Podcasts about eric gregory award

Stephen Sexton is an Irish poet and a lecturer at the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry at Queen's University Belfast. While on campus in March 2025 he sat down with the Center for Irish Studies Director Joseph Lennon to discuss howpoetry can help us navigate the world. He reads poems from his two books ___________________Stephen Sexton the author of two books of poems – If All the World and Love Were Young, published in 2019 and Cheryl's Destinies, published in 2021.  He is a recipient of multipleawards, which include winning the National Poetry Competition in 2016, the Eric Gregory Award in 2018, the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and the Shine / Strong Award for Best First Collection in 2019, the E. M. Forster Awardfrom the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature in 2020.   Sexton has been teaching creative writing at the ⁠Seamus Heaney Centre⁠ for Poetry at Queen's University Belfast for six years.  Sexton was ten years old when the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 brought a formal end to the Troubles in the North of Ireland, which later in life made him realize that he was growing up in a time that he did not understand, and he became aware of a profound generational divide between him and his parents.  Sexton explains that in a sense, there is a “kind of ghostly history that is all around you, but you can't access it in the same way that other people can, so as a consequence, it doesn't necessarily show up in my writing.”  In his book, If All the World and Love Were Young, which happens to be set in 1998, there is one moment that addresses the Omagh bombing – a single deadliest attack in thirty years of violence that he remembers hearing about on the radio and then seeingon television.  But beyond that, the book is a blend of childhood memories that uses the analogy of a nineties Nintendo videogame, Mario Brothers, that digs into Sexton's more personal recollections about the house that he grew up in and memories of his mother.   Sexton's more recent book of poems, Cheryl's Destinies, was written during the COVID lockdown, where he explored a desire to bring together the improbable and the sensitive, hence the section of poems that imagines a collaboration between Billy Corgan lead singer of the Smashing Pumpkins and Irish poet W.B Yeats. The book's general theme of being obsessed with and anxious about the future came through the conversations between two strangers separated by a century, where they discuss the difficulty of making art. Sexton's book questions the role of a poet and its connection to the role of a medium, as they both perform a similar function -- look at the world and interpret it.

Jen Hadfield (winner of a 2024 Windham Campbell Prize for Poetry) joins Michael Kelleher to wade through Annie Dillard's dense yet rewarding classic, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. They discuss difficult reading experiences, poetic attempts to unlock the ineffable and immense, the book's intense relationship to the natural world and how that has impacted Hadfield's own work, and more. Reading list: Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard • Walden by Henry David Thoreau • Storm Pegs by Jen Hadfield • "An Transparent Eyeball" by Ralph Waldo Emerson For a full episode transcript, click here. Jen Hadfield is a poet, bookmaker, and visual artist. She is the author of four poetry collections, including most recently The Stone Age. Her second collection, Nigh-No-Place (2008) received the T. S. Eliot Prize. Hadfield earned her BA from the University of Edinburgh and MLitt in creative writing from the University of Strathclyde and the University of Glasgow. Her awards and honors include a Highland Books Prize (2022), an Edwin Morgan International Poetry Award (2012), the Dewar Award (2007) and an Eric Gregory Award (2003), as well as residencies with the Shetland Arts Trust and the Scottish Poetry Library. In 2014, she was named by the Poetry Book Society as one of twenty poets selected to represent the Next Generation of poets in the United Kingdom and Ireland. Hadfield currently lives in the Shetland Islands, where she is Reader in Residence at Shetland Library.

In this episode, we chat to Andrew McMillan about his novel, Pity. We discuss intersections of masculinity, sexuality and class and the way the body might hold these ideas within fiction and poetry. We think about the ways in which the form of the novel can hold multiple truths and stories, and how this links to post-industrial identities. We explore the dangers of describing post-industrial towns by their lack or an absence, and consider what it would take to find new definitions of community. We chat about the need for more northern stories, and the idea that everyone's village, town or city is worthy of literature. We think about finding a new language to discuss the past, which honours its legacies and yet allows us to define ourselves on new terms, in order to move forwards. Andrew McMillan's debut collection physical was the only ever poetry collection to win The Guardian First Book Award. The collection also won the Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize, a Somerset Maugham Award (2016), an Eric Gregory Award (2016) and a Northern Writers' award (2014). It was shortlisted the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Costa Poetry Award, The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year 2016, the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, the Roehampton Poetry Prize and the Polari First Book Prize. It was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation for Autumn 2015. In 2019 it was voted as one of the top 25 poetry books of the past 25 years by the Booksellers Association. His second collection, playtime, was published by Jonathan Cape in 2018; it was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation for Autumn 2018, a Poetry Book of the Month in both The Observer and The Telegraph, a Poetry Book of the Year in The Sunday Times and won the inaugural Polari Prize. His third collection, pandemonium, was published by Jonathan Cape in 2021, and 100 Queer Poems, the acclaimed anthology he edited with Mary Jean Chan, was published by Vintage in 2022. Physical has been translated into French, Galician and Norwegian editions, with double-editions of physical & playtime published in Slovak and German in 2022. He is Professor of Contemporary Writing at the Manchester Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University and is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. His debut novel, Pity, was published by Canongate in 2024. ​ References Pity by Andrew McMillan Pandemonium by Andrew McMillan Playtime by Andrew McMillan Physical by Andrew McMillan As always, visit Storysmith for 10% discount on Andrew's work.

To be alive is to be in conversation with the dead. The ghosts of loved ones are always swirling around us, and sometimes we're lucky enough to catch a glimpse. In the poem “Three Mangoes, £1,” Kandace Siobhan Walker describes a surprising encounter with her late grandmother at a busy market, and an encounter with a stranger.Kandace Siobhan Walker is a writer and artist of Jamaican-Canadian, Saltwater Geechee, and Welsh heritage. Her poems have appeared in Magma, The White Review, Poetry Wales, and a number of anthologies. She is the author of the pamphlet Kaleido (Bad Betty, 2022). In 2021, she was both the recipient of an Eric Gregory Award and the winner of the White Review Poet's Prize. In 2019, she won the Guardian 4th Estate BAME short story prize. Cowboy, her debut full-length collection from CHEERIO Publishing, is shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection in 2023.Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.We're pleased to offer Kandace Siobhan Walker's poem, and invite you to read Pádraig's weekly Poetry Unbound Substack, read the Poetry Unbound book, or listen back to all our episodes.

