Podcasts about poetry book society recommendation

Asian/Other: Life, Poems, and the Problem of Memoir was published in January 2025 by Icon Books. The book considers the political and psychological dimensions of diasporic identity as Ravinthiran leaps imaginatively between memoir and criticism—understanding his life through poetry, and vice versa. Ranging from Andrew Marvell to Divya Victor, Ravinthiran writes both about and through poems, discussing Sri Lanka, experiences of racism and resilience, and pandemic parenting to name a few. Vidyan Ravinthiran is the Gardner Cowles Associate Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University and teaches in the Department of English there. Born in Leeds to Sri Lankan Tamils, Ravinthiran completed his education at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, before moving to the US five years ago. His publications include Elizabeth Bishop's Prosaic (2015), Worlds Woven Together: Essays on Poetry and Poetics (2022) and Spontaneity and Form in Modern Prose (2022). Aside from his literary criticism, which has been published in numerous journals, he is also well known as a poet. His collections explore the tensions that arise between being and becoming in diasporic imaginaries. The Million-Petalled Flower of Being Here published by Bloodaxe in 2019 was the winner of the Northern Writers Award, awarded Poetry Book Society Recommendation and was shortlisted for the Forward Prize. An earlier collection, Gru-Tu-Molani published in 2014 was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, the Seamus Heaney Centre Poetry Prizeand the 2015 Michael Murphy Memorial Prize. This interview was hosted by Zana Mody, an English DPhil student at the University of Oxford, who works on postcolonial Indian literature and art. X: @mody_zana Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

Asian/Other: Life, Poems, and the Problem of Memoir was published in January 2025 by Icon Books. The book considers the political and psychological dimensions of diasporic identity as Ravinthiran leaps imaginatively between memoir and criticism—understanding his life through poetry, and vice versa. Ranging from Andrew Marvell to Divya Victor, Ravinthiran writes both about and through poems, discussing Sri Lanka, experiences of racism and resilience, and pandemic parenting to name a few. Vidyan Ravinthiran is the Gardner Cowles Associate Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University and teaches in the Department of English there. Born in Leeds to Sri Lankan Tamils, Ravinthiran completed his education at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, before moving to the US five years ago. His publications include Elizabeth Bishop's Prosaic (2015), Worlds Woven Together: Essays on Poetry and Poetics (2022) and Spontaneity and Form in Modern Prose (2022). Aside from his literary criticism, which has been published in numerous journals, he is also well known as a poet. His collections explore the tensions that arise between being and becoming in diasporic imaginaries. The Million-Petalled Flower of Being Here published by Bloodaxe in 2019 was the winner of the Northern Writers Award, awarded Poetry Book Society Recommendation and was shortlisted for the Forward Prize. An earlier collection, Gru-Tu-Molani published in 2014 was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, the Seamus Heaney Centre Poetry Prizeand the 2015 Michael Murphy Memorial Prize. This interview was hosted by Zana Mody, an English DPhil student at the University of Oxford, who works on postcolonial Indian literature and art. X: @mody_zana Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Asian/Other: Life, Poems, and the Problem of Memoir was published in January 2025 by Icon Books. The book considers the political and psychological dimensions of diasporic identity as Ravinthiran leaps imaginatively between memoir and criticism—understanding his life through poetry, and vice versa. Ranging from Andrew Marvell to Divya Victor, Ravinthiran writes both about and through poems, discussing Sri Lanka, experiences of racism and resilience, and pandemic parenting to name a few. Vidyan Ravinthiran is the Gardner Cowles Associate Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University and teaches in the Department of English there. Born in Leeds to Sri Lankan Tamils, Ravinthiran completed his education at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, before moving to the US five years ago. His publications include Elizabeth Bishop's Prosaic (2015), Worlds Woven Together: Essays on Poetry and Poetics (2022) and Spontaneity and Form in Modern Prose (2022). Aside from his literary criticism, which has been published in numerous journals, he is also well known as a poet. His collections explore the tensions that arise between being and becoming in diasporic imaginaries. The Million-Petalled Flower of Being Here published by Bloodaxe in 2019 was the winner of the Northern Writers Award, awarded Poetry Book Society Recommendation and was shortlisted for the Forward Prize. An earlier collection, Gru-Tu-Molani published in 2014 was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, the Seamus Heaney Centre Poetry Prizeand the 2015 Michael Murphy Memorial Prize. This interview was hosted by Zana Mody, an English DPhil student at the University of Oxford, who works on postcolonial Indian literature and art. X: @mody_zana Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/south-asian-studies

