This episode features Cahal Dallat, poet, critic and musician, talking about W.B.Yeats in his capacity as founder-organiser of the WB Yeats Bedford Park Artwork Project. Cahal also read some of his own poems from his recent collection, Beautiful Lofty Things. In keeping with Cahal's talk, the theme for this episode was 'after' - in the sense of 'influence' or temporally, or anything else poets took it to be. So we have poems from Lyn Thornton, Helen Overell, Matt Bryden, Trisha Broomfield, Stephen Paul Wren, Diana Bell, Heather Moulson, Simon Rees and Dinah Livingstone.
Born in Ballycastle, County Antrim, poet, musician and critic Cahal Dallat lives in London where he is founder/organiser of the WB Yeats Bedford Park Artwork Project and a regular contributor to BBC Radio 4’s Saturday Review . Winner of both Strokestown International and Keats-Shelley poetry prizes, also 2017 Charles Causley Centenary Artist-in-Residence (Launceston, Cornwall), 2018 Research Fellow at Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas (Austin TX), and 2019 joint Writer-in-Residence (with Anne-Marie Fyfe) at Lenoir-Rhyne University (Hickory NC). Latest collection, Beautiful Lofty Things (Salmon Poetry, Ennistymon, 2022). www.cahaldallat.com www.wbyeatsbedfordpark.com Cahal teaches a popular email/online creative-and-critical poetry masterclass now in its sixteenth season, for London's Coffee-House Poetry www.coffeehousepoetry.org |
Lyn Thornton
Fellini’s Roma
Listen
above the hiss of a steam train
above the thunderous sheeting of rain
above the late-night clatter of trains
above the wailing of car horns on the autostrada
above the barking of dogs songs of street singers
I am the city you yearned for
the city you think you have found in the fountains
in the brothels in the wide piazzas in the streets
in the ghost-life of subterranean frescos
in the dissolute soldiery in Caesar’s broken statue
in the bird’s eye view
from your gantry swooping like an eagle through
wind and rain in the long shots. the close ups. the granite
faces the butchered animal carcasses sliding
you think you have caught me
but listen
above the cacophony. the bewildered faces
the carved imagery you will find only a shape-shifter. a dream
you have created. and it has many names
An Awkward Bow
to try to catch your voice seems an
impertinence instead
I’ll stand and listen, block out all
traffic noise, and hope to hear its
echo on a lifting wind or summon up
the sprite of you running through
The Vale of Health or bounding up
Holly Hill to watch the sunset
reflected in the White Stone Pond or
over the heath to the Spaniards’ Inn
letting your thoughts drift to Naples’
heat and headiness, a whole two years
away from you taking
an awkward bow
leaving us, (as you thought then), only
the shadow of your hand reflected
on uncertain tides
The quote an awkward bow is taken from Keats’ last letter, addressed to Charles Armitage Brown, Rome, November 30th 1820
The space between
after William Kentridge’s Slade Lecture
A blank page / where is the edge ? / a world reduced to paint/
leaves leaning on air / we are collage under construction/
we need to remember / we desire to forget / city of gold
panned for/broken fingers brush away dust / we are in the land
-scape and we are out of it/ the old Gods have retired/weigh
all tears / my heart is in hiding/ there is pleasure in self deception/
the pleasure of one thing becoming another / let us leap and then
look
Lyn Thornton lives in Oxford. She is a poet and Univ. Tutor in English. Her collection of poems, The Tyring House, was published by Poets House Press in 2022. She is currently working on a second collection and writing a play about Shakespeare’s time in London living with a Huguenot family in Cripplegate. The play is scheduled for performance iin November of this year. |
Helen Overell
Approaching retirement
for ML
Chest pains niggled her but she'd work to do –
all those troubled teenagers to encourage,
mothers to offer hope to, fathers to support –
and the gathering mattered, thinking of ways
forward, standing alongside, each one offering
the best they could, long days full of meetings,
the party well-earned – Spanish guitar, castanets,
dancing flamenco despite being more solid oak
than willow – and that was when flame took hold,
not one to fuss, not wanting to, she kept going,
no-one realised, and then sitting down helped,
so everything was fine really – but not;
next day, the locum, unhurried, calm, kind,
wrote a letter for her to take to A&E – that place
the self-harmers washed up at, her face fell,
she'd spent hours there calming families, offering
care, building bridges although time stood still,
and so Do I have to? – getting there another story –
instant attention, questions, tests, being stranded
flat-out on a trolley so high above the ground
she dared not move, angiogram, transfer to London,
one cannula, another that somehow broke free –
rainbow arc of thinned blood that filled the air,
doused floor, blankets, walls, deep and weary
peace, no fear whatever, calm, So this is death?
