In this podcast Jennifer Williams talks to Robert Wrigley about his collection and first book to be published in the UK, The Church of Omnivorous Light: Selected Poems (Bloodaxe). They also touch on narrative in poetry, the infinite capacity of poetry to talk about love and, wild horses on the southern plains of Idaho. Robert was at the SPL in November 2013 for a reading with John Burnside.
The Church of Omnivorous Light: Selected Poems draws on several collections published in the US, including Beautiful Country (2010); Earthly Meditations: New and Selected Poems (2006); Lives of the Animals (2003), winner of the Poets Prize; Reign of Snakes (1999), winner of the Kingsley Tufts Award; and In the Bank of Beautiful Sins (1995), winner of the San Francisco Poetry Center Book Award and finalist for the Lenore Marshall Award from the Academy of American Poets.
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Nothing But The Poem - Mick Imlah
In this Nothing But The Poem podcast, our usual host Samuel Tongue, with the SPL Friends Group, take a look at two poems from Mick Imlah.
In a Guardian obituary, Alan Hollinghurst wrote that, when he died, Mick Imlah was mourned as one of the outstanding British poets of his time. He was also a particularly Scottish poet of distinction and his final collection The Lost Leader, according to Robert Crawford, came "as a revelation, showing just how much he had accomplished. Running the gamut of Scottish literature and history, the poems confidently yet often elegiacally re-imagine material from Columban Iona to modern times." (Scotsman obituary, 21 January 2009).
The two poems read, enjoyed and analysed are Iona and London Scottish. Both can be found on the SPL website.
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From the Archive: Sean Borodale. August 2012
We met up with Sean Borodale at the Edinburgh International Book Festival in August 2012, where he was reading from his debut collection Bee Journal, which was subsequently shortlisted for the 2012 T S Eliot prize and Costa Book Awards.
Here Sean reads poems from Bee Journal, a remarkable account of the two years he kept a bee hive. He likens the way in which he jotted his poems down to documentary film-making rather than to traditional methods of poetry composition. Borodale also talks with Jennifer Williams about his interest in time, bees, Virgil and much more.
Image (copyright) Mark Vessey.
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From the Archive: Tadeusz Dąbrowski. June 2013
In this podcast, Jennifer Williams talks to Polish poet, essayist, editor and critic Tadeusz Dąbrowski. They are joined by Kasia Kokowska of Interaktywny Salon Piszących w Szkocji, who came along to help with translating.
Taseusz has been the winner of numerous awards, among others, the Kościelski Prize (2009), the Hubert Burda Prize (2008) and, from Tadeusz Różewicz, the Prize of the Foundation for Polish Culture (2006). In 2013, he was the author of six volumes of poetry, and edited the anthology Poza słowa.
Tadeusz has been widely published and translated into 20 languages, and a collection of his poetry in English, Black Square, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, was published by Zephyr Press in 2011. He lives in Gdańsk and says in this interview, ‘All art is something like self-recognition.’
Photo by Harvard Review.
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Nothing But The Poem - Naomi Shihab Nye
The prize-winning and former Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, Naomi Shihab Nye is the subject of this month’s Nothing But The Poem podcast.
Known for poetry that lends a fresh perspective to ordinary events, people, and objects, Nye has said that, for her, “the primary source of poetry has always been local life, random characters met on the streets, our own ancestry sifting down to us through small essential daily tasks.” (Poetryfoundation.org)
Our resident podcast host Sam Tongue selected Supple Cord and Blood. Find out what Sam – and the Friends Of The SPL group – took from these poems in this Nothing But The Poem podcast.
Ireland