Faber Poetry Podcast episode four: Wayne Holloway-Smith & Maurice Riordan

In this episode, 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.

Show notes

Studio guests

Photo: Mark Sherratt

WAYNE HOLLOWAY-SMITH’s first collection of poetry was published by Bloodaxe Books in 2017, was a Poetry Book Society Wildcard Choice and shortlisted for both the Roehampton Poetry Prize and the Seamus Heaney Centre Prize for Best First Collection. His poem ‘Short’ won the Poetry Society’s Geoffrey Dearmer Prize 2016. He lives in London. @hollawaynesmith

MAURICE RIORDAN was born in 1953 in Lisgoold, Co. Cork. His first collection, A Word from the Loki (1995), was nominated for the T. S. Eliot Prize, as was The Water Stealer (2013). Floods (2000) was a Book of the Year in both the Sunday Times and Irish Times and he received the Michael Hartnett Award for The Holy Land (2007). His most recent book is The Finest Music, an anthology of early Irish poetry in translation. He has edited Poetry London and The Poetry Review and is currently Professor of Poetry at Sheffield Hallam University.

Talismen

Wayne Holloway-Smith’s sketch of ‘a TV dad’ and the photo of his father.

Audio postcards

‘Poetry is the last place’ written and read by Mary Jean Chan. Mary Jean Chan’s debut pamphlet A Hurry of English is published by ignitionpress, and was selected as the 2018 Poetry Book Society Summer Pamphlet Choice. Her debut collection is forthcoming from Faber & Faber (2019).

‘Ultrasound’ written and read by Kaveh Akbar.  Kaveh Akbar’s Calling a Wolf a Wolf (2018) is published by Penguin.

‘After infatuation’ written and read by Nisha Ramayya, from the sequence ‘States of the Body Produced by Love’. Nisha Ramayya’s pamphlets Notes on Sanskrit (2015) and Correspondences (2016) are published by Oystercatcher Press.

About the presenters

RACHAEL ALLEN is the poetry editor at Granta magazine, 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 will be published by Faber in 2019. She has published two books in collaboration with visual artists, Jolene with Guy Gormley (Matchsticks Books) and Nights of Poor Sleep with Marie Jacotey (Test Centre). 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 will be 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 Billy Godfrey at Strathmore Publishing. Thanks to Kaveh Akbar, Mary Jean Chan, Wayne Holloway-Smith, Nisha Ramayya and Maurice Riordan. Special thanks to Margot Holloway-Smith for this episode’s outro.

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