Asian/Other: Life, Poems, and the Problem of Memoir was published in January 2025 by Icon Books. The book considers the political and psychological dimensions of diasporic identity as Ravinthiran leaps imaginatively between memoir and criticism—understanding his life through poetry, and vice versa. Ranging from Andrew Marvell to Divya Victor, Ravinthiran writes both about and through poems, discussing Sri Lanka, experiences of racism and resilience, and pandemic parenting to name a few. Vidyan Ravinthiran is the Gardner Cowles Associate Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University and teaches in the Department of English there. Born in Leeds to Sri Lankan Tamils, Ravinthiran completed his education at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, before moving to the US five years ago. His publications include Elizabeth Bishop's Prosaic (2015), Worlds Woven Together: Essays on Poetry and Poetics (2022) and Spontaneity and Form in Modern Prose (2022). Aside from his literary criticism, which has been published in numerous journals, he is also well known as a poet. His collections explore the tensions that arise between being and becoming in diasporic imaginaries. The Million-Petalled Flower of Being Here published by Bloodaxe in 2019 was the winner of the Northern Writers Award, awarded Poetry Book Society Recommendation and was shortlisted for the Forward Prize. An earlier collection, Gru-Tu-Molani published in 2014 was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, the Seamus Heaney Centre Poetry Prizeand the 2015 Michael Murphy Memorial Prize. This interview was hosted by Zana Mody, an English DPhil student at the University of Oxford, who works on postcolonial Indian literature and art. X: @mody_zana Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/poetry

In this episode of The Writing Life, poets Rebecca Goss and Heidi Williamson discuss using place as a vessel to write about difficult subjects and memories in poetry. Rebecca Goss is a poet, tutor and mentor, living in Suffolk. Her poems have appeared in many literary journals, anthologies and have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and BBC Arts online. Her third full-length collection, Girl, was published with Carcanet/Northern House in 2019 and was shortlisted in the East Anglian Book Awards 2019. Her fourth full-length collection, Latch, was published in 2023. Heidi Williamson's first collection Electric Shadow was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry Prize. Heidi works with poets worldwide by Skype as a Poetry Surgeon for The Poetry Society, teaches for The Poetry School, and mentors writers through the National Centre for Writing. In this podcast, Rebecca and Heidi discuss the moments they knew they were ready to write about their past experiences, and the power that comes from giving yourself permission to feel the happiness alongside the pain when writing about difficult moments in their lives. They also explore the importance of drawing from memories of landscape and place, the power of quietness in poetry, and how researching for writing may initially feel inauthentic but is actually a powerful tool for building depth. 

Today's poem comes from Matthew Hollis' remarkable collection, Earth House, which blends explorations of the four cardinal directions and original translations of Anglo-Saxon verse from the Exeter Book. Matthew Hollis was born in Norwich in 1971, and now lives in London. His debut Ground Water (Bloodaxe Books, 2004) was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award, the Whitbread Poetry Award and the Forward Prize for Best First Collection; it was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. He is co-editor of Strong Words: Modern Poets on Modern Poetry (Bloodaxe Books, 2000) and 101 Poems Against War (Faber & Faber, 2003), and editor of Selected Poems of Edward Thomas (Faber & Faber, 2011). Now All Roads Lead to France: the Last Years of Edward Thomas (Faber & Faber, UK, 2011; Norton, US, 2012) won the Costa Biography Award and the H. W. Fisher Biography Prize, was Radio 4 Book of the Week and Sunday Times Biography of the Year. He has published the handmade and letterpress pamphlets Stones (Incline Press, 2016), East (Clutag Press, 2016), Leaves (Hazel Press, 2020) and Havener (Bonnefant Press, 2022). Leaves was shortlisted for the Michael Marks Poetry Award 2021. He is the author of The Waste Land: A Biography of a Poem (Faber & Faber, UK, Norton, US, 2022). He was Poetry Editor at Faber & Faber from 2012 to 2023. His second book-length collection, Earth House, was published by Bloodaxe Books in 2023 and was longlisted for The Laurel Prize 2023.-bio via Bloodaxe Books Get full access to The Daily Poem Podcast at dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe

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.