being rescued, cleaned up – meeting the man
from Dublin, from back home, whose way of talk,
so in keeping with her own, brought comfort,
who was of like mind, understood humour,
whose angioplasty mended her heart, put right
the damage, left nothing but the merest scar,
gave her years yet, nothing wrong with her at all
after that, life as usual and yet not the same.
Helen Overell has work in several magazines and some of her poems were highly commended or placed in competitions including the Poetry Society Stanza Competition 2018 and the Poetry News Members' poems Summer 2020. Her first collection Inscapes & Horizons was published by St Albert's Press in 2008 and her second collection Thumbprints was published by Oversteps in 2015. A booklet of her poems Measures for lute was published by The Lute Society in 2020. She takes an active role in Mole Valley Poets, a Poetry Society Stanza group. |
Matt Bryden
Haunts
You have adopted
magical thinking
a ring about your neck
lifted to your lips
and kissed
the chain smoothed
of snags and kinks
You gesture to the aspen
the sound of leaves in the wind
In a playground
a stone’s throw
from the bedroom
you are living out of
your three-year-old says
she wants to stay the night with you
you nearly fall to your knees.
This is a poem which collides my daughter’s second birthday lunch with descriptions of Odysseus’s home in Ithaka in the Odyssey.
Birthday, Shoreditch White
In the café where we celebrated your second,
you ate an Indian chicken salad and sipped juice
as we supported you on a silver-studded chair.
There was a silver lintel, a golden handle
and dogs made out of gold and silver
on each side, fashioned by Hephaestus.
It being morning, the waitress ran a hand
down her spine to wake the dragon, stepped
from foot to foot as she took your order:
white-armed mother holding white-armed daughter.
It was the day after my birthday, so hospitality
was not as rust. And was it Athena lent us a pink mist
so there was depth to the pile, shade to the plush?
We stopped by a fishmonger’s, samphire spread on ice,
took home a bass for later with butter and pepper
that life might leave us only when we had once more
seen our property, our people, our great high-roofed house.
Trial
It’s like you are dead
and I’m in a house of invalids
voices come through the walls
scared something will crack
five weeks since we’ve talked
stray cats at the glass
I am bounced out of my senses
kettled in a tennis court
I miss my friend her smile
as fire doors click shut
who’s to say why
I’m not eating or drinking
whether you carry the end
of this process inside you
This poem links two scenes – post- and pre-bout – in Martin Scorsese’s celebrated 1980 biopic of Jake LaMotta.
Boxer
The scene in Raging Bull, tender hands
milling the ice, cubes half-melted
to a solution, his looping knuckles swollen
of definition by his landed blows, the camera
now fast now slowing mid-swoop casts
us back pre-fight as Vickie kisses
his bruised stomach and sprawls upon the bed,
then walks towards the bathroom door;
a jostle of ice cubes as he tips
the jug down the front of his shorts.
Matt Bryden is a teacher living in Devon with his daughter. He has published a pamphlet Night Porter (Templar), about life in a Yorkshire hotel, a first collection Boxing the Compass (also Templar) and a book of translations, The Desire to SIng after Sunset (Showwe). His most recent work is The Glassblower's House (Live Canon, 2023) an examination of fatherhood against a backdrop of personal catastrophe.
