SLAMbassadors Artistic Director Joelle Taylor speaks to poet Sabrina Mahfouz in this Poetry Society podcast, to discuss How You Might Know Me, Sabrina's new poetic exploration of women who work in the sex industry. They also speak on the surprising ways that fashion, immigrant and queer cultures intersect, the battle for cultural recognition fought by today's spoken word artists, and more. Sabrina reads her poem 'Why I Can't Marry You', taken from her new book. How You Might Know Me launches on ...
Oct 25, 2016•21 min
Joelle Taylor chats to spoken word artist Salena Godden about the UK's spoken word poetry scene, past present and future, as well as her experience with the recent BBC iPlayer documentary 'We Belong Here'. Salena also reads and discusses her poem 'Titanic', tells us the best and worst gig she's ever been to, and more. To connect with more poetry, visit poetrysociety.org.uk
Oct 21, 2016•33 min
Jen Hadfield was commissioned by The Poetry Society and the Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, to write her poem, ‘The Lantern Fly’, inspired by an exhibition of paintings by the German artist and entomologist Maria Merian. She talks to Judith Palmer about the “jewelline, sparkling” natural world of her home on Shetland, and how Merian’s pioneering spirit and paintings inspired a poem in which death is represented by the lantern fly, “unable to find the person that it’s meant to be ministering ...
Jul 05, 2016•14 min
Listen to Jen Hadfied's entrancing reading of her new poem, 'The Lantern Fly', commissioned by The Poetry Society and the Royal Collection Trust, and inspired by Maria Sibylla Merian's painting of a lantern fly. The exhibition of Merian's paintings, Maria Merian's Butterflies, was first shown at The Queen's Gallery, Palace of Holyroodhouse, and continues at The Queen's Gallery, Buckingham Palace, until 9 October 2016. This recording was made on 26 May 2016 at The Poetry Society premises. To conn...
Jun 20, 2016•2 min
Emily Berry, who will jointly edit the summer 2016 issue of The Poetry Review, talks to Maurice Riordan about taste, humour and subverting conventional power relationships. They discuss her Forward Prize-winning debut collection, Dear Boy, and shift in tone and subject matter of her upcoming collection Stranger, Baby. Emily also reads her poem ‘Aqua’.
Apr 05, 2016•17 min
Frank Ormsby was Editor of The Honest Ulsterman during one of the most illustrious phases of Irish poetry. He talks about the involvement of poets such as Heaney, Longley, Carson and Muldoon, and his own long career as a writer. His poems – modest, humorous, deeply felt and generally slow to appear – have latterly been written in a “mad excitement” he remains suspicious of – “the belated release of something”. Ormsby also talks movingly about suffering from Parkinson’s disease and its effect on ...
Mar 17, 2016•28 min
Iain Galbraith reads ‘December 1914’ from his Popescu Prize winning translation of Jan Wagner’s collection Self-Portrait with a Swarm of Bees, published by Arc Publications. The Popescu European Poetry Translation Prize is awarded biennially by The Poetry Society for a volume of poetry translated from a European language into English. The judges this year are Olivia McCannon and Clare Pollard. The prize is supported in 2015 by the British Council. For more information on the 2015 Popescu Prize a...
Dec 16, 2015•7 min
Ian Galbraith reads ‘December 1914’ in the original German and from his Popescu Prize winning translation of Jan Wagner’s collection Self-Portrait with a Swarm of Bees, published by Arc Publications. The Popescu European Poetry Translation Prize is awarded biennially by The Poetry Society for a volume of poetry translated from a European language into English. The judges this year are Olivia McCannon and Clare Pollard. The prize is supported in 2015 by the British Council. For more information o...