Jasmine reads from her new poetry collection 'Inheritance' published by Bad Betty Press. We had a deep and inspiring conversation about the role writing and reading played in her life as a child and teenager. She talks about her work as a psychotherapist and why she sees the sessions she has with her clients as a freeform improvised poem. Jasmine reads some beautiful poems from her book, and talks about her current daily poetry practice and how it relates to play.   Bio: Jasmine Cooray is a poet, psychotherapist and facilitator. After spending her 20s oversharing on London's poetry circuit, she had the opportunity to deliver creative writing projects for The Barbican, The Southbank Centre, First Story, the National Literacy Trust and Arvon. She has also been a WOW Festival speaker, BBC Performing Arts Fellow, and Writer-in-Residence at the National University of Singapore. Her debut poetry collection ‘Inheritance' was published with Bad Betty Press in November 2023 and received a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. You can find Jasmine on instagram Inheritance can be bought from: Bad Betty Press Poetry Book Society Waterstones   Show host - Naomi Woddis Music and production : Gavin O'Brien - Citóg

In this episode, poet, playwright, teacher and activist Jacqueline Saphra talks to us about the poem that has been a friend to her: 'Ceasefire' by Michael Longley.We are so grateful to Jacqueline for joining us at this time, to talk about this beautiful poem and the part it has played in her life.Jacqueline Saphra is a poet, playwright, teacher and activist. She is the author of nine plays, five chapbooks and five poetry collections. The Kitchen of Lovely Contraptions (flipped eye) was shortlisted for the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize and If I Lay on my Back I Saw Nothing But Naked Women (The Emma Press) won Best Collaborative Work at The Sabotage Awards. Recent collections from Nine Arches Press are All My Mad Mothers (shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize), Dad, Remember You are Dead and One Hundred Lockdown Sonnets. Jacqueline is a founder member of Poets for the Planet and teaches at The Poetry School. Her latest collection, Velvel's Violin (Nine Arches Press, 2023) is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation.Jacqueline is in conversation with The Poetry Exchange hosts, Fiona Bennett and Michael Shaeffer.*********Ceasefireby Michael LongleyIPut in mind of his own father and moved to tearsAchilles took him by the hand and pushed the old kingGently away, but Priam curled up at his feet andWept with him until their sadness filled the building.IITaking Hector's corpse into his own hands AchillesMade sure it was washed and, for the old king's sake,Laid out in uniform, ready for Priam to carryWrapped like a present home to Troy at daybreak.IIIWhen they had eaten together, it pleased them bothTo stare at each other's beauty as lovers might,Achilles built like a god, Priam good-looking stillAnd full of conversation, who earlier had sighed:IV‘I get down on my knees and do what must be doneAnd kiss Achilles' hand, the killer of my son.'From 'Ghost Orchid' (Jonathan Cape, 1998), copyright © Michael Longley 1998. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What self-consciousnesses do artists carry? It can be difficult to know how to hold onto confidence in your work, especially when small jibes from others remain long after apologies have been offered. Art compels and calls, and also complicates.Vidyan Ravinthiran was born in Leeds to Sri Lankan Tamils. His first book of poems, Grun-tu-molani (Bloodaxe Books, 2014), was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, the Seamus Heaney Centre Poetry Prize, and the Michael Murphy Memorial Prize. His second, The Million-petalled Flower of Being Here (Bloodaxe Books, 2019), won a Northern Writers Award and a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. It was shortlisted for the 2019 Forward Prize for Best Collection, the 2019 T.S. Eliot Prize, and the 2021 Ledbury Munthe Poetry Prize for Second Collections. He is the author of Elizabeth Bishop's Prosaic (Bucknell, 2015); a collection of essays, Worlds Woven Together (Columbia University Press, 2022); a critical study, Spontaneity and Form in Modern Prose (OUP, 2020); and Asian/Other, a fusion of poetry criticism and memoir forthcoming from Icon in the U.K. and Norton in the U.S. Ravinthiran is an associate professor of English at Harvard University.Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.We're pleased to offer Vidyan Ravinthiran's poem, and invite you to connect with Poetry Unbound throughout this season.

