an episode of A Mouthful of Air – a poetry podcast hosted by Mark McGuinness. New episodes are released every other Tuesday. You can hear every episode of the podcast via Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts or your favourite app. You can have a full transcript of every new episode sent to you via email. The music and soundscapes for the show are created by Javier Weyler. Sound production is by Breaking Waves and visual identity by Irene Hoffman. A Mouthful of Air is produced by The 21st Century Creative, with support from Arts Council England via a National Lottery Project Grant. Listen to the show You can listen and subscribe to A Mouthful of Air on all the main podcast platforms Related Episodes Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold Episode 87 Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold Mark McGuinness reads and discusses ‘Dover Beach' by Matthew Arnold.Poet Matthew ArnoldReading and commentary by Mark McGuinnessDover Beach By Matthew Arnold The sea is calm tonight.The tide is full, the moon lies... Recalling Brigid by Orna Ross Orna Ross reads and discusses ‘Recalling Brigid’ from Poet Town. 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As a new adaptation of Peter Shaffer's Amadeus begins on Sky, actor Will Sharpe speaks to Front Row about he researched the role of Mozart, and music historian Flora Willson and Music Director of the Dunedin Consort John Butt discuss how recent research helps us better understand the man and his music. Baroness Margaret Hodge - whose review into Arts Council England was published this week - tells us about her findings and recommendations. And with just a week to go until Christmas, broadcaster Bex Lindsay delivers her recommendations of books for children this festive season. The books discussed were: How To Grow A Reindeer' written by Rachel Morrisroe, illustrated by Steven Lenton Robin by Sarah Ann Juckes Elle McNicoll's Role Model Presenter: Kate Molleson Producer: Mark Crossan

Episode 86 Recalling Brigid by Orna Ross Orna Ross reads ‘Recalling Brigid' and discusses the poem with Mark McGuinness. https://media.blubrry.com/amouthfulofair/media.blubrry.com/amouthfulofair/content.blubrry.com/amouthfulofair/86_Recalling_Brigid_by_Orna_Ross.mp3 This poem is from: Poet Town: The Poetry of Hastings & Thereabouts edited by Richard Newham Sullivan Available from: Poet Town is available from: The publisher: Moth Light Press Amazon: UK | US Recalling Brigid by Orna Ross Queen of queens, they called herin the old books, the Irish Mary.Never washed her hands, nor her headin sight of a man, never lookedinto a man's face. She was goodwith the poor, multiplied food,gave ale to lepers. Among birds,call her dove; among trees, a vine.A sun among stars. Such was the sort of womanpreferred as the takeover was made:consecrated cask, throne to His glory,intercessor. Brigid said nothing to any of this,the reverence, or the upbraidings.Her realm is the lacuna,silence her sceptre,her own way of life its own witness. Out of desire, the lure of lustor the dust of great deeds,she was distorted:to consort, mother-virgin,to victim or whore. I am not as womanlya woman as she.So I say: Let us see.Let us say how she is the one. It is she who conceivesand she who does bear.She who knitted us in the womband who will cradle our tomb-fraying. Daily she offers her arms,clothes us in compassion,smiles as we wrigglefor baubles. Yes, it is she who lifts you aloftto whisper through your ears,to kiss your eyes,to touch her coolingcheek to your cheek. Interview transcript Mark: Orna, where did this poem come from? Orna: Hi Mark. Yeah, so it's one of a collection that I'm working on, around Irish women from history and myth. And these are women that I grew up with, as a young person, receiving a sort of a typical Irish education, if you like. Orna: And so some of them are saints, some of them are mythological people. Well, saints are also mythological people! Some of them are historical figures who've been mythologized. And I just wanted to go back in and do my own exploration of each of these women because everybody else had. So I've been gathering these poems over a long time, but it actually started with this one. It started with Brigid. And Brigid is a figure from ancient Irish mythology. And she was Christianized into a Roman Catholic saint. She is the patron saint of Ireland. One of. You've probably heard of the other one. Patrick. You probably haven't heard of this one: Brigid. And, so many things have been projected on her. And it's interesting to read what, what survives of what is written about her because what's written earlier on in time is quite different to what's written later on. And she continues to be an inspiration. Her feast day is the first day of spring in Ireland, which in Ireland is the first day of February. It's much earlier than it is in England. And she's just an interesting, personification of the female virtues as they've been perceived over time. Mark: So you said she was written about differently in earlier times to more recent times, which I think is pertinent to how you're exploring that in the poem. So maybe you could just give us a brief summary of that. Orna: