The Two-Way Poetry Podcast

In this episode, I talk to Alexandra Corrin-Tachibana about Kimiko Hahn’s poem ‘Compass’ and her own poem ‘Madam Gout’. We discuss all things zuihitsu - reflecting on Kimiko Hahn’s own approach to the form and Alexandra’s inspired interpretation of this complex Japanese ‘standard’. As well as asking Alexandra about the essential qualities of the zuihitsu we talk about fragmentation, layering information, the public and the private detail.  Alexandra also reflects on her own time in Japan, and from this, cogitates on Japanese influences in her own work.  In zuihitsu how do we say something without actually stating it? We go on to discuss how the words, phrases, lines are laid out on the page in relation to the 'cartography of the poem.' In the podcast, Alexandra mentions a number of times The Pillow-Book by Sei Shõnagon, a version of which can be downloaded for free on Project Gutenberg here.           Alexandra Corrin-Tachibana is a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet and author of Sing me down from the dark (Salt, 2022). She has Masters’ degrees in Writing Poetry and in Japanese Language and Culture and she lectured on the Japanese zuihitsu form at the 2024 Japan Writers Conference.    Her poems have appeared in magazines such as The North, P.N. Review, Magma, Poetry Wales, The Pomegranate London, Anthropocene and The Madrid Review.    This year, she was twice shortlisted for Verve’s Poem of the Month prize and commended in The Buzzword and Artemesia competitions. She is a freelance creative writing tutor, mentor and reviewer who has taught for The Poetry Business,  The Poetry School and The Writing School.   Alexandra’s second collection, Skinship, is due out with Salt in September 2026.   You can follow me on Bluesky - @cwjoneschris.bsky.social for more updates on future episodes. You can find out more about my own writing through my website - chris-jones.org.uk - or on my Substack Swift Diaries. The end music was composed and played by William Jones.

In this episode, I discuss Arthur Rimbaud with Cliff Forshaw. We focus on Rimbaud's poem 'Vowels', translated by Cliff in his collection French Leave: Versions and Perversions, and Cliff's sequence RE:VERB which retells the life of Rimbaud in verse. Cliff also reflects on his latest book, Elemental, and reads the opening piece 'Remains' in full. Cliff relates how he first came to Rimbaud as a school boy.  He talks about the long journey he took to come to write a book of translations of (mainly) 19th century French poets.  He goes on to discuss, at length, his long narrative poem RE:VERB which illuminates the life of Arthur Rimbaud, from decadent poet to merchant and gun runner in Africa.  He reads from, and talks about, the opening poems in the collection ('Hooligan in Hell' and 'Alchemy of the Word').  Why is Rimbaud so interesting as a writer and as an individual? We go on to explore Cliff's interest in art and how that feeds back into his identity as a writer. Finally, we discuss the work in his latest book, Elemental, landing on the opening poem - 'Remains' to read and reflect on. I ask him what he is planning to write/publish next.   From 'Alchemy of the Word' But also...                   A Hermes Trismegistus, unseen unheard,                                  I conjured the Alchemy of the Word;                   deciphered fragments of the vowels' spectrum,                                  my mind a wand, a bow, a plectrum.                   I struck the rainbow's neurasthenic strings,                                  plumbed all tenebrous, timbrous things.                   Then, when sounding out riddles as Gnostic songs,                                  it came to me: I was going wrong. Sortilege and Thaumaturgy,        Tantra, Sutra, Old Grimoires Hermeneutics, Oneiromancy,     Transits of Venus, Mercury, Mars, Almanacs, O Dark Abraxas,        Cabbalistic Hierophants, Orphic Devotees, Eleusis,             Mumbo-jumbo, Obeah, Cant, Epiphanic Hocus-Pocus,               Hoodoo-Voodoo, Occult Muse, Diabolic Psychomancy,                 Esoteric Marabouts.                    From such fiendish tomes I busked the Blues,                                   left a hobo chorus of cryptic clues.                    But my rational derangement of all the senses                                   (shamanically ancient, prophetically new)                    left me wondering: Who was the densest,                                    Poet or Reader? I got no reviews. From 'Remains'                                                   I In Transylvania when I got that call - had been that day to Sighisoara, drawn to that famous undead batman's place of birth. Think: the Saxon cemetery high up the hill. Carved gothically upon one stone, I'd seen Ruhen in fremder Erde!  Written it down. Lie still in foreign soil - but you never can: (stone blunts, moss overwrites your name) the earth remains so cold and strange. As do you.  Whoever you were, laid low in the lie of the land, you are now (whatever now might mean) your own remains - just let the world, its weather, drain right through your tongue, your ribs, whatever stubbornly persists of you.   Cliff Forshaw has been a Royal Literary Fund Fellow, twice a Hawthornden Writing Fellow, and held residences in California, France, Kyrgizstan, Romania, and Tasmania. Collections include: Elemental (Templar, 2025); French Leave (Broken Sleep, 2023); RE:VERB ((Broken Sleep, 2022) and Pilgrim Tongues (Wrecking Ball, 2015) https://www.cliff-forshaw.co.uk You can follow me on Bluesky - @cwjoneschris.bsky.social for more updates on future episodes. You can find out more about my own writing through my website - chris-jones.org.uk - or on my Substack Swift Diaries. The end music was composed and played by William Jones.        