Scripture, Philosophy, and Embracing Ambiguity with Zohar Atkins Summary: In this episode of Courage Over Convention, we dive into a fascinating conversation with Zohar Atkins, a renowned scholar and founder of Etz Hasadeh. Join us in exploring how Judaism illuminates guiding truths even in this age of disruption. We discuss the impact of technology, macroeconomics, and cultural shifts on the practice of self-reflection. We even touch on the philosophy of neuroscience. Zohar has some serious intellectual horsepower. I enjoyed this one. Guest Profile: Zohar Atkins: Founder of Etz Hasadeh, a Center for Existential Torah Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America Rhodes Scholar with a DPhil in Theology from Oxford Semikha from the Jewish Theological Seminary MA and BA from Brown University 2018 Eric Gregory Award for Poetry winner Author of multiple books Discussion Topics and Key Points: The importance of questioning our purpose and beliefs The effects of social media and wealth disparity on attention spans Opportunities for self-taught individuals in an age of open access to knowledge Determinism, compatibilism, and the balance between agency and external influences The power of heroism and the 80/20 principle applied to personal growth Explore Zohar's Work: Website: ZoharAtkins.com Substack (also on his website): https://www.zoharatkins.com/whatiscalledthinking Podcast: Meditations with Zohar Keywords: Zohar Atkins, Etz Hasadeh, existentialism, philosophy, neuroscience, free will, technology, culture, self-reflection, heroism, podcast, Courage Over Convention, Woody Wiegmann --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/couragevconvention/message

Writer Margo Jefferson and poet Victoria Adukwei Bulley join BookRising host Bhakti Shringarpure to talk about their recent books which won the Rathbones Folio Prize 2023. The authors speak about crafting aesthetically innovative, genre-bending and political works. They also weigh in on particular challenges for Black women in the world of publishing and the importance of mentoring and camaraderie among writers.Margo Jefferson is a writer who worked as a theatre and book critic for Newsweek and the New York Times, and her writing has appeared in several publications including Vogue, New York Magazine and New Republic. She is a professor of writing at Columbia University's School of the Arts. Her book Negroland was shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize and was winner of a National Book Critics Circle Award. She is also the author of On Michael Jackson. And most recently, Margo was awarded the Rathbones Folio prize for her genre-bending work of non-fiction titled Constructing a Nervous SystemVictoria Adukwei Bulley is a poet, writer and filmmaker of Ghanaian heritage, born and raised in Essex, England. She was shortlisted for the Brunel University African Poetry Prize in 2016 and received an Eric Gregory Award for her pamphlet Girl B, published as part of the New Generation African Poets series in 2017. She is an alumna of both the Barbican Young Poets and Octavia Poetry Collectives, and has held residencies internationally. In 2019, she was awarded a TECHNĒ scholarship for fully-funded doctoral research at Royal Holloway, University of London. Quiet is her 2022 her debut collection of poetry and which was also awarded the Rathbones Folio Prize only a week ago. Bhakti Shringarpure is the Creative Director of the Radical Books Collective.

Susannah Dickey grew up in Derry and now lives in London. She is the author of four poetry pamphlets, I had some very slight concerns (2017), genuine human values (2018), bloodthirsty for marriage (2020), and Oh! (2022). In 2019 she won the Vincent Buckley Poetry Prize, and in 2021 she was longlisted for the Sunday Times Short Story Award. She is an Eric Gregory Award winner, a prize granted for a collection by poets under the age of 30. Her debut poetry collection, Isdal, will be published in 2023. She is the author of Tennis Lessons (2020) and Common Decency (2022), both published by Doubleday UK.This week's Southword poem is ‘Lagan' by Niamh Prior, which appears in issue 41. You can buy single issues, subscribe, or find out how to submit to Southword here.

On Tuesday, October 4, 2022, the Lannan Center presented a reading and talk featuring writer Seán Hewit. Hosted by Professor Cóilín Parsons, Director of Global Irish Studies.Seán Hewitt was born in 1990. His debut collection, Tongues of Fire, is published by Jonathan Cape. He is a book critic for The Irish Times and teaches Modern British & Irish Literature at Trinity College Dublin. His debut collection, Tongues of Fire, won The Laurel Prize, and was shortlisted for The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, the John Pollard Foundation International Poetry Prize, and a Dalkey Literary Award. In 2020, he was chosen by The Sunday Times as one of their “30 under 30”  artists in Ireland. He is also the winner of a Northern Writers' Award, the Resurgence Prize, and an Eric Gregory Award. His book J.M. Synge: Nature, Politics, Modernism is published with Oxford University Press (2021). His memoir, All Down Darkness Wide, is published by Jonathan Cape in the UK and Penguin Press in the USA (2022).Music: Quantum Jazz — "Orbiting A Distant Planet" — Provided by Jamendo.

Jenna Clake's debut collection of poetry Fortune Cookie won the Melita Hume prize in 2016, and was published in 2017 by Eyewear. It received an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors in 2018, and was shortlisted for a Somerset Maugham Award in the same year. Her second collection Museum of Ice Cream was published by Bloodaxe in 2021. Her debut novel Disturbance will be published by Trapeze (UK) and Norton (US) in 2023. Follow her on Twitter.This week's Southword poem is 'The Quarry Lake' by Bernadette McCarthy, which appears in issue 41. You can buy single issues, subscribe, or find out how to submit to Southword here.

Our latest podcast departs from our usual interview format. It's a recording of a reading held in the Scottish Poetry Library in March. The poets featured are Nina Bogin, Eoghan Walls and Beverley Bie Brahic. Nina Bogin (pictured) was born in New York City and received a B.A. degree from New York University. She has lived in France since 1976. She taught English and literature at the University of Technology of Belfort-Montbéliard in France, until her retirement in 2017. Graywolf Press published her first book of poems, In the North, in 1989. Two books of poems followed, The Winter Orchards in 2001 and The Lost Hare in 2012, both published by Anvil Press. Her latest collection, Thousandfold, is published by Carcanet. Eoghan Walls was born in Derry in Northern Ireland. He attended Atlantic College on the coast of South Wales and has lived and taught in Germany, Rwanda, Scotland and presently, northern England. He won an Eric Gregory Award in 2006. His first collection of poems, The Salt Harvest, was published by Seren in 2011 and was shortlisted for the Strong Award for Best First Collection. He teaches creative writing at Lancaster University. His latest collection is Pigeon Songs, which is published by Seren. Beverley Bie Brahic is a poet and translator. A Canadian, she lives in Paris and the San Francisco Bay Area. Her second poetry collection, White Sheets, was a finalist for the 2012 Forward Prize. Brahic's translations include Guillaume Apollinaire's The Little Auto, winner of the 2013 Scott Moncrieff Prize; and books by Jacques Derrida and Julia Kristeva. Her latest collection is The Hotel Eden, which is published by Carcanet.

This month Suzannah V Evans takes over as host; she's in conversation with Mary Jean Chan in an interview recorded at StAnza, Scotland's poetry festival, earlier this year. Chan was born in 1990 and raised in Hong Kong before continuing her education at the Universities of Oxford and London. She's already been nominated for the Forward Prize for Poetry's Best Single Poem category twice and earlier this year she won an Eric Gregory Award. Her first full-length collection Flèche has just been published by Faber. During the podcast, Chan discusses fencing (where the term ‘flèche' comes from), how learning English at a young age made her realise some languages are more valued than others, and queerness.

In this podcast, the T.S. Eliot Prize-winning poet Sarah Howe talks to Jennifer Williams about kicking off the 2016 Edinburgh International Book Festival, writing with multiple languages and alphabets, sense and non-sense in poetry and much more. Sarah Howe is a British poet, academic and editor. Her first book, Loop of Jade (Chatto & Windus, 2015), won the T.S. Eliot Prize and The Sunday Times / PFD Young Writer of the Year Award, and was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Centre Poetry Prize and the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. Born in Hong Kong in 1983 to an English father and Chinese mother, she moved to England as a child. Her pamphlet, A Certain Chinese Encyclopedia (Tall-lighthouse, 2009), won an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors. Her poems have appeared in journals including Poetry Review, Poetry London, The Guardian, The Financial Times, Ploughshares and Poetry, and she has performed her work at festivals internationally and on BBC Radio 3 & 4. If you would prefer to read, rather than listen to, our podcast with Sarah Howe, click here to see a transcript of the interview.