Yes. So I, the poem refers to ‘the takeover'. And by that, I kind of mean the Christian, but hand in hand with Christian goes the patriarchal, takeover of old images of women in general. And Brigid is part of that. So earlier, renditions about her tend to focus on her as a healer, as a wise woman, as a very compassionate person, ‘ale to lepers' is one of the, images in the poem. Whereas later versions tend to emphasize her holiness and her saintliness and, her goodness and I suppose what we would typically think is a good, religious, icon. So it's interesting just to read how that changes and differs as we go. And she also then had her detractors, which is where we get to the ideas, about women generally that are in the poem – the consort, mother, victim, whore, those kinds of ideas. You see them brushing against Brigid over time, but she comes through intact actually, as a woman in her own right. And these don't tend to stick to her as they have stuck to others. Mark: And sometimes when poets use mythological figures like this, there's a kind of a critique of, ‘Well, that's a little bit old fashioned, it's poetry with a capital P'. But reading this and listening to you, it kind of really underlines to me that mythology and religion are really quite present in Ireland. Orna: Oh, gosh, yes! The past is very present in Ireland still, in lots of ways. And. It's interesting. I suppose it's something to do with being a small island on the very edge of, in inverted commas, civilization. Although the Irish like to think they civilized Europe during the dark ages by sending our saints and our scholarship, our images of people like Brigid, the truth is that old ways lingered on a long time, and particularly the part of Ireland where I grew up. So, I grew up in County Wexford down in the small bottom right-hand corner, the very southeast tip of Ireland. Around it, there is a river and a small hill that kind of cuts that area off. And around County Wexford in general, there are larger hills and a big river that cuts Wexford off. So they tended to travel by sea more than road, people from that part of the world. And it was the first part of Ireland to be conquered the Norman conquest and, Old English lingered there right up until, well, there are still words that are used in Wexford that aren't used elsewhere. Carols and songs as well. So other parts of Ireland and, obviously England, had moved on, it but kind of got stuck there. So I'm just kind of pointing up the fact that yes, things stayed, passed on in an oral kind of culture and an oral tradition. And hedge schools and such like, long after such things had faded away in other parts of Europe. Mark: And you say Old English rather than Irish was lingering? Orna: That's right. And, because they had, well, the Normans came to England first Hastings, actually where I live now. One of the reasons I'm here, I think is that I felt a lot of similarities between here and Wexford and I think the Norman invasion in both places, it was part of that. So yeah, a hundred years after the Normans landed in Hastings, they were brought over to Wexford by an Irish chieftain to help him win one of his battles with another Irish chieftain. So English came with the Normans to Ireland. Mark: Right. And this is another amazing thing about Ireland, is the kind of the different layers, like archaeological layers of language. You've got Irish, you've got Old English, you've got Norman French, you've got Latin from the church, you've got Norse from the Vikings and so on. It's incredibly rich. Orna: Yes. More diverse, I think. And again, because of its cut off nature, these things lasted longer, I think, because that's also true of England, but the overlay is stronger and so they don't make their way through. Mark: Right, right. And the ghosts can peep through. So, okay, that's the historical cultural context. What does Brigid mean to you and why did you choose her as the first figure in this sequence? Orna: She chose me, I think. I very much feel this poem, you know, some poems are made and some arrive and this one arrived. I wanted to do something to celebrate her. That was all I knew because it was the first day of spring, which I always loved, that first day of February. You know, when winter is really beginning to bite and you feel, I mean, there is no sign of spring except some crocuses maybe peeking up and, uh, a few spring flowers making a little promise. But usually the weather is awful, but it's the first day of spring and it's, been a really important day for me from that point of view. And then the fact that it does, you know, the fact that Patrick is such a great big deal everywhere and Brigid isn't known at all. So that's kind of where I started and I just knew I'd like to write a poem. And then it was one of those ones that I, if I had set out to write a poem about Brigid, I don't think this is what I would have written. It just arrived. And I found that I was thinking about lots of things and as the first poem of this sequence, I wanted to say some of the things about womanhood in the poem, and I, well, I realised I did, because that's what emerged. So for me, it's very much about that kind of quiet aspect of, so, you