In this episode, I talk to Helen Angell about T S Eliot's early poem 'Preludes', and her own architecturally-inspired poem 'Mancunian Way.' Helen discusses where and when she first encountered Eliot's poetry (at Rotherham College) and how much his work has gone on to influence her writing. We talk about the public spaces versus the private rooms in Eliot's poem 'Preludes'.  How does Eliot confront modernity in his poetry, and the psychological forces acting on open and vulnerable minds? Helen then goes on talk about her travels to Manchester (and other urban environments) with her pen and her camera.  She elaborates on the thing that is the Mancunian Way - how it dominates the sight-lines of the city (and how difficult it is to actually get onto). Helen describes the underbelly of the road, and how this inspired her to write the poem.  She reflects on her position as a lone traveller in possibly edgy environments.  Helen also considers the issues of depicting the street people she encounters. We discuss architectural space (particularly post-war landscapes) and how this might be re-imagined in print. You can read T S Eliot's poem 'Preludes' here (on the Poetry Foundation website). Mancunian Way The underpass docks in early autumn chill. Its boat’s underbelly faded as worn planks, sooty striations and stone bleachings. A small, late butterfly flitters near the hull, uncertain ivory amongst sown meadow-flowers. Breaking the wall of sound with ocean breath, the A57 washes seawater noises. And in this undersea world of mist and sleeping bags, makeshift tents, a messiah unfurls a scroll beside London Road. It would be easy to be absent here for years. By the closed taco stand and the blue portaloos, skaters fling tied shoes to hook on grey ribs. Soles twisting from the double-knots, above boys who skid, hand-scuffed across the reeling surface. Wishbones hold roof to floor. Things hatch under Oxford Road, yellow containers expand, open doors into other worlds. Hydroponics stretch their roots in white trays. Behind wire fencing, the Mancunian Way’s elephant-legged stride is trapped. Our dreams turn to lullabies, chewed paper spat into an ashtray.   Helen Angell writes poetry and non-fiction often inspired by brutalist architecture and post-war landscapes. She writes about the beauty and transience of urban life as well as its impact on human relationships. Helen has worked creatively with The Hepworth, Manchester School of Architecture, National Railway Museum and Kelham Island Museum as well as in collaboration with a number of visual artists and musicians. Her writing has appeared in a number of publications and anthologies including The North, Strix and The Modernist. She is currently completing a Creative Writing PhD at University of Liverpool based on the work of post-war landscape architect Brenda Colvin. You can follow me on Bluesky - @cwjoneschris.bsky.social for more updates on future episodes. You can find out more about my own writing through my website - chris-jones.org.uk - or on my Substack Swift Diaries. The end music was composed and played by William Jones.      

In this episode, I talk to Geraldine Monk about Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem ‘The Leaden Echo and The Golden Echo’ and her own poem ‘Chattox Sings’ from her collection Interregnum (1993).  We begin by discussing poets who could have been chosen by Geraldine as exemplars - Gertrude Stein, Harold Munro and Dylan Thomas.  We then focus on Gerard Manley Hopkins - how he spent his time at Stonyhurst College, in the shadow of Pendle Hill (with its Pendle witches association). We reflect on Hopkins’ life as a Jesuit Priest. We discuss Catholicism and poetry which leads us to exploring the poem ‘The Leaden Echo and The Golden Echo’. Geraldine then goes talk about how she developed the work that went into Interregnum - the collection that focuses on the history of the Pendle witches. We discuss how she built up on section of the book through ‘harvesting’ lines from Hopkins’ poems and putting them into the mouths of the women who were put on trial.  We talk at length about ‘Chattox Sings’ and a couple of other poems that lift phrases from Hopkins oeuvre - including his poem 'The Blessed Virgin compared to the Air we Breathe.' You can read ‘The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo’ on this website here.   CHATTOX SINGS   What we have lighthanded left will have waked and have waxed and have walked  with the wind.   This side, that side hurling while we slumbered. Oh then, weary then why should we tread? O why are we so haggard at the heart, so care-coiled, care-killed, is there  no frowning of these wrinkles ranked wrinkles deep.   Down?   No waving off these most mournful messengers still messengers sad and stealing                                             (Hush there)  - only not within seeing of the sun.   Resign them, sign them, seal them, send them, motion them with breath.   Whatever’s prized and passes of us, everything that’s fresh and fast flying of us, seems to us sweet of us, and swiftly away with, done away with, undone.   So beginning, be beginning to despair.   O there’s none, no no there’s none: with sighs soaring, soaring sighs deliver. Them:               Beauty-in-the-ghost.   Geraldine Monk was first published in the 1970’s. Since then her poetry has appeared in countless magazines and anthologies and her major collections include Interregnum from Creation Books,  Escafeld Hangings, West House Books, Ghost & Other Sonnets, Salt Publishing. They Who Saw the Deep, was published in the USA by Parlor Press. In 2012 she edited Cusp: Recollections of Poetry in Transition from Shearsman Books. Together with her late husband, the poet and artist Alan Halsey and the musician Martin Archer she was a founding member of the Sheffield antichoir Juxtavoices for which she wrote many pieces most notably Midsummer Mummeries. She is an affiliated poet at the Centre for Poetry & Poetics, The University of Sheffield.    You can follow me on Bluesky - @cwjoneschris.bsky.social for more updates on future episodes. You can find out more about my own writing through my website - chris-jones.org.uk - or on my Substack Swift Diaries. The end music was composed and played by William Jones.