In this podcast, Jennifer Williams talks to Sophie Collins about experimenting with starting points for creating poems, including using online translators and working with the unconscious; feminism and her role as co-editor of tender, a journal celebrating writing by women and the wide-ranging world of poetry translation from radical to faithful; and much more! Sophie Collins is also editor of translation anthology Currently & Emotion (Test Centre, 2016). She received an Eric Gregory Award in 2014.

The Playcast is back!We return with the first episode of the season brining you an interview with Caroline Bird. Caroline is the writer of Red Ellen which arrives at Nottingham Playhouse on Weds 13th April. Get your tickets hereBioCaroline won The Forward Prize for best poetry collection in 2020. She was shortlisted for the Costa Prize 2020, the TS Eliot Prize 2017, the Ted Hughes Award 2017, and the Dylan Thomas Prize twice in 2008 and 2010. She was a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize 2014. She has also won an Eric Gregory Award (2002) and the Foyle Young Poet of the Year award two years running (1999, 2000), and was a winner of the Poetry London Competition in 2007, the Peterloo Poetry Competition in 2004, 2003 and 2002. Caroline was on the shortlist for Shell Woman Of The Future Awards 2011.Caroline has had six collections of poetry published by Carcanet. Her first collection Looking Through Letterboxes (published in 2002 when she was only 15) is a topical, zesty and formally delightful collection of poems built on the traditions of fairy tale, fantasy and romance. Her second collection, Trouble Came to the Turnip, was published in September 2006 to critical acclaim. Watering Can, her third collection published in November 2009 celebrates life as an early twenty-something with comedy, wordplay and bright self-deprecation. Her fourth collection, The Hat-Stand Union, was described by Simon Armitage as ‘spring-loaded, funny, sad and deadly.' Her fifth collection, In These Days of Prohibition (published July 2017) was shortlisted for the 2017 TS Eliot Prize and the 2017 Ted Hughes Award. Her sixth collection, The Air Year was published in February 2020, and was book of the month in The Telegraph, book of the year in the Guardian, shortlisted for the Costa Prize, and winner of the Forward Prize.Bird's poems have been published in several anthologies and journals including Poetry Magazine, PN Review, Poetry Review and The North magazine. Several of her poems and a commissioned short story, Sucking Eggs, have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio 3. She was one of the five official poets at London Olympics 2012. Her poem, The Fun Palace, which celebrates the life and work of Joan Littlewood, is now erected on the Olympic Site outside the main stadium.In recent years, Caroline has given poetry performances at Aldeburgh Festival, Latitude Festival, the Manchester Literature Festival, the Wellcome Collection, the Royal Festival Hall, the Wordsworth Trust, Cheltenham Festival, and Ledbury Festival, amongst others.Caroline Bird began writing plays as a teenager when she was the youngest ever member of the Royal Court Young Writer's Programme, tutored by Simon Stephens. In 2011 Caroline was invited to take part in Sixty Six Books by the Bush Theatre. She wrote a piece inspired by Leviticus, directed by Peter Gill. In February 2012, her Beano-inspired musical, The Trial of Dennis the Menace was performed in the Purcell Room at the Southbank Centre.Caroline's new version of The Trojan Women premiered at the Gate Theatre at the end of 2012 to wide critical acclaim. Caroline's plSupport the show (https://nottinghamplayhouse.co.uk/support-us/donate/curtain-up-appeal/)

This week we are joined by the brilliant Kim Moore. Her first full length collection The Art of Falling (Seren) won the Geoffrey Faber memorial prize in 2017. She won a New Writing North Award in 2014, an Eric Gregory Award in 2011 and the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize in 2012. Her latest book was recently released under Seren. Today she shares a great poem by Vicki Feaver called 1974. We talk sexism, self-reflection and all things poetry.

CJ Cooke, also known as Carolyn Jess-Cooke, grew up on a council estate in Belfast, Northern Ireland, at the height of the Troubles. She started writing at the age of 7 and pestered publishers for many years with manuscripts typed on her grandparents' old typewriter and cover notes written on pages ripped from school jotters. Since then, she has published 12 works in 23 languages and won numerous awards, including an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors, a Tyrone Guthrie Prize, a K Blundell Award, and she has won a Northern Writer's Award three times. In 2011, her debut novel, The Guardian Angel's Journal, was published by Little, Brown. The novel was an international bestseller. Her second novel, The Boy Who Could See Demons (2012), is a cult classic. Her sixth novel, The Lighthouse Witches, was published in October 2021, and was an Indigo Book of the Month and an international bestseller. CJ's work is concerned with trauma, motherhood, loss, and social justice. CJ holds a BA (Hons), MA, and PhD from Queen's University, Belfast, and commenced her academic career in 2005 as a Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Sunderland. Shortly thereafter, she published four academic works in swift succession on Shakespearean Cinema and Film Sequels, before establishing her career as a poet, editor, and novelist. Now Reader in Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow, CJ convenes the prestigious MLitt Creative Writing and researches ways that creative writing can help with trauma and mental health. Throughout 2013-18 she directed the Writing Motherhood project, which explored the impact of motherhood on women's writing. She is also the founder and director of the Stay-at-Home! Literary Festival, which is dedicated to providing people with accessible, inclusive, and eco-friendly ways to access literature. CJ has four children and lives with her family in Glasgow, Scotland. https://carolynjesscooke.com/ VOX VOMITUS: Sometimes, it's not what goes right in the writing process, it's what goes horribly wrong. Host/Literary Horror author Jennifer Anne Gordon with the help of her co-host/author Allison Martine, chat with some of the best authors of the day. www.jenniferannegordon.com www.afictionalhubbard.com www.patreon.com/JenniferAnneGordon @copyrighted by the Authors on the Air Global Radio Network #voxvomitus #vixens #jenniferannegordon #Jennifergordon #allisonmartinehubbard #allisonmartine #authorsontheair #authorsontheairglobalradionetwork #podcast #interview #books #hotelseries #bourbonbooks #cjcooke #thelighthousewitches