know, we've got feminism, which talks very much about women's rights to do whatever it is they want to do in the outer world. But for me, she, in this poem, represents the inner, the quiet virtues, if you like, always there for us. We're not always there for them, but they're always there and active in our lives all the time, and I wanted to celebrate that in the poem. So that's what, you know, I got, the rough draft just came pouring out, and that's what I found myself wanting to bring out. Mark: And the title, ‘Recalling Brigid', you know, I was thinking about that word ‘recalling', because it could mean ‘remembering', but it could also mean ‘calling' or ‘summoning'. Orna: Yes, deliberately chosen for both of those meanings, yes, very well spotted there, poetry reader. Mark: Well, you know, this is a very ancient function of poetry, isn't it? And it's where it kind of shades into charm or spells, to summon, or invoke a spirit or some kind of otherworldly creature or being. Orna: Absolutely. I think you've got the heart of what the poem is trying to do there. It is about calling forth, something, as I say, that's there, that we're all, you know, is there for all of us in our lives, but that we're not always aware of it. And our culture actively stifles it, and makes it seem like it's less important than it is. And so, yes, very much exactly all the words, the beautiful words you've just used there. I was hoping this poem would tap into that. Mark: Very much. And, you know, the beginning, ‘Queen of Queens, they called her'. So presumably this is in the old pre-Christian days, ‘they called her'. So there's that word ‘calling' again, and you give us the kind of the gloss, ‘in the old books, the Irish Mary'. And then you introduce the takeover: ‘such was the sort of woman / preferred as the takeover was made:' And then you get the other version. And then you've got: ‘Brigid said nothing to any of this,' which I think is really wonderful that she keeps – so you've gone from ‘they' in the past, ‘what they called her'. And then Brigid keeping her own counsel about this. She said nothing to any of this, ‘the reverence, or the upbraidings'. And then we get you where you say, ‘I am not as womanly / a woman as she. / So I say: let us see. / Let us say how she is the one. // It is she who conceives, and she who does bear.' Lovely, beautiful repetitions and shifts in there. So you really, you step forward into the poem at that point. Orna: I really wanted to, to place myself in relation to, to her and to all the women in this collection. Which isn't out yet, by the way, it's not finished. So I've got another three to go. No, I really wanted to place myself in relation to the women in the poems. That was an important part of the project for me. And I do that, you know, lots of different ways. But this poem, the first one is very much about, I suppose, calling out, you know, the ‘recalling' that you were talking about there a few moments ago, calling out the qualities. That we tend to overlook and that are attributed to Brigid as a womanly woman. And so, yeah, that's, that's what I was saying. I'm more of a feminist woman who is regarded by some as less womanly. so there is a, that's an interesting debate for me. That's a very interesting, particularly now at this time, I think, it's very interesting to talk about, you know, what is a feminist and what is feminism. And I personally believe in feminisms, lots of different, you know, it's multiple sort of thing. But these poems are born of a, you know, a feminist poet's sensibility without a doubt. So in this first one, I just wanted to call out, you know, the womanly virtues, if you like. Mark: Yeah. So I get a sense of you kind of starting as a tuning fork for different ideas and voices, calling her different things. And then you shift into, ‘Let us see. / Let us say…' I love the description earlier on where you said it's a celebration because by the end of the poem, it really is. It's all her attributes, isn't it? ‘It is she who conceives / and she who does bear.' And so on. Again, how easy was it for you to let go and, and, and step into that? Because it's kind of a thing that it's a little bit, it's not what we associate with modern poetry, is it? Orna: No, not at all. Not at all. But I had to ages ago, give up on modern poetry. If I wanted to write poetry, I had to drop so much, so much that I learned, you know, English Lit. was my original degree. And, you know, I, I was in love with poetry from a very young age. So, I learned everything I could about everything. And then I had to drop it all because I didn't write, I didn't write any poems between the end of my teens and my early forties when I lost a very dear friend. And then when I went on, shortly afterwards to, develop breast cancer. So those two things together unlocked the poetry gates and poems came again. And the kind of poems that came, very often were not, poems that they're not fashionable in that sense. You know, they're not what poetry tends to be. And from that point, in our time, if you like, some are, some, some do come that way, but an awful lot don't. And, for that reason, I'm just so entirely delighted to be able to self-publish because