In this episode, I talk to Al McClimens about Simon Armitage’s poem ‘Evening’ and his own poem ‘Grand National’. We discuss ideas of place and time in Armitage's 'views' of Marsden, the village where he grew up, and how these ideas are represented in his work.   We focus on the formal designs of both Simon Armitage's and Al's pieces.  I ask Al about the two different versions of his poem that he is weighing up here.  We talk about horses and the 'form' and how things can balance so precipitously upon an edge between success and failure. How can poetry articulate these kinds of two-way moments? Al goes on to outline his journey toward writing poetry after a career as a lecturer in Health and Social Sciences. Evening You're twelve. Thirteen at most. 
 You’re leaving the house by the back door. 
There's still time. You've promised 
not to be long, not to go far.  One day you’ll learn the names of the trees. 
You fork left under the ridge, 
pick up the bridleway between two streams. 
Here is Wool Clough. Here is Royd Edge. The peak still lit by sun. But 
evening. Evening overtakes you up the slope. 
Dusk walks its fingers up the knuckles of your spine. 
Turn on your heel. Back home your child sleeps in her bed, too big for a cot. 
Your wife makes and mends under the light. 
You’re sorry. You thought 
it was early. How did it get so late?  This poem is reproduced from Simon Armitage's collection Magnet Field: The Marsden Poems (Faber, 2020).   Grand National (original version) I backed a horse at five to one –
it came home at ten past.
 We had a ball tho, it was fun
 but it could never last. The money flew, the good times rolled, 
the future opened wide.
 We thought that we were solid gold
 and jumped on for the ride. Wot larx, such thrills, our names in lights
 the fizzing, shiny things…
 the bubble popped and from what heights
 we lost those fragile wings.  And now the screens are up, the vet
 is walking down the track.
 Is it too late, is there time yet
 to get our money back? Achilles drags the corpse away,
 parades it round the walls.
 All’s fair in love and war, they say.
 Troy crumbles and then falls.   Grand National (published version) I backed a horse at five to one –
it pulled up at ten past.
 We had a ball tho, it was fun
 but it could never last. The money flew, the good times rolled, 
the sky cracked open wide.
 We thought that we were solid gold
 and jumped on for the ride. Wot larx, such thrills, our names in lights
 the fizzing, shiny things…
 ...the bubble popped and from what heights
 we lost those fragile wings.  Now the screens are up, the vet
 is walking down the track.
 Is it too late, is there time yet
 to get our money back? Achilles drags the corpse away,
 parades it round the walls.
 All’s fair in love and war, they say.
 Troy crumbles and then falls.   Other poems mentioned (and read) in this podcast include Robin Robertson's poem 'About Time', from his collection The Wrecking Light (Picador, 2010). W H Auden's 'The Fall of Rome' is also briefly discussed - a piece you can read here.   Al McClimens was born and brought up in Bellshill some time after Matt Busby and just before Teenage Fanclub. He escaped by studying for his first degree at Edinburgh University where he ‘majored’ in sex, drugs and rock’n’roll. During a lull in his study he signed up for the poetry society. Well, duh. He peaked when he was chosen as the warm-up act for new rising star Liz Lochhead. When asked about her co-performer’s act Ms Lochhead later said, Who…? He later moved to Sheffield in the same year as the miners’ strike where, after a few years, he attended a WEA evening class run by Liz Cashdan who pointed him at the various open mics available in the city. It was also around this time that his university work meant he was getting papers in journals and the two strands, the published academic and the gradually getting more stuff published poet began to coalesce with his enrolment onto the SHU MA Creative Writing degree. Well, we all know how that one ended. So there it is, the trajectory to international stardom or how a youth from Bellshill became one of the best poets in his own house. Or make that second best if Denise is visiting. You couldn’t make it up. Except I just did. And some of it was true… Al Mclimens books include Keats on the Moon which was published by Mews Press in 2017, and The Other Infidelities which came out in 2021,  which you can purchase from Pindrop Press here and The Placebo Effect (Dreich, 2024). You can follow me on Bluesky - @cwjoneschris.bsky.social for more updates on future episodes. You can find out more about my own writing through my website - chris-jones.org.uk - or on my Substack Swift Diaries.