CJ Cooke, also known as Carolyn Jess-Cooke, grew up on a council estate in Belfast, Northern Ireland, at the height of the Troubles. She started writing at the age of 7 and pestered publishers for many years with manuscripts typed on her grandparents' old typewriter and cover notes written on pages ripped from school jotters. Since then, she has published 12 works in 23 languages and won numerous awards, including an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors, a Tyrone Guthrie Prize, a K Blundell Award, and she has won a Northern Writer's Award three times. In 2011, her debut novel, The Guardian Angel's Journal, was published by Little, Brown. The novel was an international bestseller. Her second novel, The Boy Who Could See Demons (2012), is a cult classic. Her sixth novel, The Lighthouse Witches, was published in October 2021, and was an Indigo Book of the Month and an international bestseller. CJ's work is concerned with trauma, motherhood, loss, and social justice. CJ holds a BA (Hons), MA, and PhD from Queen's University, Belfast, and commenced her academic career in 2005 as a Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Sunderland. Shortly thereafter, she published four academic works in swift succession on Shakespearean Cinema and Film Sequels, before establishing her career as a poet, editor, and novelist. Now Reader in Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow, CJ convenes the prestigious MLitt Creative Writing and researches ways that creative writing can help with trauma and mental health. Throughout 2013-18 she directed the Writing Motherhood project, which explored the impact of motherhood on women's writing. She is also the founder and director of the Stay-at-Home! Literary Festival, which is dedicated to providing people with accessible, inclusive, and eco-friendly ways to access literature. CJ has four children and lives with her family in Glasgow, Scotland. https://carolynjesscooke.com/ VOX VOMITUS: Sometimes, it's not what goes right in the writing process, it's what goes horribly wrong. Host/Literary Horror author Jennifer Anne Gordon with the help of her co-host/author Allison Martine, chat with some of the best authors of the day. www.jenniferannegordon.com www.afictionalhubbard.com www.patreon.com/JenniferAnneGordon @copyrighted by the Authors on the Air Global Radio Network #voxvomitus #vixens #jenniferannegordon #Jennifergordon #allisonmartinehubbard #allisonmartine #authorsontheair #authorsontheairglobalradionetwork #podcast #interview #books #hotelseries #bourbonbooks #cjcooke #thelighthousewitches

CJ Cooke, also known as Carolyn Jess-Cooke, grew up on a council estate in Belfast, Northern Ireland, at the height of the Troubles. She started writing at the age of 7 and pestered publishers for many years with manuscripts typed on her grandparents' old typewriter and cover notes written on pages ripped from school jotters. Since then, she has published 12 works in 23 languages and won numerous awards, including an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors, a Tyrone Guthrie Prize, a K Blundell Award, and she has won a Northern Writer's Award three times. In 2011, her debut novel, The Guardian Angel's Journal, was published by Little, Brown. The novel was an international bestseller. Her second novel, The Boy Who Could See Demons (2012), is a cult classic. Her sixth novel, The Lighthouse Witches, was published in October 2021, and was an Indigo Book of the Month and an international bestseller. CJ's work is concerned with trauma, motherhood, loss, and social justice. CJ holds a BA (Hons), MA, and PhD from Queen's University, Belfast, and commenced her academic career in 2005 as a Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Sunderland. Shortly thereafter, she published four academic works in swift succession on Shakespearean Cinema and Film Sequels, before establishing her career as a poet, editor, and novelist. Now Reader in Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow, CJ convenes the prestigious MLitt Creative Writing and researches ways that creative writing can help with trauma and mental health. Throughout 2013-18 she directed the Writing Motherhood project, which explored the impact of motherhood on women's writing. She is also the founder and director of the Stay-at-Home! Literary Festival, which is dedicated to providing people with accessible, inclusive, and eco-friendly ways to access literature. CJ has four children and lives with her family in Glasgow, Scotland. carolynjesscooke.com/ VOX VOMITUS: Sometimes, it's not what goes right in the writing process, it's what goes horribly wrong. Host/Literary Horror author Jennifer Anne Gordon with the help of her co-host/author Allison Martine, chat with some of the best authors of the day. www.jenniferannegordon.com www.afictionalhubbard.com www.patreon.com/JenniferAnneGordon @copyrighted by the Authors on the Air Global Radio Network #voxvomitus #vixens #jenniferannegordon #Jennifergordon #allisonmartinehubbard #allisonmartine #authorsontheair #authorsontheairglobalradionetwork #podcast #interview #books #hotelseries #bourbonbooks #cjcooke #thelighthousewitches

Tishani Doshi publishes poetry, essays, and fiction. She is the recipient of an Eric Gregory Award for Poetry, winner of the All-India Poetry Competition, and her first book, Countries of the Body, won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection in 2006. Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award and a Firecracker Award. Her fourth collection of poetry, A God at the Door (Bloodaxe Books), has been shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Poetry 2021 and was just published in the United States by Copper Canyon Press. She lives in Tamil Nadu, India. Find the book and more at: tishanidoshi.com As always, we'll also include live open lines for responses to our weekly prompt or any other poems you'd like to share. For details on how to participate, either via Skype or by phone, go to: https://www.rattle.com/rattlecast/ This Week's Prompt: Coin a word or a phrase, then make the the title of your poem. Next Week's Prompt: Take a walk around your neighborhood and write a poem about it. (Alternatives to walking: Take a drive, sit on your porch, or look out your window.) The Rattlecast livestreams on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, then becomes an audio podcast. Find it on iTunes, Spotify, or anywhere else you get your podcasts.

This week Adam is joined by poets Richard Barnett and Luke Kennard. Richard Barnet's WHEREVER WE ARE WHEN WE COME TO THE END is an imagining of the experience of the young Ludwig Wittgenstein in the First World War, recounted in the same austere and succinct statements as the philosopher's Tractatus Logico Philosophicus, the initial notes for which were taken during the conflict. The result is an affecting examination of love, duty and violence that had such a strong impact on me that it sent me back to investigate Wittgenstein's writing with fresh eyes. Sarah Bakewell called WHEREVER WE ARE WHEN WE COME TO THE END “ingenious, devastating and filled with emotional riches.” Luke Kennard's NOTES ON THE SONNETS, revisits Shakespeare's poetry in a chain of prose poems set in a British house party. The party is a contradictory beast—at once crushingly dull yet flecked with the absurd, at once sprawling yet intensely claustrophobic. Kennard's poems embody these contradictions too, they somehow manage to be superficial yet profound, charmingly insolent yet glacially serious, knowingly pretentious yet deeply insecure and self-critical, and they take in almost every subject under the stars. NOTES ON THE SONNETS was a Poetry Book Society recommendation, and recently won the Forward Prize for Best Collection 2021. Buy WHEREVER WE ARE WHEN WE COME TO THE END here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/I/9781912436583/wherever-we-are-when-we-come-to-the-end Buy NOTES ON THE SONNETS here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/I/9781908058812/notes-on-the-sonnets Browse our online store here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/15/online-store/16/bookstore Become a Friend of S&Co here: https:/.friendsofshakespeareandcompany.com * Richard Barnett is a poet and historian. He taught the history of science and medicine at Cambridge, UCL, and Oxford for more than a decade, and his history books include Medical London, a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week, and The Sick Rose, an international bestseller. His first poetry collection Seahouses was published by Valley Press in 2015, and was short-listed for the Poetry Business Prize. His next poetry publication was Wherever We Are When We Come to the End, a poetic experiment digging into the form and language of Wittgenstein's Tractatus, published in May 2021. Luke Kennard has published five collections of poetry. He won an Eric Gregory Award in 2005 and was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection in 2007. He lectures at the University of Birmingham. In 2014 he was selected by the Poetry Book Society as one of the Next Generation Poets. His debut novel, The Transition, is published in 2017 by Fourth Estate. Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-time Listen to Alex Freiman's Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1