His work has appeared in Poetry Ireland, Poetry Wales and Modern Poetry in Translation and he has won the Templar pamphlet and collection prize, the William Soutar Prize, the Charroux Memoir Prize and the Live Canon Pamphlet Prize. In 2019 he won a Literature Matters award from the Royal Society of Literature. He is Royal Literary Fellow at Exeter University. |
Trisha Broomfield
Role Models
Oh, Mary Tyler-Moore
those legs, always in black,
kicking back at the stereotypical housewife
the polo neck sweaters, I still choose to wear,
and that hair, I loved it all.
You were in control, wiping the occasional womanly tear,
beating your Dick Van Dyke husband at pool.
You moved with such grace
and you had a waist.
Your face, when it smiled, lit up the room.
Cathy Gale, you followed
leather clad, on a black and white screen.
You joined John Steed in the fight
against evil, appearing, self assured,
in series two, when Steed switched to Saville Row suits.
Just as I had decided you were the one
you left in nineteen sixty four
becoming Pussy Galore.
You still fought your corner
but you’d lost out to James Bond.
Emma Peel, you were next
you’d steal the show from Steed
despite his suave smile
his bowler hat, in seasonal shades.
From you, the villains would run a mile
your high-kicking catsuit spinning them across the room
knocking out chairs and china with such ease.
And you had a waist!
One day a husband returned to claim you
and Steed looked wistful, but not for long.
A Thief of Words
I prised open Hardy’s poem
released his ‘strings of broken liars’,
inspired I lied, owned them, wrote them
to you, never to be sent,
after the event.
I scan my pages and find that scribes of ages have
leant me their colour,
and when I read, dames, in the best sense,
have bequeathed me
the flavour of their rounded sound,
reminding me that consonants abound
and urging me to finish my words
not swallow the hollow Lincolnshire Wolds
that underpin my voice.
I have a choice but like a sponge I absorb,
my listening ear grabs hungrily at any accent I hear,
Eastenders beating elocution hands down.
Trisha Broomfield writes poems and short stories. She has three pamphlets published by Dempsey and Windle and poems published in many anthologies and online poetry magazines, including the Lancaster One Minute Monologues. She is one third of The Booming Lovelies who will be appearing at this year ‘s Cranleigh Literary Festival on April 3rd and the Guildford Institute on May 13th, where the tickets include afternoon tea. There will be a souvenir pamphlet for sale Meet the Booming Lovelies. As a member of Cranleigh Writers’ Group she has contributed to an anthology of their work, From the Crane’s Mouth, out in time for the above Literary Festival and her own book, My Acrostic Mother, illustrated by fellow ‘Lovely’ Heather Moulson, is also due out soon. Her poem ‘It’s only Maths, was featured on BBC Upload in January. She recently appeared with fellow Booming Lovelies at The Spice of Life pub in Soho as part of the Poems Not Bombs monthly open mic. You can hear more of her poems on the Poetry Worth Hearing poetry podcast and on BBC Upload. See more on Instagram @magentapink22 @boominglovelies FaceBook Trisha Broomfield Poetry
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Stephen Paul Wren
You can find the text of Stephen's abecedarian poem at https://stephenpaulwren.wixsite.com/luke12poetry/post/penrose
Dr Stephen Paul Wren studied at Cambridge (Corpus Christi College) and worked in industry for many years. He transitioned back into academiaat Oxford (St Hilda’s College) before joining Kingston University in2018 where he works as a Senior lecturer in pharmaceutical chemistry.Stephen's poetry can be read atwww.stephenpaulwren.wixsite.com/luke12poetry and you can find him onTwitter @Stephen34343631. His book ‘Formulations’ (co-written with DrMiranda Lynn Barnes) was published by Small Press in 2022. His book 'Acelestial crown of Sonnets' (co-written with Dr Sam Illingworth) waspublished by Penteract Press in 2021. Also, Stephen's poetry hasappeared in places such as 14 magazine, Marble Broadsheet,Consilience, Green Ink Poetry, Tears in the Fence, Fragmented Voices, and Dreich magazine. Stephen's Facebook group Molecules Unlimited is growing quickly and its fifth online meeting took place in November 2023. The winners from its 1st poetry competition were announced recently. |
Diana Bell
Level 4
Lift going up, please mind the door
door closing – door opening
Here we are, each with our own story
our own pain – mother and daughter
husband and wife, boyfriend and girlfriend,
a lone person in a wheelchair.
