The Two-Way Poetry Podcast

Pam Thompson on James Schuyler’s ’Hymn to Life’ and her own poem ’An Afternoon’

In this episode, Pam Thompson discusses James Schuyler’s ‘Hymn to Life’ and how reading this work influenced the writing of her own poem ‘An Afternoon’.

In the interview, Pam talks about how Schuyler’s life affected what he focused on in his work, and his approach to writing ‘of-the-moment’ poems. She talks about his influences, his interest in diaries, his peripatetic life; how all of this comes through in ‘Hymn to Life’.  Pam then goes on to describe how she came to write her own piece ‘An Afternoon’ after workshopping in Sheffield and online. She reflects on why she wrote a first second and second person version of the poem.  She talks about the afterlife of the painter Edith Spiller. 

Pam has written a blog piece on James Schuyler's poem 'Hymn to Life' for Antony Wilson's website Lifesaving Poems which you can find here 'The Pure Pleasure of / Simply Looking...'
 
 

Pam Thompson is a writer, educator and reviewer based in Leicester. She has been widely published in magazines including Butcher’s Dog, Finished Creatures, The North, The Rialto, Magma and Mslexia. Pam has been Highly Commended for the Forward Prize and has won the Magma and the Poetry Business competitions and gained second and third prizes respectively in the Ledbury and Poets and Players competitions.  Her works include include The Japan Quiz (Redbeck Press, 2009) and Show Date and Time (Smith|Doorstop, 2006). Pam’s collection, Strange Fashion, was published by Pindrop Press in 2017. Pam has a PhD in Creative Writing from De Montfort University and is a Committee Member for Word!, a spoken-word night at Attenborough Arts Centre in  Leicester. She is a Hawthornden Fellow.

Her web-site is https://pamthompsonpoetry.com/author/pamthompsonpoetry/

She is on Twitter as @fierydes.
 

You can find a complete version of James Schuyler’s poem ‘Hymn to Life’ here from his collection Hymn to Life (1974, Random House). The text comes with an audio recording of the piece.

 

 An afternoon

    where adult lads 
up from Derby, in shirts and jeans
in January, ahead of an on-the-piss
evening, walk fast at the side
of their reflections in steel; 
the fountain near the station, 
which, when the sun dips, 
will spill onto the pavement and freeze.
In the Millennium Gallery, 
Madonnas, flanked by fat putti, 
vie for my attention 
but I want something more subtle, 
a painting or drawing that I’ll
have to work at knowing.
Over there, on the other side,
with no-one else looking, 
a watercolour under glass, 
‘Biography of a Snowdrop’, 
February 20th, 1896, its greyish flower 
seeming too heavy for the stem –
how slowly she must have painted 
while the light was still good. 
Barely out of adolescence, its root, 
scrotal, with white filaments.
For our convenience, she returned
on March 14th, prompted, perhaps, 
by better weather, to draw exquisite
cross-sections of sex organs:
stigma and stamens; the segmented 
flower like a star on a mosque 
or a sliced fig, a tile, the day’s tile. 
Picking snowdrops first thing, 
inside her own biography,
with spring lying in wait. Edith 
Spiller. Look her up.

(First person perspective version)

 

 

An afternoon
 
   where adult lads 
up from Derby, in shirts and jeans
in January, ahead of the on-the-piss afternoon, 
walk fast at the side of their reflections
in steel; the fountain near the station, 
which, when the sun dips, 
will spill onto the pavement and freeze.
In the Millennium Gallery, 
Madonnas, flanked by fat putti, 
vie for your attention 
but you want something more subtle, 
a painting or drawing that you’ll
have to work at knowing.
Over there, on the other side,
with no-one else looking, 
a watercolour under glass, 
‘Biography of a Snowdrop’, 
February 20th, 1896, its greyish flower 
seeming too heavy for the stem –
how slowly she must have painted 
while the light was still good. 
Barely out of adolescence, its root, 
scrotal, with white filaments.
For our convenience, she returned
on March 14th, prompted, perhaps, 
by better weather, to draw exquisite
cross-sections of sex organs:
stigma and stamens; the segmented 
flower like a star on a mosque 
or a sliced fig, a tile, the day’s tile. 
Picking snowdrops first thing, 
inside her own biography,
with spring lying in wait. Edith 
Spiller. Look her up.

(Second person perspective version)

 

Suzannah Evans on James Tate’s ’Making the Best of the Holidays’ and her own poem ’A Course in Miracles’

In this episode, poet Suzannah Evans discusses James Tate’s ‘Making the Best of the Holidays’ and how reading this work influenced the writing of her own poem ‘A Course in Miracles’.

In the interview, Suzannah reflects on the use of form, tone, humour, and the notion of objectionable or challenging narrators as she unpicks James Tate’s piece ‘Making the Best of the Holidays’.  She goes on to discuss her own work ‘A Course in Miracles’, in relation to ideas of faith, encountering different kinds of spiritual or transcendental experiences, and absorbing the sustenance that is on offer.

Suzannah Evans is the author of two collections of poetry, Near Future and Space Baby, both published by Nine Arches Press. Her first pamphlet Confusion Species was a winner in the 2012 Poetry Business Competition, and her second, Green, will be published by Little Betty Press next year. She lives in Sheffield and is a creative director of Sheaf Poetry Festival. 