they speak to readers and say they communicate. And to me, that's what matters. And I don't have to worry about being accepted by a poetry establishment at all. I don't spend any time whatsoever thinking about that. I work at the craft, but I, it's for myself and for the poem and for the reader, but not to please anybody that, you know, would be a gatekeeper of any kind. Mark: Well, some listeners will know this – you are very much known as a champion of opportunity and diversity in publishing for writers and self-publishing, independent publishing, however you call it. But I think what I'd like to focus on here is the fact that, you know, by writing a poem like this, you highlight the conventions that we have in modern poetry. And it's easy to see the conventions of the past, but maybe not so much the ones in the present. And I love the fact that you've just sidestepped that or ignored that and written the poem that came to you. Orna: Yes. Yes, very much did and do. And like I said, I don't spend, I did at one time spend time thinking about this, but I spend absolutely no time now thinking about this at all. Mark: That's so refreshing to hear! [Laughter] Orna: No, it's, it's great. It's certainly a liberation. I think very much about the poem and what the poem needs and wants from me. And I make mistakes. I, you know, I don't do well on some poems. I go back, rewrite, sometimes years later, sometimes after they're published. so yeah. It's not that I don't think about form or structure or, you know, all of the things that poets think about but I only think about the master, you know, is the poem itself or the reader possibly or the communication between the bridge between me and the reader, something like that. But yeah, it's liberating for sure. Mark: And how did that play out in this poem? I mean, how close is this to the original draft that came to you? Orna: It's one of the poems that's closest to the original. It kind of arrived and I didn't want to play with it too much at all. So yeah, it, I just left it be. I let it be what I wanted to be because for me there are echoes in this poem as well of Old Irish poetry and ways of writing. you know, that if you, I don't know if you've ever had the pleasure of reading Old Irish poetry in translation? Mark: Yes. Orna: So, you know, that sense of I'm reading something from a completely different mind. It's, it isn't just that the, you know, the structures are different or whatever. It's like the whole mind and sensibility is something else. And that was one of the things I wanted to slightly have to retain in this poem. You know, I felt that it, it carries some of that forward and I wanted to, to leave it there as an echo. Mark: Yeah. Quite a lot of those Old Irish poems have a kind of a litany, a list of attributes of the poet or their beloved or the divine being that they're evoking. And that comes across very strongly here. Orna: Yeah, definitely. That's sort of a list of, which to the modern ear can sound obvious and, you know, just not poetry really. So yeah, I think that's one of the qualities that it carries. Mark: And I love the kind of the incantatory repetitive thing. Like I was saying about the, ‘So I say: let us see. / Let us say', and then ‘It is she… It is she… she who', you know, it just carries you along. It's got a hypnotic quality to it. Orna: Yes. And the she part, you know, the emphasizing the feminine, I suppose, touch of the divine feminine, but very much the physical feminine, and activities as well. So, you know, women held the role of birth and death very much in Irish culture again, up to really quite recently. I remember that, in my own youth and okay, I am getting on a bit, but, it's still, you know, it was quite late in time where, women did the laying out for burial. They did the keening of the, the wake, all of that. I remember very well. so at the beginning and end of life at the thresholds, if you like, that was a woman's job. And, that was lost, I think in the takeover. But I still think all the emotional labour around those thresholds are still very much held by women, you know, silently and quietly. And yeah, Brigid doesn't shout about it, but in this poem, I want to call it. Mark: Yeah. Recall it. Okay. And then let's go back to Hastings, which we touched on earlier, because this, okay. It's, it's going to be in your collection. It's been published in a wonderful anthology poetry from Hastings called Poet Town. Tell us a bit about that book and how you came to be involved. Orna: Yeah. So I heard about it and, Richard [Newham Sullivan] wonderful, poet and, publisher and general literary person. He now lives in New York, but he grew up in Hastings and lived here for many years. And it was a kind of a homesickness project he told me later, for him just. But he carried the idea in his mind for a very long time. He wanted to, he knew that there was an incredible, poetic history in Hastings, which people were not aware of. So Hastings is very well known. Hastings and St. Leonard's, where I live, both are very well known as arty kind of towns. Visual arts are very, very visible here, and all sorts of marvellous things going on, and music as well, there's brilliant Fat Tuesday