The Faber Poetry Podcast: Rae Armantrout and Don Paterson

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.

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Show notes

Studio guests

RAE ARMANTROUT is the author of more than ten collections of poetry and has also published a short memoir, True (1998). Her Collected Prose was published in 2007. Her most recent collections include Versed (2009), which won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry and a 2009 National Book Critics Circle Award, and was a finalist for the 2009 National Book Award; Itself (2015); Partly: New and Selected Poems (2016); Entanglements (2017); and Wobble (2018), a finalist for the National Book Award. She has received fellowships and awards from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the California Arts Council, the Rockefeller Center, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

DON PATERSON was born in Dundee in 1963. He is the author of Nil Nil (1993), winner of the Forward Prize for Best First Collection; God’s Gift to Women (1997) – winner of both the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize; and Landing Light (2003), which won both the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Whitbread Prize for Poetry. Rain won the Forward Prize for Best Collection in 2009, the same year that he was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry. He has also published two collections of aphorisms, one of which is his most recent book The Fall at Home, and a treatise on poetry in three parts, The Poem. His Selected Poems appeared in 2012.

Audio postcards

‘The Thirteen O’Clock News’ written and read by Daljit Nagra.
Daljit Nagra’s latest collection British Museum (2017) is published by Faber & Faber.

‘Rhubarb’, ‘Sea Lavender’ and ‘Rue’, three poems written and read by Sylvia Legris. Sylvia Legris’ latest poetry collection is The Hideous Hidden (New Directions, 2016). The poems featured in this episode are from Garden Physic, a work in progress. 

‘Slightly lopsided but a more accurate portrait’ written by Zeyar Lynn. Translated and read by ko ko thett. Zeyar Lynn’s most recent pamphlet Nobody Represents Me (2018) is published by Clinic.

About the presenters

RACHAEL ALLEN is the poetry editor at Granta, co-editor at the poetry press Clinic and of online journal tender. A pamphlet of her poems was published as part of the Faber New Poets scheme, and her first collection, Kingdomland, was published by Faber in January 2019. She is the recipient of an Eric Gregory award and New Writing North’s Andrew Waterhouse award. @r_vallen 

JACK UNDERWOOD is a poet, who also writes short fiction and non-fiction. A recipient of the Eric Gregory Award in 2007, he published his debut pamphlet in 2009 as part of the Faber New Poets series. His first collection Happiness was published by Faber in 2015 and was winner of the 2016 Somerset Maugham prize. He is a lecturer in creative writing at Goldsmiths College and is currently writing a non-fiction book about poetry and uncertainty. Two pamphlets, Solo for Mascha Voice and Tenuous Rooms were published by Test Centre in 2018. @underwood_jack 

The Faber Poetry Podcast is produced by Rachael Allen, Jack Underwood and Hannah Marshall for Faber & Faber. Editing by Strathmore Publishing.  Special thanks to Rae Armantrout, Sylvia Legris, Zeyar Lynn, Daljit Nagra, Don Paterson and ko ko thett.

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