Continuing the Technecast’s miniseries on Nature, we hear from the poet, composer, sound artist and techne PhD researcher Rowan Evans. He introduces a recording of a poetic performance that recounts an instructional sequence about translating bird calls through Old English, which was recording running through Leigh Woods in Bristol. We then spoke to Rowan about the methodology of absurdity, magic and play; his doctoral research on contemporary poetic encounters with early medieval languages; and about the epistemological limits of language to contain non-human nature. We hope you enjoy! Rowan Evans is a poet, composer and sound artist. His most recent chapbook is The Last Verses of Beccán (Guillemot Press, 2019), which won the Michael Marks Award for poetry. He received an Eric Gregory Award in 2015 and a selection of his work appears in Penguin Modern Poets 7: These Hard and Shining Things (Penguin, 2018). Rowan is editor of Moot Press and artistic co-director of the performance company FEN. He is currently undertaking practice-based PhD research in modern poetry and early medieval language at Royal Holloway, University of London. rowan-evans.com

On episode 183 of The Quarantine Tapes, Paul Holdengräber is joined by poet and professor, Paul Muldoon. In this conversation, Paul offers a thoughtful look at his process as a poet and what it means to write work that speaks to this moment.The pair discuss some of Paul’s influences, as a writer, including T.S. Eliot and John Donne. He reads from a poem he worked on in the early weeks of the pandemic, “Plaguey Hill,” and previews his recently-announced project with Paul McCartney. Paul brings us all into his practice as both a teacher and a writer, and explains how important unknowing is to writing, and confronts what it means to approach the page from a place of innocence and ignoranceREAD: Plaguey Hill, a new poem by Paul Muldoon  Paul Muldoon was born in County Armagh in 1951. He now lives in New York. A former radio and television producer for the BBC in Belfast, he has taught at Princeton University for more than thirty years. He is the author of fourteen collections of poetry including Howdie-Skelp, due from FSG and Faber and Faber in 2021. Among his awards are the 1972 Eric Gregory Award, the 1980 Sir Geoffrey Faber Memorial Award, the 1994 T.S. Eliot Prize, the 1997 Irish Times Poetry Prize, the 2003 Pulitzer Prize, the 2003 Griffin International Prize for Poetry, the 2004 American Ireland Fund Literary Award, the 2004 Shakespeare Prize, the 2006 European Prize for Poetry, the 2015 Pigott Poetry Prize, the 2017 Queens Gold Medal for Poetry, and the 2020 Michael Marks Award. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society for Literature and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. 

Poet, writer and lecturer Seán Hewitt was shortlisted for the Sunday Times University of Warwick Young Writer of the Year Award 2020 for his debut poetry anthology ‘Tongues of Fire’, published by Jonathan Cape. ‘Tongues of Fire’ is a sensitive, compelling and beautiful ode to life and to nature, and Seán presents a reading of one of his earliest poems in his Babble interview - as well as a hilarious story about camping in the moors when writing it. His memoir, ‘All Down Darkness Wide’, is forthcoming from Jonathan Cape in the UK and Penguin Press in the USA in 2022. He is also the winner of the Northern Writers Award, the Resurgence Prize and an Eric Gregory Award, and was chosen by The Sunday Times as one of their "30 under 30" most promising artists in Ireland. ‘Tongues of Fire’ was a Spectator, Guardian, Attitude, Irish Times and Irish Independent book of the year - as well as interviewer Megan’s, who is very excited to be able to pick Seán’s brains about his work, his anthology and his creative process. The two discuss prizes and Seán’s views on them, as well as how honoured he is to have been shortlisted amongst so many young, talented writers.

CJ Cooke grew up on a council estate in Belfast, Northern Ireland. She started writing at the age of 7 and pestered publishers for many years with manuscripts typed on her grandparents' old Remington typewriter and cover notes written on pages ripped from school jotters. Finally, in 2009, her hard work paid off, and her debut novel, The Guardian Angel's Journal, about a woman who dies and comes back as her own guardian angel, was sold at a four-way auction at the Frankfurt Book Fair to Piatkus as their 2011 superlead title. The novel was published under the name Carolyn Jess-Cooke in 23 languages, and was an international bestseller. Since then, she has published two poetry collections, a creative anthology (titled Writing Motherhood) and three further novels, with a fourth, The Nesting, due out in October 2020. Also a poet (published under Carolyn Jess-Cooke), CJ's prizes for writing include a Northern Writers Award, an Eric Gregory Award, a Tyrone Guthrie prize, and she has twice received a K Blundell award from the Society of Authors. She holds a PhD in literature and film, and is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Glasgow, where she researches the impact of motherhood on women's writing and inclusive approaches to literature. Based in north east England for many years, she now lives in Glasgow with her husband, four children, and a dog named Ralph, who thinks he's human. CJ is currently working on her new gothic thriller, due out in 2021. In March 2020 CJ Cooke set up the Stay-At-Home! Literary Festival, in partnership with the creative writing incubator, Paper Nations, in response to Covid-19, and as a venture to provide people with accessible, eco-friendly engagement with literature. https://carolynjesscooke.com/ VOX VOMITUS: Sometimes, it's not what goes right in the writing process, it's what goes horribly wrong. Host/Gothic Horror novelist Jennifer Anne Gordon (with help from co-hosts/authors Allison Martine and Trisha Mckee) chat with some of the best authors of the day. www.jenniferannegordon.com www.trishamckee.com www.afictionalhubbard.com www.patreon.com/JenniferAnneGordon

CJ Cooke grew up on a council estate in Belfast, Northern Ireland. She started writing at the age of 7 and pestered publishers for many years with manuscripts typed on her grandparents’ old Remington typewriter and cover notes written on pages ripped from school jotters. Finally, in 2009, her hard work paid off, and her debut novel, The Guardian Angel’s Journal, about a woman who dies and comes back as her own guardian angel, was sold at a four-way auction at the Frankfurt Book Fair to Piatkus as their 2011 superlead title. The novel was published under the name Carolyn Jess-Cooke in 23 languages, and was an international bestseller. Since then, she has published two poetry collections, a creative anthology (titled Writing Motherhood) and three further novels, with a fourth, The Nesting, due out in October 2020. Also a poet (published under Carolyn Jess-Cooke), CJ’s prizes for writing include a Northern Writers Award, an Eric Gregory Award, a Tyrone Guthrie prize, and she has twice received a K Blundell award from the Society of Authors. She holds a PhD in literature and film, and is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Glasgow, where she researches the impact of motherhood on women’s writing and inclusive approaches to literature. Based in north east England for many years, she now lives in Glasgow with her husband, four children, and a dog named Ralph, who thinks he’s human. CJ is currently working on her new gothic thriller, due out in 2021. In March 2020 CJ Cooke set up the Stay-At-Home! Literary Festival, in partnership with the creative writing incubator, Paper Nations, in response to Covid-19, and as a venture to provide people with accessible, eco-friendly engagement with literature. https://carolynjesscooke.com/ VOX VOMITUS: Sometimes, it's not what goes right in the writing process, it's what goes horribly wrong. Host/Gothic Horror novelist Jennifer Anne Gordon (with help from co-hosts/authors Allison Martine and Trisha Mckee) chat with some of the best authors of the day. www.jenniferannegordon.com www.trishamckee.com www.afictionalhubbard.com/ www.patreon.com/JenniferAnneGordon