music festival every year, but there's also, there's classical music, music in the pubs, music coming out your ears, literally. But very little about the literary life that goes on here, and lots of writers living here. And so Richard wanted to just bring forward the poetry side of that. And so he decided it's a passion project for him. He decided to, he worked with the publisher, a small publisher here, in Hastings for it. It's Moth Light Press. And he set out to gather as many living poets into one collection as he could. And this is where I was interested because as, I'm a historical novelist as well, so history is big for me, and I was really interested in the history, you know, the history and the poets who had lived here. There were quite a few. It's not every day you find yourself in an anthology with Lord Byron and Keats, and, two Rossetti's! So that was a joy, discovering all the poets who, had a connection to Hastings back to, I think he went back to the early 1800s with it. So, yeah, it's been a huge success, and, people are loving the book, and it has really brought poetry, brought pride, I think, to the poetry community in the town, which is lovely. Mark: Yeah, I'm really enjoying it, and I love the fact that it's got the old and the new. Because, of course, that's what I do here on A Mouthful of Air. I always think the ghosts of poetry past are always present in the work of the living. I hadn't realized what a deep and rich poetic history Hastings had. So, yeah, Poet Town, a great anthology. Do check that out while you're waiting for Orna's sequence to come to light. And Orna, thank you so much for sharing such a remarkable poem and distinctive take on the poet's craft. And I think this would be a good point to listen to the poem again, and appreciate your praise and celebration once more. Orna: Thanks so much, Mark, for having me. I really enjoyed it. Thank you. Recalling Brigid by Orna Ross Queen of queens, they called herin the old books, the Irish Mary.Never washed her hands, nor her headin sight of a man, never lookedinto a man's face. She was goodwith the poor, multiplied food,gave ale to lepers. Among birds,call her dove; among trees, a vine.A sun among stars. Such was the sort of womanpreferred as the takeover was made:consecrated cask, throne to His glory,intercessor. Brigid said nothing to any of this,the reverence, or the upbraidings.Her realm is the lacuna,silence her sceptre,her own way of life its own witness. Out of desire, the lure of lustor the dust of great deeds,she was distorted:to consort, mother-virgin,to victim or whore. I am not as womanlya woman as she.So I say: Let us see.Let us say how she is the one. It is she who conceivesand she who does bear.She who knitted us in the womband who will cradle our tomb-fraying. Daily she offers her arms,clothes us in compassion,smiles as we wrigglefor baubles. Yes, it is she who lifts you aloftto whisper through your ears,to kiss your eyes,to touch her coolingcheek to your cheek. Poet Town: The Poetry of Hastings & Thereabouts ‘Recalling Brigid' is from Poet Town: The Poetry of Hasting & Thereabouts, published by Moth Light Press. Available from: Poet Town is available from: The publisher: Moth Light Press Amazon: UK | US Orna Ross Orna Ross is an award-winning poet and novelist. Her poetry, rooted in Irish heritage and mindfulness practice, explores love, loss, creativity, and spiritual renewal through a female lens. As founder-director of the Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), she champions creative freedom for poets and writers. Her forthcoming collection, And Then Came the Beginning—Poems of Iconic Irish Women, Ancient and Modern—is available for pre-order at OrnaRoss.com/TheBeginning. A Mouthful of Air – the podcast This is a transcript of an episode of A Mouthful of Air – a poetry podcast hosted by Mark McGuinness. New episodes are released every other Tuesday. You can hear every episode of the podcast via Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts or your favourite app. You can have a full transcript of every new episode sent to you via email. The music and soundscapes for the show are created by Javier Weyler. Sound production is by Breaking Waves and visual identity by Irene Hoffman. A Mouthful of Air is produced by The 21st Century Creative, with support from Arts Council England via a National Lottery Project Grant. Listen to the show You can listen and subscribe to A Mouthful of Air on all the main podcast platforms Related Episodes Recalling Brigid by Orna Ross Orna Ross reads and discusses ‘Recalling Brigid’ from Poet Town. From The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge Episode 85 From The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge Mark McGuinness reads and discusses a passage from ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.Poet Samuel Taylor ColeridgeReading and commentary by Mark McGuinnessFrom... Alchemy by Gregory Leadbetter Episode 84 Alchemy by Gregory Leadbetter Gregory Leadbetter reads ‘Alchemy' and discusses the poem with Mark McGuinness.This poem is from: The Infernal Garden by Gregory LeadbetterAvailable from: The Infernal Garden is available from: The publisher: Nine Arches...

