The Poetry Pharmacy

So pleased to have Finn Menzies in the Poetry Pharmacy this week! Finn prescribes Max Ritvo‘s AFTERNOON which can be found here, and I reciprocate with Jim Ferris‘s FACTS OF LIFE (read Jim’s poem here). We also read and talk about … Continue reading →

Today in the Poetry Pharmacy, we’re hanging out with Chen Chen.  Chen prescribes a Keegan Lester poem which can be found here, and I reciprocate with jayy dodd‘s incredible ars poetica. We also read and talk about Chen’s poem Poplar Street.  … Continue reading →

Today in the Poetry Pharmacy, we had a visit from Mary Jean Chan,  Mary Jean’s work has appeared in The Poetry Review, Ambit, The Rialto, The London Magazine, Callaloo and elsewhere. She is also a Co-Editor at Oxford Poetry. Her poem … Continue reading →

Welcome to a new season of the show, now rebranded and slightly reformatted as POETRY PHARMACY! You might notice that we have a slightly different way of doing things: two readers, three poems, and even more POETRY LOVE than ever before.  We’re … Continue reading →

“”What the hell the tooth is doing there, I don’t know, but I love it.” Ryan Van Winkle   Ryan Van Winkle is currently Poet in Residence at Edinburgh City Libraries following a similar stint as the Scottish Poetry Library’s … Continue reading →

In the last few days, two events have played themselves out. To be more precise: an almost infinite number of events have occured if you’re willing to squish down to the atomic and subatomic (which I am). Yesterday, for example, a … Continue reading →

You don’t need another self-help book (apart from this one, perhaps?). It’s good to know though that you, me, Sarah Salway and David Foster Wallace still buy them.  (I only include DFW as a sanctioning-device. If DFW digs something, doesn’t … Continue reading →

Whilst preparing this podcast for your tympanic membranes, I’ve found myself again and again drawn to YouTube  in order to get an eyeful of pants. And because these pants are American, I of course mean trousers.   You might know … Continue reading →

“Try and imagine what this great pond, quite unglamorous and muddy, this dirty-watered pond looks like when you don’t impose yourself, your whole history, or the history of a culture on it; when you just let yourself see it.”  Josh … Continue reading →

Here’s a jug of story water to put into your morning kettle. When I was living in Milan in the early 90s, with all the potential and fear that being a young adult entails, the floorboards of our flat would … Continue reading →

“Something I find really moving is the timelessness of our struggles. Herbert probably wouldn’t have been diagnosed with a depressive illness, but we now know that he had terrible battles and internal struggles. To me this poem describes that perfectly. … Continue reading →

 “Then I began to speak of style, of the army of words, an army in which all kinds of weapons are on the move. No iron can enter the human heart as chillingly as a full stop placed at the … Continue reading →

Imagine a small tribe living on the edge of the savannah. A tribe with it’s requisite, antler festooned Poet-Philosopher-Shaman doing her shape shifting, neologising, bewilderment making best to entertain us. What he or she presents to the tribe on a daily … Continue reading →

My parents were probably not hip enough to read me Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree. You can’t really get more hip, as a writer of children’s books (and “A Boy Named Sue”), than have Johnny Cash introduce you thus: “Sometimes … Continue reading →

“BECAUSE of New Year’s I get the big room, eight-dollar room. But it seems smaller than before; and sitting by the window, looking out on the rain and town, I know the waiting eats at me again.“