Writers choose a Black Country scene to reveal something of this strangely hidden region. Poet Liz Berry is taking a nighttime drive to the top of a hill in the Black Country to visit the ghosts of her childhood in Sedgley. Liz's first book of poems, Black Country, a ‘sooty, soaring hymn to her native West Midlands' (Guardian) was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, received a Somerset Maugham Award, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Award and Forward Prize for Best First Collection. Liz's pamphlet The Republic of Motherhood was a Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice and the title poem won the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem. In her latest book, The Home Child, a novel in verse, Liz reimagines the story of her great aunt Eliza Showell, one of the many children forcibly migrated to Canada as part of the British Child Migrant schemes. Producer: Rosie Boulton A Must Try Softer Production A co-funded project between the BBC, The Space and Arts Council England.

"I think affinity bias is the one where I feel is the deal breaker , if you can meet someone, and you can see something in them, that reflect you be a principle, be a belief, be it a way that you would like to be seen. I think that's the one that draws you in, you know, we talk about being charismatic, we talk about being charming,some people are very naturally charismatic, which means it's not, you know, they're not learned. It's not trained. But I also think there's an element of how does that charisma impact and affect us in different ways?" Anthony Anaxagorou is a British-born Cypriot poet, fiction writer, essayist, publisher and poetry educator. Anthony is the winner of the 2023 Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje prize for his most recent poetry collection “Heritage Aesthetics” published by Granta. The chair of judges, journalist Samira Ahmed, said Anthony's poetry “is beautiful, but does not sugar coat. The arsenic of historical imperial arrogance permeates the Britain he explores in his writing. And the joy of this collection comes from his strength, knowledge, maturity, but also from deeply felt love.” His poetry has been published in POETRY, The Poetry Review, Poetry London, New Statesman, Granta, and elsewhere. His work has also appeared on BBC Newsnight, BBC Radio 4, ITV, Vice UK, Channel 4 and Sky Arts. His second collection After the Formalities published with Penned in the Margins is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and was shortlisted for the 2019 T.S Eliot Prize along with the 2021 Ledbury Munthe Poetry Prize for Second Collections. It was also a Telegraph and Guardian poetry book of the year. In 2022 he founded Propel Magazine, an online literary journal featuring the work of poets yet to publish a first collection. Anthony is artistic director of Out-Spoken, a monthly poetry and music night held at London's Southbank Centre, and publisher of Out-Spoken Press. This is what one reviewer says of Anthony and his work ‘One of the most politically engaged poets of our time, Anthony holds the busy intersectionality of history, politics and ideology in poems that remain fresh and open. To stay up to date, follow @SmitaTharoor on Smita Tharoor (@SmitaTharoor) / Twitter or Smita Tharoor (@smitatharoor) | Instagram and follow the podcast on your favorite streaming service.

A lunchtime 'in conversation' event on April 4th, 2023, featuring Rooney Writer Fellow Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe in conversation with Dr Sean Hewitt (School of English, TCD), organized by Trinity Long Room Hub. Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe is a poet, pacifist and fabulist. Auguries of a Minor God, her first collection, was published by Faber & Faber in 2021. A finalist for the Dylan Thomas Prize, John Pollard Foundation International Poetry Prize and the Butler Literary Award, it was chosen as a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, National Poetry Day Recommendation, Shakespeare & Co. Year of Reading Selection, and a Book of the Year by both The Irish Times and The Irish Independent. Seán Hewitt is a poet, writer and literary critic. Before joining Trinity, he held postdoctoral positions at University College Cork and at TCD, funded by the Leverhulme Trust and the Irish Research Council, respectively. His teaching and research interests are mainly focused on late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century British and Irish literature. He also has an ongoing interest in the environmental humanities, and in studies of literature and science.

Bill welcomes poet and biographer Matthew Hollis to the show. Matthew is a poet, biographer, editor, and teacher. His first full-length collection Ground Water was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award, the Whitbread Poetry Award, the Forward Prize for poetry, as well as being a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. He is also the author of Now All Roads Lead to France, a critically acclaimed biography of seminal English poet Edward Thomas. His most recent work is Waste Land: A Biography of a Poem. 