CJ Cooke is a poet, a successful horror and suspense author, and a senior lecturer in creative writing at the University of Glasgow. She's been published in 23 countries, and her new novel is 'The Nesting'. It's set in the fjords and forests of Norway, where down on her luck Lexi becomes a nanny in a strange, high-concept house, and peculiar things start happening. We talk about why it's set there, and how CJ worked on getting the chilling atmosphere right.You can hear how the tone and pacing of gothic sets it apart from horror and psychological suspense, and how to try and plan a day to be as creative as possible.As a poet, CJ’s prizes for writing include a Northern Writers Award, an Eric Gregory Award, a Tyrone Guthrie prize, and she has twice received a K Blundell award from the Society of Authors.Please do support the show at patreon.com/writersroutine, and leave a review on Apple Podcasts!@writerspodwritersroutine.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In times of isolation, what stories have you turned to for comfort?  This poem is an exploration of isolation as seen through the mythical Irish character, Suibhne. Suibhne was cursed and lived a life on the move, a transitory isolation. In the midst of the sadness at all he’s missed, he also sees beauty — and he holds both sadness and appreciation together.Seán Hewitt was born in 1990 and studied English at the University of Cambridge. He is a fiction reviewer for The Irish Times and a Leverhulme Research Fellow at Trinity College Dublin. His awards include the Northern Writers' Award, the Resurgence Prize, and an Eric Gregory Award. His debut book of poetry is Tongues of Fire.Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

In episode 27 we speak to Caleb Klaces, poet, academic and author of 'Fatherhood' (2019, Prototype). Caleb is also the author of 'Bottled Air' (2013), winner of the Melita Hume Prize and an Eric Gregory Award, as well as two chapbooks: 'All Safe All Well' (2011) and 'Modern Version' (2018). He is Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing and English Literature at York St John University, and runs the York Centre for Writing Poetry Series. Fatherhood is available here: https://prototypepublishing.co.uk/product/fatherhood/ The book discussed during the AI chat is 'the Bestseller Code' by Jodie Archer and Matthew Jockers. You can read some of Caleb's poetry here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/caleb-klaces Find us on Twitter: @UnsoundMethods (https://twitter.com/UnsoundMethods) - @JaimieBatchan (https://twitter.com/JaimieBatchan) - @LochlanBloom (https://twitter.com/LochlanBloom) Jaimie's Instagram is: @jaimie_batchan Thanks for listening, please like, subscribe and rate Unsound Methods wherever you get your podcasts. Our website is: https://unsoundmethods.co.uk/

Stephen Sexton joins us on this month's episode of the Stinging Fly podcast, to read and discuss two poems by Sinéad Morrissey. Stephen Sexton's debut collection, If All The World And Love Were Young, was published in September 2019 by Penguin, and won The Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection in October. Sexton's first pamphlet, Oils (Emma Press), was a Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice; he won the UK National Poetry Competition in 2016 with 'The Curfew'; he won an Eric Gregory Award in 2018. He lives in Belfast, where he teaches at the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry. Sinéad Morrissey was born in Portadown in 1972, grew up in Belfast, and holds a PhD from Trinity College, Dublin. In January 2014, she won the T. S. Eliot Prize for her fifth collection Parallax, and in 2017 she won the Forward Prize for Poetry for her sixth collection On Balance. In 2007, Morrissey was awarded the Lannan Literary Fellowship for Poetry, while her poem 'Through the Square Window' took first place in the UK National Poetry Competition the same year. She is lecturer in Creative Writing at the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry, Queen's University, Belfast. The Stinging Fly Podcast invites Irish writers to choose a story from the Stinging Fly archive to read and discuss. Previous episodes of the podcast can be found here. The podcast's theme music is ‘Sale of Lakes', by Divan. All of the Stinging Fly archive is available for subscribers to read – subscribe now and access 20 years of the best new writing.

We can’t believe we’ve come to the end of our second series [sad face]... In this extended final episode, Jack and Rachael have fun chatting with guests Daljit Nagra and Nisha Ramayya in the studio and there are audio postcards from Aria Aber and Jericho Brown, as well as poems from our two presenters. Thank you to all our listeners – we hope you've enjoyed our second series. Remember to rate and review us and make sure you subscribe so you don't miss future episodes of the podcast. Show notes  Studio guests DALJIT NAGRA has published four poetry collections with Faber & Faber, including his most recent, British Museum (https://www.faber.co.uk/9780571333745-british-museum.html) . He has won the Forward Prize for Best Individual Poem and Best First Collection, the South Bank Show Decibel Award and the Cholmondeley Award. His books have been nominated for the Costa Prize and twice for the T. S. Eliot Prize, and he has been selected as a New Generation Poet by the Poetry Book Society. He is the inaugural Poet-in-Residence for Radio 4 & 4 Extra, and presents a weekly programme, Poetry Extra (https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06qdjcn) , on Radio 4 Extra. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and was elected to its Council, and is a trustee of the Arvon Trust. He teaches at Brunel University, London. NISHA RAMAYYA is a poet and lecturer in Creative Writing at Queen Mary University of London. Her book, States of the Body Produced by Love (https://ignota.org/collections/featured/products/states-of-the-body-produced-by-love-by-nisha-ramayya) , is published by Ignota (2019). She has published three pamphlets: Notes on Sanskrit (2015) and Correspondences (2016) with Oystercatcher Press, and In Me The Juncture (https://sadpresspoetry.com/our-books/) (2019) with Sad Press. Threads (https://clinic-publishing.myshopify.com/collections/frontpage/products/threads) , a creative-critical pamphlet co-authored with Sandeep Parmar and Bhanu Kapil, is published by clinic. She is a member of the 'Race & Poetry & Poetics in the UK' research group and the interdisciplinary practice-as-research group Generative Constraints. Audio postcards featured in this episode ‘Reading Rilke in Berlin’, written and read by Aria Aber. The poem is taken from Aria Aber’s new book, Hard Damage (https://www.ariaaber.com/hard-damage-1) (University of Nebraska Press, 2019).  ‘Stand’, written and read by Jericho Brown. Jericho Brown’s most recent collection, The Tradition (https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/jericho-brown/the-tradition/9781529020472) , is out now from Picador and is a 2019 National Book Award for Poetry finalist. About the presenters RACHAEL ALLEN is the poetry editor at Granta, co-editor at the poetry press clinic and of online journal tender. A pamphlet of her poems was published as part of the Faber New Poets scheme, and her first collection, Kingdomland (https://www.faber.co.uk/9780571341115-kingdomland.html) , was published by Faber in January 2019. She is the recipient of an Eric Gregory award and New Writing North’s Andrew Waterhouse award. JACK UNDERWOOD is a poet, who also writes short fiction and non-fiction. A recipient of the Eric Gregory Award in 2007, he published his debut pamphlet in 2009 as part of the Faber New Poets series. His first collection Happiness (https://www.waterstones.com/book/happiness/jack-underwood/9780571313617) was published by Faber in 2015 and was winner of the 2016 Somerset Maugham prize. He is a lecturer in creative writing at Goldsmiths College and is currently writing a non-fiction book about poetry and uncertainty. Two pamphlets, Solo for Mascha Voice and Tenuous Rooms were published by Test Centre in 2018. The Faber Poetry Podcast is produced by Rachael Allen, Jack Underwood and Hannah Marshall for Faber & Faber. Editing by Strathmore Publishing. Special thanks to Aria Aber, Jericho Brown, Daljit Nagra and Nisha Ramayya.

