Arji's Poetry Pickle Jar

This week on the Pickle Jar we are joined by Martina Evans to talk about her PBS Choice book Drunken Driving.
Martina Evans is one of Ireland's most distinctive contemporary poets and novelists. Raised in County Cork and now based in London, she is the author of thirteen books of poetry and prose. Her collection American Mules won the 2022 Pigott Poetry Prize, while The Coming Thing was shortlisted for both the Derek Walcott Prize and the PEN Heaney Prize. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, Evans is celebrated for her exhilarating blend of narrative, wit, lyricism and dark humour.
Her new collection, Drunken Driving (Carcanet, 2026), is a bold, darkly comic sequel to The Coming Thing. Set against the backdrop of Pentonville Prison, the book follows its protagonist Imelda as she navigates motherhood, work and power through a sequence of inventive sonnets threaded with quotations from Dracula and prison regulations. Funny, unsettling and formally daring, Drunken Driving confronts questions of control, justice and survival with Evans's trademark verve and originality.
this is a wonderful conversation and i hope you enjoy it as much as i did.

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This month I'm joined by Karen McCarthy Woolf.

She's is a poet and editor of multiple literary anthologies. author of three major works: An Aviary of Small Birds, that was shortlisted for the Forward Felix Dennis and Jerwood Prizes and named an Observer Book of the Year; Seasonal Disturbances, which won the inaugural Laurel Prize for ecological poetry; and Top Doll, a verse novel shortlisted for the 2024 T. S. Eliot Prize. Her work has appeared in the Financial Times and The Guardian.

Also, wanted to let you know I now have a regular bi-monthly newsletter which is kind of like my attempt at a blog. Sign up at www.arji.org. You'll be pleased you did.

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This week is another PBS special. We are joined by the brilliant Sarah Howe. She is a British poet, academic and editor. Born in Hong Kong moved to England as a child. Her pamphlet won an Eric Gregory Award, and her first collection, Loop of Jade (Chatto & Windus, 2015), won the T.S. Eliot Prize and was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. She is currently the Poetry Editor at Chatto & Windus and an Honorary Visiting Professor at the University of Liverpool.

This episode is brought to you through Poetry Book Society. The good people of PBS are offering podcast listeners 10% off PBS Membership. Simply enter the code PODCAST (All caps) at the checkout here.

Mona Arshi's third collection of poems, Mouth was published in July 2025 by Chatto and Windus, and is the PBS Choice. So we decided to sit down for a chat about the book. Two beautifully read poems, an amazing back and forth about myths, nature and love and all in 30 minutes.
If you haven't bought the book, go get it, as this interview really opens it up in a new way

Sorry about the poor frequency of this podcast at the moment. I'm doing a lot of stuff at the same time and believe it or not I have a tendency to drop the ball sometimes! Regardless, thanks for sticking by me.
Today’s guest is Erica Hesketh. She's a brilliant poet, editor, and producer, she spent  eight years leading the Poetry Translation Centre, helping bring international voices to UK readers. She is the editor of Living in Language: International reflections for the practising poet, and a member of the Southbank Centre New Poets Collective 2023–24. Now her debut collection, In the Lily Room, is out with Nine Arches Press exploring motherhood, mental health, and transformation.