Recorded November 8, 2022 A special event exploring poetry and resistance organized by the Trinity Centre for Resistance Studies and Poetry Ireland as part of the Literature and Resistance Series. Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe and Anthony Anaxagorou joined us to read from their work, and to discuss how ideas of resistance inform and emerge from their writing, and how such ideas have also shaped their work beyond poetry, in research, teaching, mentoring, and publishing. The evening was introduced and chaired by Seán Hewitt, award-winning author of Tongues of Fire (2020) and All Down Darkness Wide (2022), and Teaching Fellow in the School of English at Trinity. Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe is a poet, pacifist and fabulist. Auguries of a Minor God, her first collection, was a finalist for the 2022 Dylan Thomas Prize, John Pollard Foundation International Poetry Prize and the Butler Literary Award. In 2021, it was chosen as a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, National Poetry Day Recommendation, Shakespeare & Co. Year of Reading Selection, and a Book of the Year by both The Irish Times and The Irish Independent. The recipient of a Next Generation Artist Award and Ireland Chair of Poetry Award, she serves as an advisor on the boards of Culture Ireland and Diversifying Irish Poetry. Founder of the Play It Forward Fellowships for writers traditionally underrepresented in Irish literature, she is poetry editor at Skein Press and Fallow Media, and contributing editor with The Stinging Fly. Anthony Anaxagorou is a British-born Cypriot poet, fiction writer, essayist, publisher and poetry educator. He is publications include the collections After the Formalities (Penned in the Margins, 2019), which was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize and was a Poetry Book of the Year in both the Guardian and the Telegraph, and Heritage Aesthetics, published in November 2022. He is also the author of How To Write It (Merky Books, 2020), a practical guide fused with tips and memoir looking at the politics of writing, the craft of poetry and fiction, and the wider publishing industry. In 2022 Anthony founded Propel Magazine, an online literary journal featuring the work of poets yet to publish a first collection. He is artistic director of Out-Spoken, a monthly poetry and music night held at London's Southbank Centre, and publisher of Out-Spoken Press.

In this episode, poet Ella Frears talks about the poem that has been a friend to her: The The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot. Ella Frears is a poet and artist based in London. Her debut collection, Shine, Darling, (Offord Road Books, 2020) was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and was shortlisted for both the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, and the T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry. Her latest pamphlet I AM THE MOTHER CAT written as part of her residency at John Hansard Gallery is out with Rough Trade Books (2021).  Ella was recently named Poet in Residence for the Dartington Trust's grade II listed Gardens, selected by Alice Oswald. She is a trustee and editor for Magma Poetry and has been Poet in Residence for the National Trust, Tate Britain, The John Hansard Gallery, K6 Gallery, SPUD (the Observatory), conservation organisation Back from the Brink, and was poet in residence at Royal Holloway University physics department, writing about the Cassini Space Mission. https://ellafrears.com Ella is in conversation with The Poetry Exchange hosts Fiona Bennett and Michael Shaeffer.

Liz Berry was born in the Black Country which gave her first collection its title. Black Country won a chorus of praise, not to mention a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, a Somerset Maugham Award, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Award and Forward Prize for Best First Collection. The collection is characterised by poems written in the Black Country dialect. Her recent pamphlet The Republic of Motherhood was a Poetry Book Society Pamphlet choice and was shortlisted for the Michael Marks Award, while its title poem won the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem 2018.  Recorded at the StAnza Poetry Festival in St Andrews, Berry talks about the lack of poetry that tells the truth about the experience of childbirth and rearing, the Black Country accent and pigeons.

Beverley Bie Brahic is a Canadian poet and translator who lives in Paris, France and the San Francisco Bay Area. Her poetry collection, White Sheets, was a finalist for the Forward Prize and a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. Her translations include Guillaume Apollinaire, Francis Ponge and Yves Bonnefoy. Suzannah V. Evans spoke with her at StAnza 2020, where she discussed how translating poetry inspires her own work, owning a secret shelf of erotic literature, and being a ‘selfish translator'.