In the penultimate episode of the second series, Ilya Kaminsky and Sophie Robinson join Jack and Rachael in the studio to discuss, among other things, poems with ‘big dick energy’, the blurring of poetry with other literary forms and the tension between metaphor and the denial of metaphor. Audio postcards are from Daisy Lafarge, Anthony Anaxagorou and Hugo Williams.  Listen to this episode and subscribe to the podcast so you don’t miss forthcoming episodes from the new season. Show notes  Studio guests ILYA KAMINSKY was born in the former Soviet Union and is now an American citizen. He is the author of two collections of poetry, Deaf Republic and Dancing in Odessa (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dancing-Odessa-Ilya-Kaminsky/dp/1908376120) , and co-editor of The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry. Deaf Republic (https://www.faber.co.uk/9780571351411-deaf-republic.html) has been shortlisted for the 2019 Forward Poetry Prize for Best Collection, the T. S. Eliot Prize and the National Book Award for Poetry. He has received a Whiting Award, a Lannan Literary Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship. His work has been translated into more than twenty languages. @ilya_poet (https://twitter.com/ilya_poet) SOPHIE ROBINSON teaches Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia and is the author of A and The Institute of Our Love in Disrepair. Her third collection, Rabbit (https://www.boilerhouse.press/product-page/rabbit) , was published by Boiler House Press in 2018 and was chosen for the winter PBS Wild Card Choice. Recent work has appeared in n+1, The White Review, Poetry Review, The Brooklyn Rail, Ploughshares, BOMB Magazine, and Granta. @sophiepoetry (https://twitter.com/sophiepoetry) Audio postcards featured in this episode ‘the willows on the common are still on fire’, written and read by Daisy Lafarge. Her pamphlets understudies for air (https://sadpresspoetry.com/our-books/) and capriccio (https://shop.spamzine.co.uk/product/capriccio) were published by Sad Press in 2017 and Spam Press in 2019 respectively. @janepaulette (https://twitter.com/janepaulette) ‘Cause’, written and read by Anthony Anaxagorou. Anthony’s most recent collection, After the Formalities (http://www.pennedinthemargins.co.uk/index.php/2019/08/after-the-formalities/) , is out now from Penned in the Margins and is shortlisted for the 2019 T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry. @Anthony1983 (https://twitter.com/Anthony1983) ‘Tara Browne’, written and read by Hugo Williams. Lines Off (https://www.faber.co.uk/9780571349753-lines-off.html) , Hugo’s latest collection, was published by Faber in June 2019.  About the presenters RACHAEL ALLEN is the poetry editor at Granta, co-editor at the poetry press Clinic and of online journal tender. A pamphlet of her poems was published as part of the Faber New Poets scheme, and her first collection, Kingdomland (https://www.faber.co.uk/9780571341115-kingdomland.html) , was published by Faber in January 2019. She is the recipient of an Eric Gregory award and New Writing North’s Andrew Waterhouse award. @r_vallen (https://twitter.com/r_vallen) JACK UNDERWOOD is a poet, who also writes short fiction and non-fiction. A recipient of the Eric Gregory Award in 2007, he published his debut pamphlet in 2009 as part of the Faber New Poets series. His first collection Happiness (https://www.waterstones.com/book/happiness/jack-underwood/9780571313617) was published by Faber in 2015 and was winner of the 2016 Somerset Maugham prize. He is a lecturer in creative writing at Goldsmiths College and is currently writing a non-fiction book about poetry and uncertainty. Two pamphlets, Solo for Mascha Voice and Tenuous Rooms were published by Test Centre in 2018. @underwood_jack (https://twitter.com/underwood_jack) The Faber Poetry Podcast is produced by Rachael Allen, Jack Underwood and Hannah Marshall for Faber & Faber. Editing by Strathmore Publishing. Special thanks to Anthony Anaxagorou, Ilya Kaminskyi, Daisy Lafarge, Sophie Robinson and Hugo Williams. 

Award-winning author, poet and dancer Tishani Doshi reads from - and premieres - a performance of SMALL DAYS AND NIGHTS, her acclaimed new Bloomsbury novel, during Heckfield's month celebrating the Value of Silence. She is in conversation with Lucy Hyslop, the Assembly's curator, and music during the performance is created by Luca Nardon. Of Welsh-Gujarati descent, Doshi has published seven books of poetry and fiction - a signed copy of her new book will be available to buy. Her essays, poems and short stories have been widely anthologised and she has contributed to the Guardian, Financial Times, International Herald Tribune and The Hindu. Doshi is the recipient of an Eric Gregory Award for Poetry, winner of the All-India Poetry Competition, and her first book, Countries of the Body, won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection in 2006. Her debut novel, The Pleasure Seekers, was long-listed for the Orange Prize and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and shortlisted for the Hindu Literary Prize. She lives in Tamil Nadu. Set against the vivid and evocative backdrop of modern India, Small Days and Nights is a story of family, of the ties that bind and the secrets we bury. Escaping her failing marriage, Grace has returned to Pondicherry to cremate her mother. Once there, she finds herself heir to an unexpected inheritance. First, there is the strange pink house, blue-shuttered, out on a spit of the wild beach, haunted by the rattle of fishermen in their catamarans. And then there is the sister she never knew she had: Lucia, who has spent her life in a residential facility. Soon Grace sets up a new and precarious life in this lush, melancholy wilderness, with Lucia, the village housekeeper Mallika, the drily witty Auntie Kavitha and an ever-multiplying litter of puppies. Here in Paramankeni, with its vacant bus stops colonised by flying foxes, its solitary temples and step-wells shielded by canopies of teak and tamarind, where every dusk the fishermen line the beach smoking and mending their nets, Grace feels that she has come to the very end of the world. But Grace’s attempts to play house prove first a struggle, then a strain, as she discovers the chaos, tenderness, fury and bewilderment of life with Lucia. Luminous, funny, surprising and heart-breaking, Small Days and Nights is the story of a woman caught in a moment of transformation, and the sacrifices we make to forge lives that have meaning. Acclaim for Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods: ‘Intelligent, elegant, unflinching’ Kamila Shamsie, Guardian, Best Summer Books, 2018 ‘Tishani Doshi combines artistic elegance with a visceral power to create a breath-taking panorama of danger, memory, beauty and the strange geographies of happiness. This is essential, immediate, urgent work and Doshi is that rare thing, an unashamed visionary’ John Burnside

This month Suzannah V Evans takes over as host; she's in conversation with Mary Jean Chan in an interview recorded at StAnza, Scotland's poetry festival, earlier this year. Chan was born in 1990 and raised in Hong Kong before continuing her education at the Universities of Oxford and London. She's already been nominated for the Forward Prize for Poetry's Best Single Poem category twice and earlier this year she was given an Eric Gregory Award. Her first full-length collection Flèche has just been published by Faber. During the podcast, Chan discusses fencing (where the term 'flèche' comes from), how learning English at a young age made her realise some languages are more valued than others, and queerness.