Dec 16, 2015•3 min
Anne Stokes reads ‘Earth’ from her Popescu Prize shortlisted translation of Sarah Kirsch’s collection Ice Roses: Selected Poems, published by Carcanet. The Popescu European Poetry Translation Prize has been awarded biennially by The Poetry Society for a volume of poetry translated from a European language into English. The judges this year are Olivia McCannon and Clare Pollard. The prize is supported in 2015 by the British Council. For more information on the 2015 Popescu Prize and selected poem...
Dec 16, 2015•3 min
David Constantine reads ‘When I Left You, Afterwards…’ from his Popescu Prize shortlisted translation of Bertolt Brecht’s collection Love Poems, published by Liveright. The Popescu European Poetry Translation Prize has been awarded biennially by The Poetry Society for a volume of poetry translated from a European language into English. The judges this year are Olivia McCannon and Clare Pollard. The prize is supported in 2015 by the British Council. For more information on the 2015 Popescu Prize ...
Dec 16, 2015•46 sec
Tom Kuhn reads ‘Discovery about a Young Woman’ from his Popescu Prize shortlisted translation of Bertolt Brecht’s collection Love Poems, published by Liveright. The Popescu European Poetry Translation Prize has been awarded biennially by The Poetry Society for a volume of poetry translated from a European language into English. The judges this year are Olivia McCannon and Clare Pollard. The prize is supported in 2015 by the British Council. For more information on the 2015 Popescu Prize and sele...
Dec 16, 2015•1 min
Susan Wicks reads ‘The Poem for Jacques’ from her Popescu Prize shortlisted translation of Valérie Rouzeau’s collection Talking Vrouz, published by Arc Publications. The Popescu European Poetry Translation Prize has been awarded biennially by The Poetry Society for a volume of poetry translated from a European language into English. The judges this year are Olivia McCannon and Clare Pollard. The prize is supported in 2015 by the British Council. For more information on the 2015 Popescu Prize and...
Dec 16, 2015•2 min
Helen Mort talks to Maurice Riordan about writing and the problem of observation; Jeremy Deller’s Battle of Orgreave and her poem ‘Scab’; writing on the run; neuroscience, Norman MacCaig, John Burnside and Paul Muldoon, and how writing her first novel is both similar to and different from writing poems. Helen is a five times winner of Foyle Young Poets of the Year. Her first collection, Division Street (Chatto & Windus) was shortlisted for the Costa Prize and the T.S. Eliot Prize and, in 201...
Dec 10, 2015•22 min
‘Awater’, written by Martinus Nijhoff in 1934, is considered the great Dutch modernist poem. Hailed by Brodsky as “the future of poetry”, it is still barely known outside the Netherlands. In it, the poet-narrator trails his mysterious neighbour – Awater – through the city night before abandoning the trail in a train station. Is the poem about the imagination, the unconscious mind, about bereavement, about the existential hollow in the wake of the First World War, about T.S. Eliot, about religion...
Dec 09, 2015•10 min
US poet Paul Nemser was delighted to have been commended in the The Poetry Society's National Poetry Competition – "an opportunity to have one's work looked at [anonymously] by very, very good poets". He spoke to Mike Sims about being taught by Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop and Stanley Kunitz, the benefits of translating poetry and why competitions matter.
Sep 04, 2015•19 min
"I'm struck by the meaninglessness of words, how slippery they are and yet I also want to believe in them. I'm left stuck between the two." Zaffar Kunial talks to Maurice Riordan about all his successes in 2014: winning the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize, his residency at the Wordsworth Trust (his first job as a 'poet') and publication in the Faber New Poets series. He also talks about writing for Hallmark Cards, bilingualism, identity and discovering his voice as a poet. He also reads his poem 'Fielder...
Aug 13, 2015•16 min
Don Share, editor of Poetry, talks to Maurice Riordan, editor of The Poetry Review, about their magazines' latest exchange of American and British poems, and how writers and readers on both sides of the Atlantic benefit from wider exposure to the two traditions. They also discuss 'Prufrock' – first published in Poetry 150 years ago – Young Turks, Old Possums, an editor's luck and typos.