We sit in rows silently suspended
between present and future,
sipping water, reading a book,
checking mobile phone, drinking coffee.
Sunlight slides through blinds
and draws white lines on the floor.
A name is called like a lottery number -
the next person disappears behind a blue curtain
a life changed every hour, every day,
while the sandwich trolley goes round
and a cleaner mops the floor.
Lift going down, please mind the door,
door closing….
Diana Bell is a multi-media visual artist including sculpture, installation and painting. She has won awards for her sculpture and for her work in hospitals. She has always written poetry and worked with poets, but did not try to get any of her work published until joining Oxford Stanza Two. |
Heather Moulson
Under the Influence
I can’t drive because I’m under the influence
of You
The Emotional Police will stop me
I was warned you may cause drowsiness
And to give operation of heavy machinery a wide berth
But you’re under my skin and other features
You’ve crayoned me in in a different colour
And I’m aware I’m just another figure on your sketchpad
Shaded in for fun, an eraser on standby
Love Anonymous washed their hands of me
Written off as a hopeless case
I may have to go as high as the Ministry of Love
According to George Orwell, they’re big on influences
Beryl The Peril
Oh lovely Beryl the Peril.
Running away from Policemen
and your slipper wielding Dad,
puffing in his permanent striped suit.
You always outsmarted
Cynthia and her pals.
Biting my nails that you would
run out of adventures,
but there you were,
Every Tuesday, freshly drawn
with another ruse.
I coveted plaits like yours,
and longed to look that good
in a gym-slip.
Why couldn’t you have lived
round our way?
You would have come home for tea,
we’d fire peashooters
and say words like ‘sooper’.
Blissfully, you never had
Sleepovers.
I think that would have been
too much.
Heather Moulson co-founded Poetry Performance in Teddington in 2017 and has been writing poetry ever since. She has performed extensively in London, particularly Celine’s Salon and Soho Poets. Her debut pamphlet Bunty, I Miss You was published in 2019. Heather won the Brian Dempsey Memorial Award in 2020. Heather also writes reviews and runs a website www.heathermoulsonpoet.com. |
Simon Rees
Fingernails
For Louise
As a boarding school boy
he chewed them to the quick
and worried at the skin
Always after, he bit them neat
for grooming
or hurt them for solace
In his fifties he found a therapist -
within two years he bought
nail clippers
It began with an acquaintance mentioning poetry for catharsis, leading to a deeply cathartic poem falling out of Simon’s pen. His writing quickly spread to dogs, beds and other subjects. With four poems published, Simon is now working towards his first collection. Simon is from Wales and lives in Dublin with his wife and a houseful of writer’s block distractions. |
Dinah Livingstone
After All
When I wake up the rain is pouring down
from a louring sky.
I am depressed, I cower in bed,
don’t want to face the day.
I force myself to shower,
get dressed,
not feeling well.
Suddenly the sun comes out
and everything has been refreshed,
sparkles much more kindly than before.
Now like the clouds my gloom evaporates
and I am fine again.
I realise the rain was right
and was a proper blessing after all.
Dinah Livingstone has given many poetry readings in London, throughout Britain and abroad. She has received three Arts Council Writer’s Awards for her poetry, which has also appeared in various magazines and anthologies. Her tenth collection, Embodiment, was published in 2019. She is a translator of poetry and prose and edits the magazine Sofia. katabasis.co.uk/dinah.html The Proper Blessing by A.C. Jacobs, the Scottish- Jewish poet, d.1994, is published by Menard Press. |
That concludes this episode. Please listen to the podcast at https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/kathleen-mcphilemy/episodes/Poetry-Worth-Hearing-Episode-22-e2hkll3. or on Apple, Audible or Spotify podcasts.
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