As the Government looks to appoint a new Freelance Champion for the creative industries we delve into the findings of the latest State of the Nations report from Creative PEC on Arts, Culture and Heritage workforce.Dr Mark Taylor will unveil the findings and plot the freelancer journey in the creative industries. A panel of guests including Yasmin Khan, Director for Individual Practitioners, Arts Council England, Philippa Childs, Deputy General Secretary, of the Broadcasting, Entertainment, Communications and Theatre Union, Amy Tarr, Head of Policy and Public Affairs, Creative UK, and Alexander Jacob, freelance television director, will explore how creative freelancers can be better supported and what the priorities should be for the new government champion. Chaired by Bernard Hay, Head of Policy, Creative PEC. Followed by Q&A and soft drinks reception.The new State of the Nations report, Who stays and who leaves?: Mapping arts, culture and heritage careers, will be released and available to download on the day.The Creative PEC is funded by the AHRC and led by Newcastle University with the RSA.Speakers:Speakers:Yasmin Khan, Director for Individual Practitioners, Arts Council EnglandPhilippa Childs, Head of BectuAmy Tarr, Associate Director, Policy & Research, Creative UKDr Mark Taylor, Research Lead for Arts, Culture and Heritage at Creative PEC, and Senior Lecturer in Quantitative Methods, University of SheffieldAlexander Jacob, Freelance television directorChair:Bernard Hay, Head of Policy, Creative PECDonate to the RSA: https://thersa.co/3ZyPOEaBecome an RSA Events sponsor: https://utm.guru/ueembFollow RSA on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thersaorg/Like RSA on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theRSAorg/Listen to RSA Events podcasts: https://bit.ly/35EyQYUJoin our Fellowship: https://www.thersa.org/fellowship/join

Why are so many prisoners being released from prison by mistake? What happens if Arts Council England goes under? And what can the Democrats learn from Mamdani's New York City mayoral election victory?Rebecca Moore is joined by The Observer's Deputy Sports Editor, Andrew Butler, Arts and Media Editor, Vanessa Thorpe, and reporter Jon Ungoed-Thomas as they pitch their top stories of the day.Must Reads:Days of wine and noses: the life of a critic**We want to hear what you think! Email us at: newsmeeting@observer.co.uk Follow us on Social Media: @ObserverUK on X @theobserveruk on Instagram and TikTok@theobserveruk.bsky.social‬ on bluesky Host: Rebecca MooreProducer: Amalie SortlandExecutive Producers: Matt Russell and Poppy BullardTo find out more about The Observer:Subscribe to TheObserver+ on Apple Podcasts for early access and ad-free contentHead to our website observer.co.uk Download the Tortoise app – for a listening experience curated by our journalists Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“Being read to as a small child and reading yourself when you're older can help you be healthier as an adult and even live longer.” – Franziska Liebig, Arts Council EnglandIn this exciting episode, Krish dives into Alex Rider: Stormbreaker by Anthony Horowitz, a fast-paced spy adventure filled with gadgets, danger and daring missions. When fourteen-year-old Alex discovers his uncle's death was not an accident, he is thrown into a world of secret agents, powerful billionaires and high stakes missions that test his courage at every turn.Krish also talks with Franziska Liebig from Arts Council England, the organisation dedicated to ensuring everyone can experience the magic of books and creativity. Fran shares how reading can change lives by improving wellbeing, sparking imagination and helping every child find their own story. Together, they explore the power of books to inspire empathy, confidence and lifelong curiosity.Key topics covered in this episode:Alex Rider: Stormbreaker, thrilling read for young spies and adventurersHow reading builds creativity, imagination and wellbeingWhy every kind of reading counts, from comics to novelsThe importance of seeing yourself represented in storiesExciting reading initiatives ahead of the National Year of Reading 2026Follow Arts Council EnglandInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/aceagrams/ Website: https://www.artscouncil.org.uk Follow Author Anthony HorowitzWebsite: https://www.anthonyhorowitz.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AnthonyHorowitzAuthor Follow KrishInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/krishthepodcasterFollow The Fourth BookmarkInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/thefourthbookmark