Last year Stephanie Sy-Quia spoke to online editor Josie Mitchell about modern cathedrals, telling her grandmothers' stories and the impulse to categorise. Stephanie Sy-Quia's debut poetry collection Amnion was selected as a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. Her writing has appeared in the FT Weekend, the TLS, the Economist, the Spectator and TANK magazine, and has twice been shortlisted for the FT Bodley Head Essay Prize. You can read an excerpt from Amnion on granta.com. 

Another instalment this time with a poet so bloody brilliant it feels almost pointless to give her an introduction. She was named as one of Mslexia's ‘top ten' women poets of the decade, as well as being chosen as one of the Poetry Book Society's Next Generation poets. Her book ‘Burying the Wren' was published in 2012; it was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, and shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize and a Times Literary Supplement book of the year. She has such a wealth of knowledge, I can honestly say I learnt a lot in this session! Today we talk about Wild Iris by Louise Gluck. Enjoy.

What if there is no language to describe what the body experiences? In this episode, I talk to Deryn Rees-Jones about poetry and illness. Deryn shares what it feels like being a poet and tackling the complexity of life. With her personal experience of Long Covid, she talks about the challenge of how to use language to describe the precarious state of the body and finding ways to connect with the experience of others. In this amazing conversation, we go deep into topics of the everyday that are at the same time fundamental to human existence. Poets try to find a bridge through language so that experience can be articulated, understood, and shared. Moving beyond illness, we look at poetry and intersectional feminism, the climate crisis – and war. As a special treat, Deryn reads two of her poems: “The Cure” and “Drone” - both are immensely powerful and scarily topical. Deryn Rees-Jones is a poet, an editor and a critic, as well as a professor of creative writing at the University of Liverpool. In 2004, Deryn was named as one of Mslexia's ‘top ten' women poets of the decade. In 2010 she received a Cholmondeley Award from the Society of Authors. Deryn's most recent book of poems, 'Erato', published in 2019, was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, and shortlisted for The Welsh Book of the Year and the TS Eliot Prize in 2019. You can find her poem ‘The Cure' here You can read '14 Little Pieces on Love' here ‘Drone' is one of the poem in ‘Erato' --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/michaela-mahlberg/message

The final episode of the second season and it is a special one. We are joined by the wonderful Ella Frears. She is a poet and artist based in London. Her debut collection, Shine, Darling, (Offord Road Books, 2020) was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and was shortlisted for both the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, and the T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry. She has had poetry published in the LRB, Poetry London, The Guardian, The Telegraph, Ambit, The Rialto, and the Moth among others. Today she brings in two strange, short poems. One by Dianne Williams called The Idea of Counting. The other is by Michael Earl Craig and it's called Tomatoes Disrespect us.

Beverley Bie Brahic is a Canadian poet and translator who lives in Paris, France and the San Francisco Bay Area. Her poetry collection, White Sheets, was a finalist for the Forward Prize and a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. Her translations include Guillaume Apollinaire, Francis Ponge and Yves Bonnefoy. Suzannah V. Evans spoke with her at StAnza 2020, where she discussed how translating poetry inspires her own work, owning a secret shelf of erotic literature, and being a 'selfish translator'.

Listen to Anthony Anaxagorou performing his beautiful poem ‘Things Already Lost’ especially for the Salon at the recent Cheltenham Literature Festival. Anthony is a British-born Cypriot poet, fiction writer, essayist, publisher and poetry educator. His poetry has been published in POETRY, The Poetry Review, Poetry London, Granta, and more, and has appeared on BBC Newsnight, BBC Radio 4, ITV, Vice UK, Channel 4 and Sky Arts. This poem is from his second collection After the Formalities, published by Penned in the Margins in September 2019, which is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and has been shortlisted for the 2019 T.S Eliot Prize. Anthony was awarded the 2019 H-100 Award for writing and publishing, and the 2015 Groucho Maverick Award for his poetry and fiction. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Liz Berry was born in the Black Country which gave her first collection its title. Black Country won a chorus of praise, not to mention a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, a Somerset Maugham Award, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Award and Forward Prize for Best First Collection. The collection is characterised by poems written in the Black Country dialect. Her recent pamphlet The Republic of Motherhood was a Poetry Book Society Pamphlet choice and was shortlisted for the Michael Marks Award, while its title poem won the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem 2018.  Recorded at the StAnza Poetry Festival in St Andrews, Berry talks about the lack of poetry that tells the truth about the experience of childbirth and rearing, the Black Country accent and pigeons.