Our latest podcast departs from our usual interview format. It's a recording of a reading held in the Scottish Poetry Library in March. The poets featured are Nina Bogin, Eoghan Walls and Beverley Bie Brahic. Nina Bogin (pictured) was born in New York City and grew up on the north shore of Long Island. She attended Kirkland College and received a B.A. degree from New York University. She has lived in France since 1976. She taught English and literature at the University of Technology of Belfort-Montbéliard inFrance, until her retirement in 2017. She was a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Grant in 1989 and Graywolf Press published her first book of poems, In the North, that same year. Two books of poems followed, The Winter Orchards in 2001 and The Lost Hare in 2012, both published by Anvil Press. Her latest collection, Thousandfold, is published by Carcanet. Eoghan Walls was born in Derry in Northern Ireland. He attended Atlantic College on the coast of South Wales and has lived and taught in Germany, Rwanda, Scotland and presently, northern England. He won an Eric Gregory Award in 2006, an Irish Art's Council Bursary in 2009, and his work has been published widely in journals and anthologies throughout the UK and Ireland. His first collection of poems, The Salt Harvest, was published by Seren in 2011 and was shortlisted for the Strong Award for Best First Collection. He teaches creative writing at Lancaster University. His latest collection is Pigeon Songs, which is published by Seren. Beverley Bie Brahic is a poet and translator. A Canadian, she lives in Paris and the San Francisco Bay Area. Her second poetry collection, White Sheets, was a finalist for the 2012 Forward Prize. Brahic’s translations include Guillaume Apollinaire's The Little Auto, winner of the 2013 Scott Moncrieff Prize; and books by Jacques Derrida and Julia Kristeva.

Andrew McMillan's debut poetry collection, Physical, was the first ever poetry collection to win the Guardian First Book Award. It also won a Somerset Maugham Award, and Eric Gregory Award and a Northern Writers Award, was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Award, the Costa Poetry Award, the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year 2016, the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, the Roehampton Prize and the Polari First Book Prize. His second collection, Playtime, was published by Jonathan Cape in 2018 and is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation for Autumn 2018. A doctor of neuroscience by training and a former Royal Society fellow at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Rachel Genn's debut novel The Cure was published by Corsair in 2011. Her second novel, What You Could Have Won, is due for publication in 2019 by Sheffield-based publisher And Other Stories. She teaches creative writing MA programmes at Sheffield and the Manchester Writing School.

It's not so much about imagery or language as it is about longing for that human connection. It's imagining yourself into another life in order to connect with it and be less isolated. And that is the case in my poetry as well - imagination is a way of reaching other people. — Polly Clark Sean Robinson met with Polly Clark at Toppings bookshop, after her appearance at the School of Night, where she read from her novel Larchfield. They discussed the difference between writing a novel and writing a poem, as well as the roles of imagination and location in the writing process. Polly also read her poem 'Heaven' (at 14m55s). Polly Clark was born in Toronto and lives in Helensburgh on Scotland’s west coast, close to where W.H. Auden wrote The Orators. She is Literature Programme Producer for Cove Park, Scotland’s International Artist Residency Centre, and the author of three poetry collections. She won the MsLexia Prize for Larchfield, the Eric Gregory Award, and has been shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize. Larchfield will be published by Quercus under their riverrun imprint March 2017. Her pamphlet A Handbook for the Afterlife was shortlisted in the 2016 Michael Marks Awards and a volume of New and Selected Poems, Afterlife, is due in 2018. Sean Robinson is studying for a masters in poetry writing at St. Andrews under Don Paterson. An estwhile policy wonk, he graduated in 2013 from Oxford with a bachelors in Philosophy, Politics and Economics and worked for some time with the Civil Service, until deciding to chuck it all in to do something useful, and write poems. He is from London. Lessons from the School of Night are an irregular series of video or audio interviews and tips from poets and writers who visit St Andrews. The School of Night – inspired by the group which included Christopher Marlowe and Sir Walter Raleigh – is Topping & Company Booksellers' Year-Round Poetry Festival in St Andrews. Curated with the help of Don Paterson and playing host to poets as varied as Paul Muldoon and Lorraine Mariner, Simon Armitage and Annie Freud, it is anchored to a regular fixture on the last Tuesday of the month. The School of Night offers the chance to explore and discuss the work of some of the best poets on the contemporary scene. For more details on these and other events, please visit the Topping & Company website. Photo Credit: Johnny Adolphson, http://johnny-adolphson.pixels.com/

In this podcast, the poet Sarah Howe talks to Jennifer Williams about kicking off the 2016 Edinburgh International Book Festival, writing with multiple languages and alphabets, sense and non-sense in poetry and much more. http://sarahhowepoetry.com/home.html Sarah Howe is a British poet, academic and editor. Her first book, Loop of Jade (Chatto & Windus, 2015), won the T.S. Eliot Prize and The Sunday Times / PFD Young Writer of the Year Award, and was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Centre Poetry Prize and the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. Born in Hong Kong in 1983 to an English father and Chinese mother, she moved to England as a child. Her pamphlet, A Certain Chinese Encyclopedia (Tall-lighthouse, 2009), won an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors. Her poems have appeared in journals including Poetry Review, Poetry London, The Guardian, The Financial Times, Ploughshares and Poetry, as well as anthologies such as Ten: The New Wave and four editions of The Best British Poetry. She has performed her work at festivals internationally and on BBC Radio 3 & 4. She is the founding editor of Prac Crit, an online journal of poetry and criticism. Previous fellowships include a Research Fellowship at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, a Hawthornden Fellowship, the Harper-Wood Studentship for English Poetry and a Fellowship at Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute. Find out more about her latest academic projects here. She is currently a Leverhulme Fellow in English at University College London. Photo credit: Hayley Madden

In this podcast, Jennifer Williams talks to Sophie Collins about experimenting with starting points for creating poems, including using online translators and working with the unconscious; feminism and her role as co-editor of Tender (http://www.tenderjournal.co.uk/abouttender), a journal celebrating writing by women and the wide-ranging world of poetry translation from radical to faithful; and much more! Sophie Collins is co-editor of online quarterly tender, and editor of translation anthology Currently & Emotion (Test Centre, 2016). She received an Eric Gregory Award in 2014. Her first collection will be published by Penguin in 2017. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/sophie-collins

Philip Gross was born in 1952 in Cornwall, and grew up in Plymouth. With a Cornish mother and an Estonian father, Gross has emerged as one of the greatest poetic voices of displacement, conveying what Terry Eagleton views as “lost bearings and blurred frontiers” (Independent on Sunday). He won an Eric Gregory Award in 1981 and, in the following year, won the National Poetry Competition. He was recently awarded the TS Eliot Prize for his collection The Water Table (Bloodaxe, 2009). His other collections for adults include Familiars (Peterloo, 1983), The Ice Factory (Faber, 1984), Cat’s Whisker (Faber, 1987), The Son of the Duke of Nowhere (Faber, 1991), I.D. (Faber, 1994), The Wasting Game (Bloodaxe, 1998), Changes of Address: Poems 1980-1998 (Bloodaxe, 2001), Mappa Mundi (Bloodaxe, 2003) and The Egg of Zero (Bloodaxe, 2006).

ANDREW MOTION poet, novelist, and biographer, was Poet Laureate from 1999 to 2009 and was knighted in 2009. He founded the Poetry Archive, an online resource of poems and audio recordings of poets reading their own work, and the Poetry By Heart competition for school children. Andrew has won the Arvon Prize, the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, Eric Gregory Award, Whitbread Prize for Biography and the Dylan Thomas Prize.