Joz Norris is an acclaimed comedy writer and performer. He makes unusual shows for the Edinburgh Fringe including the smash hit Joz Norris Is Dead. Long Live Mr Fruit Salad. (winner of the Comedians' Choice Award for Best Show, nominee for the Malcolm Hardee Award for Comic Originality, the Chortle Award for Best Music & Variety Act, and longlisted for the Edinburgh Comedy Award) and Blink (one of the Evening Standard's Top 20 comedy shows of 2022, and sponsored by Arts Council England), both of which transferred to multiple runs at Soho Theatre. In 2020 he adapted You Build The Thing You Think You Are, which would have been a new live show, into a feature film streamed online which was acclaimed as one of the comedy highlights of the year by both the Guardian and the Telegraph. His original sitcom for BBC Radio 4, The Dream Factory, co-written with Miranda Holms, was a radio pick of the week in the Observer, the Times, the Telegraph and the Mail on Sunday, and was featured on Radio 4's Comedy of the Week podcast, and his Radio 4 comedy special A Small Talk On Small Talk was a Guardian Audio Pick of the Week. He was also the co-host and co-creator of BBC Radio 4's Useless Millennials with Roxy Dunn, and has guest starred in Radio 4's The Many Wrongs Of Lord Christian Brighty; The Now Show and The Train At Platform 4.Joz Norris is our guest in episode 535 of My Time Capsule and chats to Michael Fenton Stevens about the five things he'd like to put in a time capsule; four he'd like to preserve and one he'd like to bury and never have to think about again .Tickets for Joz's tour are available here - https://www.joznorris.co.uk/you-wait-time-passes-uk-tour .Follow Joz Norris on Instagram & Twitter/X: @JozNorris .Follow My Time Capsule on Instagram: @mytimecapsulepodcast & Twitter/X & Facebook: @MyTCpod .Follow Michael Fenton Stevens on Twitter/X: @fentonstevens & Instagram @mikefentonstevens .Produced and edited by John Fenton-Stevens for Cast Off Productions .Music by Pass The Peas Music .Artwork by matthewboxall.com .This podcast is proud to be associated with the charity Viva! Providing theatrical opportunities for hundreds of young people .To support this podcast, get all episodes ad-free and a bonus episode every Wednesday of "My Time Capsule The Debrief', please sign up here - https://mytimecapsule.supercast.com. All money goes straight into the making of the podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this REWIND episode Gary Mansfield speaks to Simon Callery (@Simon.Callery) Simon Callery is known for his innovative approach to painting, which bridges the gap between two-dimensional surfaces and three-dimensional space. Born in London in 1960, Callery studied at Campion School and later at Cardiff College of Art. His work challenges traditional definitions of painting by incorporating sculptural elements—his canvases are often cut, pierced, folded, and stained with intense, earthy pigments. These works possess a physicality that invites viewers to engage not only visually but also spatially.Callery's artistic process is deeply connected to the landscape and archaeology, particularly the British countryside. Collaborations with archaeologists have influenced his method of working directly on site, allowing his paintings to absorb the environment both physically and conceptually. His paintings are often large in scale, with surfaces that appear worn, layered, and tactile—echoing the processes of erosion and excavation.By rejecting the illusionistic space of traditional painting, Callery creates works that are both objects and experiences. He has exhibited widely across the UK and Europe, with works held in public collections such as the Tate and Arts Council England. To Support this podcast from as little as £3 per month: www.patreon/ministryofarts For full line up of confirmed artists go to https://www.ministryofarts.co.ukEmail: ministryofartsorg@gmail.comSocial Media: @ministryofartsorg Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.