Blackwell's were delighted to be joined by Carcanet poets on the 7th of February for a wonderful evening of poetry and discussion with three of Carcanet's most prominent poets, Beverley Bie Brahic, Alison Brackenbury and Nina Bogin. Beverley Bie Brahic is a poet, translator and occasional critic. Her collection White Sheets was a finalist for the 2012 Forward Prize; Hunting the Boar (2016) was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, and her translation, Guillaume Apollinaire, The Little Auto, won the 2013 Scott Moncrieff Prize. Other translations include Francis Ponge, Unfinished Ode to Mud, a 2009 Popescu Prize finalist, and books by Hélène Cixous, Yves Bonnefoy, Jacques Derrida and Julia Kristeva. Brahic was born in Saskatoon, Canada, grew up in Vancouver, and now lives in Paris and the San Francisco Bay Area. Alison Brackenbury was born in Lincolnshire in 1953 and studied at Oxford. She now lives in Gloucestershire, where she works, as a director and manual worker, in the family metal finishing business. Her Carcanet collections include Dreams of Power (1981), Breaking Ground (1984), Christmas Roses (1988), Selected Poems (1991), 1829 (1995), After Beethoven (2000) and Bricks and Ballads (2004). Her poems have been included on BBC Radio 3 and 4, and 1829 was produced by Julian May for Radio 3. Her work recently won a Cholmondeley Award. Nina Bogin, poet and translator, was born in New York City and has lived in France since 1976. Her previous collections are In the North, The Winter Orchards and The Lost Hare. In addition to numerous translations in the domain of art history, her translation of The Illiterate by Agota Kristof was published in 2013. The evening will be chaired by Bernard O’Donoghue, Emeritus Fellow of Wadham College, where he taught Medieval English and Modern Irish Poetry. He has published six collections of poetry, including Gunpowder, winner of the 1995 Whitbread Prize for Poetry, and Farmers Cross (2011) which was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot prize as well as a verse translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (2006). Music: Borrtex - Children's Joy.

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.

Liz Berry's debut collection, Black Country (Chatto & Windus, 2014), was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, received a Somerset Maugham Award, won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Award and won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection 2014. Black Country was chosen as a book of the year by The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Mail, The Big Issue and The Morning Star. Liz’s poems have been broadcast on BBC Radio, television and recorded for the Poetry Archive. She has been a judge for major prizes including The Forward Prizes for Poetry and Foyle Young Poets. Liz works as a tutor for The Arvon Foundation, Writer’s Centre Norwich and Writing West Midlands. Mona Arshi is a poet and lawyer. Her poem 'Hummingbird' won first prize in the Magma Magazine poetry competition in 2012. She also was one of the Competition winners for the World Events Young Artists Festival in September 2012. She was also an award winner in the Troubadour International Competition for her poem ‘Bad day in the Office’. In 2014, she was joint winner of the Manchester Creative Writing Competition. A portfolio of her poems appeared in TEN-THE NEW WAVE in 2014 by Bloodaxe books. Mona’s poetry has been published widely in magazines including Poetry Review, Magma, Rialto and the Sunday Times. Her début collection of poem ‘Small Hands’ was published by Liverpool University in 2015 and won the Forward Prize for best first collection. Mona was one of ten poets selected for the ‘Complete Works’, a national development programme funded by the Arts Council.

Two poet-translators rattle their sabres for a duel of words and French poetry! Listen to MPT's translation duel which took place at Ledbury Poetry Festival, Sunday 9 July 2017. Olivia McCannon and Susan Wicks went head-to-head with their translations of a poem by Ariane Dreyfus. *No poets were harmed in the production of this event*. About the translators: Olivia McCannon is a translator of Balzac and winner of the Jerwood Aldeburgh First Collection Prize. Susan Wicks’ translations of Valérie Rouzeau have won prizes and her own seventh collection, The Months was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation.