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The Faber Poetry Podcast

25 August 2023

The Faber Poetry Podcast, produced and presented by poets Rachael Allen and Jack Underwood, brings together some of the most exciting voices from the world of poetry.

Whether you’re a devotee or a newcomer to verse, join Rachael and Jack for lively conversation with their studio guests and audio postcards sent by acclaimed poets from around the globe.

The third series of the Faber Poetry Podcast launches on 25 August 2023. The original six-part series in 2018 was followed by a second series in 2019. All series are available to listen to on Apple and Spotify.

Series 3

AND we’re back!

In the first episode of the third season, Rachael and Jack welcome guests Anthony Anaxagorou and Nick Laird to the studio to discuss poetry writing, tea drinking and the ultimate battle: long poem vs short poem. Audio postcards in this episode come from Courtney Bush, Emily Berry and Anthony Joseph.

Episode One
Show Notes

Studio guests

ANTHONY ANAXAGOROU is a British-born Cypriot poet, fiction writer, spoken word artist, essayist, publisher and poetry educator. He has published several collections of poetry and short stories, and, in 2020, he published How to Write It, a practical guide, fusing writing tips and memoir, with Penguin Random House UK imprint #Merky Books. His most recent collection, Heritage Aesthetics (Granta) won the 2023 Ondaatje prize.

NICK LAIRD was born in County Tyrone in 1975. A poet, novelist, screenwriter, critic and former lawyer, his awards include the Betty Trask Prize, the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, the Somerset Maugham Award and a Guggenheim fellowship. Feel Free (2018) was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot prize and the Derek Walcott award. ‘Up Late’ the title poem from his latest collection Up Late (2023) won the Forward Prize for Best Poem. He is the Seamus Heaney Professor of Poetry at Queens’ University, Belfast.

Audio postcards featured in this episode

‘Last Night Kyle’, written and read by Courtney Bush. Her new collection, I Love Information (Milkweed Editions, 2023) will be available in the UK in October.

Untitled poem written and read by Emily Berry. Taken from her most recent collection, Unexhausted Time (Faber, 2022).

‘A Gap in Language’, written and read by Anthony Joseph. His T. S. Eliot Prize-winning collection Sonnets for Albert (Bloomsbury, 2022) is out now.

You can find the transcript for this episode on Audioboom.

About the presenters

RACHAEL ALLEN is the author of Kingdomland (Faber) and co-author of numerous artists’ books, including Nights of Poor Sleep (Prototype), Almost One, Say Again! (Slimvolume), Green at an Angle (Kestle Barton) and Material (Loose Joints). She was recently Anthony Burgess Fellow at the University of Manchester, is the poetry editor for Granta Publications, teaches Creative Writing at Queen Mary University, and her second collection of poems, God Complex, is forthcoming from Faber in 2024.

JACK UNDERWOOD is a poet, writer and critic. He is author of Happiness (Faber 2015) Solo for Mascha Voice (Test Centre, 2018) and A Year in the New Life (Faber 2021). His debut work of non-fiction, NOT EVEN THIS, was published by Corsair in 2021. He has collaborated widely with composers and artists, and his work has been published internationally and in translation. He is senior lecturer in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths College.

The Faber Poetry Podcast is produced by Rachael Allen, Jack Underwood and Hannah Marshall for Faber. Production and editing by Strathmore Publishing. Special thanks to Anthony Anaxagorou, Emily Berry, Courtney Bush, Anthony Joseph and Nick Laird. All three seasons are available to stream on Audioboom, Apple Podcasts, Spotify and other major podcast listening platforms.

 

Episode Two

 

Show notes

The second episode in the new season, hosted by the poets Rachael Allen and Jack Underwood.

In this episode, Jack and Rachael discuss religion in poetry and the buried histories found within words with Camille Ralphs and Stephanie Sy-Quia. Audio postcards in this episode come from Eve Esfandiari-Denney, K Patrick and Hannah Sullivan.

Studio guests

CAMILLE RALPHS (b.1992, Stoke-on-Trent) is a poet, critic and editor. Her poems and translations have appeared or are forthcoming in magazines including the New York Review of Books, the Poetry Review, The Spectator and the London Magazine, and she has released three pamphlets: Malkin (The Emma Press, 2015), which was shortlisted for the Michael Marks Award; uplifts & chains (If A Leaf Falls/Glyph Press, 2020); and Daydream College for Bards (Guillemot Press, forthcoming 2023). She writes critically for publications including the Telegraph, the Poetry Review and the Los Angeles Review of Books, produces a regular column for Poetry London and conducts an interview series for Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal. She is Poetry Editor at the Times Literary Supplement. Her debut collection, After You Were, I Am, will be published by Faber in the summer of 2024.

STEPHANIE SY-QUIA was born in 1995 and is based in London. Her writing and criticism have been published in The Guardian, The White Review, The Boston Review, Granta, The TLS, and others. She is a Ledbury Poetry Critic and has twice been shortlisted for the FT Bodley Head Essay Prize. Her debut Amnion, published by Granta Poetry in 2021, received a Somerset Maugham Award and was a Poetry Book Society Winter Recommendation; was longlisted for the Rathbones Folio and RSL Ondaatje Prizes; and won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. She is the recipient of an Eric Gregory Award.

Audio postcards

‘Joseph in Bird Mask Can Fly’, written and read by Eve Esfandiari-Denney. Her pamphlet, My Bodies This Morning This Evening, is out now (Bad Betty Press, 2022).

‘Splash’, written and read by K Patrick. K Patrick’s debut poetry collection is forthcoming from Granta.

An extract from ‘Was It For This’, written and read by Hannah Sullivan, taken from her most recent collection, Was It For This (Faber, 2023).

About the presenters

RACHAEL ALLEN is the author of Kingdomland (Faber) and co-author of numerous artists’ books, including Nights of Poor Sleep (Prototype), Almost One, Say Again! (Slimvolume), Green at an Angle (Kestle Barton) and Material (Loose Joints). She was recently Anthony Burgess Fellow at the University of Manchester, is the poetry editor for Granta Publications, teaches Creative Writing at Queen Mary University, and her second collection of poems, God Complex, is forthcoming from Faber in 2024.

JACK UNDERWOOD is a poet, writer and critic. He is author of Happiness (Faber 2015) Solo for Mascha Voice (Test Centre, 2018) and A Year in the New Life (Faber 2021). His debut work of non-fiction, NOT EVEN THIS, was published by Corsair in 2021. He has collaborated widely with composers and artists, and his work has been published internationally and in translation. He is senior lecturer in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths College.

The Faber Poetry Podcast is produced by Rachael Allen, Jack Underwood and Hannah Marshall for Faber. Production and editing by Strathmore Publishing. Special thanks to Eve Esfandiari-Denney, K Patrick, Camille Ralphs, Hannah Sullivan and Stephanie Sy-Quia. All three seasons are available to stream on Audioboom, Apple Podcasts, Spotify and other major podcast listening platforms.

 

Episode Three

 

 

Show Notes

Rachael and Jack welcome studio guests Raymond Antrobus and Victoria Adukwei Bulley, and there are poems from Declan Ryan, Holly Isemonger and Dawn Watson.

In this episode, Jack and Rachael are joined by award-winning poets Raymond Antrobus and Victoria Adukwei Bulley in the studio, where they consider the multiple meanings of the word ‘quiet’ and the gifts that make you feel seen. Audio postcards in this episode come from Declan Ryan, Holly Isemonger and Dawn Watson.

A transcript of the episode is available here.

Studio guests

RAYMOND ANTROBUS is the author of three poetry titles: To Sweeten Bitter (Out-Spoken Press), The Perseverance (Penned in the Margins) and All The Names Given (Picador), as well as a forthcoming collection to be published by Picador. His work has won the Rathbones Folio Prize, the Ted Hughes Award, the Somerset Maugham Award, the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, and his poems have been added to GCSE syllabi. He is also the author of a children’s book, Can Bears Ski? (Walker Books), which became the first story to be broadcast on the BBC entirely in British Sign Language. Antrobus was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2020 and appointed an MBE in 2021. His debut work of non-fiction, An Investigation of Missing Sound, will be published by W&N in 2025.

VICTORIA ADUKWEI BULLEY is a poet, writer and artist. An alumna of the Barbican Young Poets and recipient of an Eric Gregory award, Victoria has held residencies in the US, Brazil and the V&A Museum in London. Her debut pamphlet, Girl B, was published by the African Poetry Book Fund in 2017. She is the recipient of a Techne scholarship for doctoral research at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her debut collection, Quiet, was published by Faber in 2022. It was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize and won the Rathbones Folio Prize for Poetry and the John Pollard Foundation International Poetry Prize.

Audio postcards

‘Mayfly’, written and read by Declan Ryan. His debut collection, Crisis Actor, is out now (Faber, 2023).

‘My Life as an Artist’, written and read by Holly Isemonger, from her collection Greatest Hit (Vagabond Press, 2023).

An extract from ‘We, Ghost Tigers’, written and read by Dawn Watson, taken from her collection, We Play Here (Granta, 2023).

About the presenters

RACHAEL ALLEN is the author of Kingdomland (Faber) and co-author of numerous artists’ books, including Nights of Poor Sleep (Prototype), Almost One, Say Again! (Slimvolume), Green at an Angle (Kestle Barton) and Material (Loose Joints). She was recently Anthony Burgess Fellow at the University of Manchester, is the poetry editor for Granta Publications, teaches Creative Writing at Queen Mary University, and her second collection of poems, God Complex, is forthcoming from Faber in 2024.

JACK UNDERWOOD is a poet, writer and critic. He is author of Happiness (Faber 2015), Solo for Mascha Voice (Test Centre, 2018) and A Year in the New Life (Faber 2021). His debut work of non-fiction, NOT EVEN THIS, was published by Corsair in 2021. He has collaborated widely with composers and artists, and his work has been published internationally and in translation. He is senior lecturer in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths College.

The Faber Poetry Podcast is produced by Rachael Allen, Jack Underwood and Hannah Marshall for Faber. Production and editing by Strathmore Publishing. Special thanks to Raymond Antrobus, Victoria Adukwei Bulley, Holly Isemonger, Declan Ryan and Dawn Watson. All three seasons are available to stream on Audioboom, Apple Podcasts, Spotify and other major podcast listening platforms.

 

Episode Four

 

 

Show Notes

Featuring guests Lucy Mercer and Maggie Millner, and poems by Susannah Dickey, Oluwaseun Olayiwola and Rowan Ricardo Phillips.

In this episode, Jack and Rachael talk couplets, nutlets and cats in poems, among many other things, with Lucy Mercer in the studio and Maggie Millner down the line from New York. Audio postcards are dispatched from Susannah Dickey, Oluwaseun Olayiwola and Rowan Ricardo Phillips.

A transcript of the episode is available here.

Studio guests

LUCY MERCER’S first poetry collection Emblem (Prototype, 2022) is a Poetry Book Society Choice. She has written for ArtReview, LA Review of Books and Poetry Review amongst others. She teaches creative writing at Goldsmiths and lives in London.

MAGGIE MILLNER was born and raised in rural upstate New York. She teaches writing at Yale and is a senior editor at the Yale Review. Her poems have appeared in the New Yorker, the Paris Review and Poetry. Couplets is her first book.

Audio postcards

‘Whenever you feel sad you enjoy the smooth refreshing taste of Diet Coke with Lemon’ written and read by Susannah Dickey. Her collection ISDAL is shortlisted for the 2023 Forward Prize for Best First Collection and is out now.

Oluwaseun Olayiwola reads from his poem ‘Simulacrum’. Strange Beach, Oluwaseun Olayiwola’s debut poetry collection will be published in 2024.

‘El Pintor’ written and read by Rowan Ricardo Phillips. His collections Living Weapon (2021) and Silver (forthcoming in April ’24) are published by Faber.

About the presenters

RACHAEL ALLEN is the author of Kingdomland (Faber) and co-author of numerous artists’ books, including Nights of Poor Sleep (Prototype), Almost One, Say Again! (Slimvolume), Green at an Angle (Kestle Barton) and Material (Loose Joints). She was recently Anthony Burgess Fellow at the University of Manchester, is the poetry editor for Granta Publications, teaches Creative Writing at Queen Mary University, and her second collection of poems, God Complex, is forthcoming from Faber in 2024.

JACK UNDERWOOD is a poet, writer and critic. He is author of Happiness (Faber 2015), Solo for Mascha Voice (Test Centre, 2018) and A Year in the New Life (Faber 2021). His debut work of non-fiction, NOT EVEN THIS, was published by Corsair in 2021. He has collaborated widely with composers and artists, and his work has been published internationally and in translation. He is senior lecturer in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths College.