Jul 03, 2015•16 min
'Enough Sky' was commended in The Poetry Society's 2014 National Poetry Competition. From the judges: 'From the start, 'Enough Sky' impresses with its tight lyricism and careful adjectives. It is delightfully elusive and warrants repeated reading. A poem which crept up on me and won me over with its spell and its surprising phrases - 'urging tangerine starward', 'seeking gauze to pull away''. This is a poem which feels longer than it is because it packs in a lot - lush and distilled.'' - Roddy L...
Jun 12, 2015•1 min
Orla was one of the winners of the Young Poets Network mini writing competition with the Reading Agency, to write a poem about reading. http://www.youngpoetsnetwork.org.uk/2015/03/17/writing-about-reading-the-latest-mini-competition/
May 12, 2015•1 min
Working in collaboration with Royal Collection Trust, The Poetry Society commissioned Forward Prize winning poet Kei Miller to create a new poem. Place Name – Oracabessa, skilfully unites the themes of Gold and Journeys and follows the form of Miller's award winning collection 'The Cartographer tries to map his way to Zion'. The poem was premiered at an evening event in The Queen's Gallery on Thursday, 12 February 2015 to a full audience.
Apr 17, 2015•3 min
"Many writers write not because they're fluent or because they have any kind of ability in a language but for the exact opposite reason." Paul Muldoon talks to Maurice Riordan, Editor of The Poetry Review, about Heaney, Beckett and Joyce, and reads 'A Dent' from his new collection, One Thousand Things Worth Knowing (Faber).
Feb 05, 2015•23 min
US poet Kim Addonizio talks to Maurice Riordan, Editor of The Poetry Review, about riffing on the canon and traditional forms, her view that "emotional experience is the essence of any art" and how "the best humour is also dark and traffics with something else" – how she uses poetry as a process of discovery. She also reads her new poem 'White Flower, Red Flower'.
Dec 02, 2014•20 min
Rose was one of the winners of the Young Poets Network Edith Sitwell challenge. http://www.youngpoetsnetwork.org.uk/2014/03/24/edith-sitwell-eccentricity-and-sounds-new-writing-challenge/
Jul 11, 2014•4 min
Linda France, winner of the National Poetry Competition 2013, presented by the Poetry Society, talks about her why entering competitions is so worthwhile, which poems she enters and why, how the competition connects the world of poetry and why anonymity matters.
Jul 01, 2014•17 min
Simon Armitage talks about his writing home – his teenager's bedroom in Marsden, West Yorkshire, of taking poetry out into the world on long walks, on the radio and in the theatre – the "go anywhere artform" in Les Murray's phrase. He also talks about compiling his new Selected and reads his new poems 'Camera Obscura' and 'Paper Aeroplane'.
Jun 30, 2014•21 min
This poem was specially commissioned by the British Museum, London, in partnership with the Poetry Society. It was inspired by the exhibition, 'Germany Divided: Baselitz & his generation', at the British Museum, London, 2014. http://www.britishmuseum.org/whats_on/exhibitions/germany_divided.aspx
Jun 24, 2014•3 min
This poem was specially commissioned by the British Museum, London, in partnership with the Poetry Society. It was inspired by the exhibition, 'Germany Divided: Baselitz & his generation', at the British Museum, London, 2014. http://www.britishmuseum.org/whats_on/exhibitions/germany_divided.aspx
Jun 24, 2014•3 min
This poem was specially commissioned by the British Museum, London, in partnership with the Poetry Society. It was inspired by the exhibition, 'Germany Divided: Baselitz & his generation', at the British Museum, London, 2014. http://www.britishmuseum.org/whats_on/exhibitions/germany_divided.aspx
Jun 24, 2014•3 min
Adlestrop - read by Lance Pierson by The Poetry Society
Jun 20, 2014•1 min
The Blackbirds Come by Kim Rooney by The Poetry Society
Jun 17, 2014•29 sec