 

A Course in Miracles
Howarden, 2019

I’ve been counting the fly agarics
on the library lawn and today
there are 31.  At lunch the theology scholar
laughs because I’m wearing slippers.
I eat a baked avocado, which I’ve
never eaten before.  I watch the yews
that brush the churchyard wall
while he pronounces the Greek Αποκάλυψic
and asks me what is being revealed
that might not be known otherwise.
The avocado has been cooked in its skin
with red onion and pepper.  A visiting vicar
tells me Christians are unafraid because
they know they will be saved and asks
if I have a faith like that?  I imagine myself
in the ruins of my house, fashioning
a fallout shelter from a blown-off door.
When John ate the scroll in Revelation
it tasted both bitter and sweet
and allowed him to speak prophesy, but
did he wash it down with anything?
The teacher of A Course in Miracles
says consuming food is not essential
but a human experience we’ve grown used to -
while polishing off the last forkfuls
of a tuna jacket.  Every day
more toadstools rise out of the grass
like cartoon thought-bubbles.
I have been reading about the expanse
of their finely rigged root systems
and how they communicate with trees.
If I have faith in anything it’s the plants.
When the time comes they’ll eat me inside out.

 

Making the Best of the Holidays by James Tate (Harper Collins, 2004)

Justine called on Christmas Day to say she
was thinking of killing herself. I said, ‘We’re
in the middle of opening presents, Justine. Could
you possibly call back later, that is, if you’re
still alive.’  She was furious with me and called
me all sorts of names which I refuse to dignify
by repeating them. I hung up on her and returned
to the joyful task of opening presents. Everyone
seemed delighted with what they got, and that
definitely included me. I placed a few more logs
on the fire, and then the phone range again. This
time it was Hugh and he had just taken all of his
pills and washed them down with a quart of gin.
‘Sleep it off, Hugh,’ I said, ‘I can barely under-
stand you, you’re slurring so badly. Call me
tomorrow, Hugh, and Merry Christmas.’ The roast
in the oven smelled delicious. The kids were playing
with their new toys. Loni was giving me a big
Christmas kiss when the phone rang again. It was
Debbie. ‘I hate you,’ she said. ‘You’re the most
disgusting human being on the planet.’ ‘You’re
absolutely right,’ I said, ‘and I’ve always been
aware of this. Nonetheless, Merry Christmas, Debbie.’
Halfway through dinner the phone rang again, but
this time Loni answered it. When she came back
to the table she looked pale. ‘Who was it?’ I 
asked. ‘It was my mother,’ she said. ‘And what
did she say?’ I asked. ‘She said she wasn’t my
mother,’ she said.

 

Rob Hindle on William Blake’s ’The Sick Rose’ and his own poem ’The Sick Rose’

In this episode, poet Rob Hindle discusses William Blake's 'The Sick Rose' and how reading this work influenced the writing of his own poem 'The Sick Rose'. 

In the interview, Rob reflects on Blake's political convictions, and touches on psychoanalytical readings of Blake as a means of understanding the original poem. He goes on to reflect on what his own position is regarding poetry and the world, poetic form, and how his poem fits into the collection Sapo as a whole.

Rob Hindle's poetry has appeared in books and pamphlets since 2006. His first, Some Histories of the Sheffield Flood 1864, won the inaugural Templar Poetry Pamphlet Competition, and was followed by Neurosurgery in Iraq, his first full collection (Templar, 2008). An extended sequence, The Purging of Spence Broughton, was published by Longbarrow Press in 2009, marking the beginning of a fruitful relationship which has seen the publication of two further collections - The Grail Roads (2018), shortlisted in the Forward Prizes, and Sapo (2022), in which 'The Sick Rose' appears. In 2013, Yoke and Arrows was published by Smokestack.

You can read a text version of William Blake's (1757-1827) 'The Sick Rose' (with modernized punctuation) here: The Sick Rose (text version).  You can read another version - with accompanying images - here: The Sick Rose (text and image).

You can find out more about Sapo, and buy copies here on The Longbarrow Press website: Sapo (Longbarrow Press)

 

'The Sick Rose' by Rob Hindle
(from the sequence Songs of Experience & of Innocence)

Up in the night I creak my way to the bathroom.
The sky has wheeled its stars round; where the moon was
a faint smear of orange burns on the moor line.

 

The cat flap snaps. Ours jumps from her sleep.
A black shape wanders down to the gate, job done.

Back in bed I picture a plane stalling over Sheffield,

 

ploughing into the moor, a brief flare, thunder.

I see the tom cat crossing the abandoned street,

unhurried and undeterred. The rest is sweat,

imagined steps on the stairs.

 

 

 

 

The Two-Way Poetry Podcast: What’s It All About

In this episode, Chris Jones introduces The Two-Way Poetry Podcast, a biweekly series of interviews where he speaks to poets about their own creative inspirations and practice. He says a little about himself, and discusses the background to the show, reflecting on how writers are influenced by the texts they read.

He reflects on the idea that when poets create poems they are often ‘in conversation’ with other writers’ works.  How do poems talk away to other poems? An intriguing prospect if you are eavesdropping on this communication, but also possibly distancing as well if you don’t share the intimate knowledge that is being passed on. This is what the podcast will look to explore in depth: what poets understand about this process of responding to texts, poems that they have read.

In the first upcoming podcast Chris will talk to the poet Rob Hindle about William Blake’s poem ‘The Sick Rose’ and how it influenced, played a part in the writing of his own piece ‘The Sick Rose’ from his collection Sapo (Longbarrow Press).