The Faber Poetry Podcast is produced by Rachael Allen, Jack Underwood and Hannah Marshall for Faber. Production and editing by Strathmore Publishing. Special thanks to Susannah Dickey, Lucy Mercer, Maggie Millner, Oluwaseun Olayiwola and Rowan Ricardo Phillips. All three seasons are available to stream on Audioboom, Apple Podcasts, Spotify and other major podcast listening platforms.

Series Two

Episode One

In the first episode of the second series, Rachael and Jack discuss typewriters, ‘poetry’ backpacks, ruffles and codpieces (and much more) with their studio guests Joe Dunthorne and Will Harris and feature audio postcards sent to them by Simon Armitage, Heather Christle and Isabel Galleymore.

Episode Two

Rachael and Jack are joined in the studio by Mary Jean Chan and Rebecca Tamás to chat about recurring themes and preoccupations in their work – from fencing to the ecological world, the mother to the non-human. Audio postcards this week come from Paige Lewis, Peter Scupham and Matthew Dickman.

Episode Three

Award-winning poets Fiona Benson and Julia Copus join Rachael and Jack in the studio and there are audio postcards from Morgan Parker, Bobby Parker and Wendy Cope.

Episode Four

Two acclaimed award-winners join Rachael and Jack in the studio in our fourth episode of the second series: the Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet Rae Armantrout and the Scottish poet Don Paterson, twice winner of the T. S Eliot Prize and recipient of all three Forward Poetry Prizes, the Costa Poetry Prize and the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry. This episode also features audio postcards from Daljit Nagra, Sylvia Legris and Zeyar Lynn and ko ko thett.

Episode Five

Ilya Kaminsky and Sophie Robinson join Jack and Rachael in the studio to discuss, among other things, poems with ‘big dick energy’, the blurring of poetry with other literary forms and the tension between metaphor and the denial of metaphor. Audio postcards are from Daisy Lafarge, Anthony Anaxagorou and Hugo Williams.

Episode Five

We can’t believe we’ve come to the end of our second series [sad face]… In this extended final episode, Jack and Rachael have fun chatting with guests Daljit Nagra and Nisha Ramayya in the studio and there are audio postcards from Aria Aber and Jericho Brown, as well as poems from our two presenters.

Series One

Episode One

In the first episode, Rachael and Jack discuss talismans, teenage crushes and gateways to poetry with their studio guests Emily Berry and Momtaza Mehri, and play audio postcards sent to them by Ocean Vuong, Natalie Shapero and Vahni Capildeo.

Episode Two

Rachael and Jack have Sophie Collins and Emily Critchley in the studio to discuss, among other things, female authorship, having a lightbulb moment for Denise Riley and the art of leaving a poem without a conventional ending. Audio postcards in this episode come from Jillian Weise, Jennifer L. Knox and Nuar Alsadir.

Episode Three

Rachael and Jack chat in the studio with Richard Scott and Jane Yeh, discussing, among other things, the importance of recognising gay shame, the difference between biographical honesty and poetic honesty and a shared love for Star Trek (The Next Generation, obviously). Audio postcards this episode come from Peter Gizzi, Emily Toder and Hannah Sullivan.

Episode Four

Rachael and Jack talk fatherhood, the lyric I and the magical sound of a garden pond with their guests Wayne Holloway-Smith and Maurice Riordan and there are audio postcards from Mary Jean Chan, Kaveh Akbar and Nisha Ramayya.

Episode Five

In the penultimate episode of our first series, Rachael and Jack are joined in the studio by Holly Pester and Sam Riviere, plus a pat of butter and a set of nail clippers, which inspire conversations about poetry writing and its relationship to research, archives and procrastination. Audio postcards this episode come from Will Harris, Zaffar Kunial and Monica McClure.

Episode Six

In the final episode of our first series of the Faber Poetry Podcast, Rachael and Jack are joined in the studio by Edward Doegar and Ishion Hutchinson, who discuss the value of a ‘fake’ talisman and the violence and beauty that can be found in a game of marbles. Our final audio postcards of the series come from Elaine Kahn and Sara Peters.

This article was originally published on 19 April 2018 and updated on 19 April 2023.