Beyond the Verse - Journeying into Poetry: Answering Poetry+ User Questions

Episode Date: July 8, 2024

Welcome to the inaugural episode of “Beyond the Verse,” the official podcast of PoemAnalysis.com and Poetry+. In this first episode, Joe and Maiya share their personal paths to poetry, revealing how influential teachers and early literary successes sparked their enduring love for the art form. They discuss their academic backgrounds in English literature and how their experiences have shaped their understanding and appreciation of poetry.Get answers from questions submitted Poetry+ subscribers. Joe and Maiya delve into the importance of studying poetry beyond artistic appreciation, exploring how poetry serves as a cultural artifact that reflects historical, social, and political changes. As they discuss their favorite poets and influential works, listeners get a glimpse into the diverse voices that have shaped Joe and Maya’s literary tastes. From classic poets like Emily Brontë (Poems/PDF Guide) and Federico García Lorca (Poems/PDF Guide) to contemporary voices like Ocean Vuong and Danez Smith (Poems), the hosts highlight the enduring impact of these poets on their lives and work.Joe and Maiya also address the evolution of poetry in the digital age, considering how social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok have made poetry more accessible and popular among younger audiences. They reflect on the balance between short-form and long-form poetry, acknowledging the benefits of both in engaging modern readers.Tune in and Discover:Personal stories of discovering poetry and the impact of inspirational teachers.The role of poetry in understanding cultural and historical contexts.Tips for writing effective GCSE essays and making poetry relevant in education.Favorite poets and influential works that have shaped Joe and Maiya’s literary journeys.The intersection of poetry and social media in the 21st century.and much more! Send us a textSupport the showAs always, for the ultimate poetry experience, join Poetry+ and explore all things poetry at PoemAnalysis.com.

Welcome to Beyond the Verse with me, Joe and my co-host Maya. This is a podcast on poetry, brought to you by the team at Poemanalysis.com and Poetry Plus, the home of poetry, whether you're a student, teacher or general poetry lover. We are very pleased to have you with us. So, Maya, we've had some very lovely questions from some of our subscribers. One of our subscribers would like to know how we first came to be involved in the world of poetry. and I'm going to throw that question to you, Mai, if you don't mind. So I have been writing poetry since I was probably about 15.

I have always loved it. I've always read poetry. I think it's one of those classic stories everyone has that is across the poetry world where you have your favourite English teacher and they just inspire you. And I got told to start submitting things. I did.

I was very lucky to win a few things, get shortlisted on a couple of things, and it just ignited that spark in me. I then went on to, to study it for my undergrad and for my master's as well. So I did English literature and then 20th and 21st century literature, but with a focus on poetry throughout for both my dissertations. And yeah, being part of this podcast is such a nice way to extend that I think poetry is something that follows you through your whole life if you do have that love for it. I don't know about you,

but that's definitely how I feel. No, I completely agree. And I think we share the love, if only we share the talent, I think. I also had one of those inspirational teachers, but rather than being inspired to write poetry, I think I went down the road of trying to become one of those inspirational teachers. So I also fell in love of poetry with a teenager, particularly when I was doing my A-levels, went to university to study English literature, went on to study for a master's in Irish literature, again with a strong focus on poetry. I edited a literary magazine for a time, and I have since been tutoring, I've been an English

tutor now for six or seven years, and I absolutely love that process of working through a poem with a student. And that's how we came to be. And I've been doing a lot of the content for poem analysis and a lot of the PDF and our extensive PDF learning library were written by yours truly. So I'm sure our listeners will go and check those out if they're looking to understand either individual poets, poetic movements or any kind of poetic terminology. And I'm really excited to kick off the podcast because there is so much to discuss in this kind of forum really lends itself, that almost classroom seminar-esque environment where you can bounce ideas of each other. The written word just doesn't quite cut it sometimes.

100% is very exciting. We actually have a question from one of our Poetry Plus subscribers saying, aside from artistic appreciation or entertainment, what are the reasons to read and analyse poetry? I think that's probably a good one for you to tackle, given that you have that tutoring element. Yeah, I think it's a brilliant question first and foremost, and thank you for it. I think that using poetry and also other forms of art, whether it's visual art or whether it's other forms of written art, is a way of plotting the human story, whether it's a specific historical development, a linguistic development, the development of any kind of political change. You can tell an alternative history without looking at any of the historical

facts just by looking at what artists were saying about those historical facts. And actually, you can plot the progression of things like democracy, the progression of laws around ratism in America or the slave trade. You can plot those things without no any of the dates just by looking at the way the artists were responding. So I think as a cultural artefact, poetry, it stands above most other forms of identifying the way that things were changing. And I think it's a hugely valuable thing, quite aside from the fact that it makes us feel happy and sad and loved and all of those things that it does.

What about you, my? No, I completely agree. I think it's such a fascinating thing, especially when you look at certain poetic movement, to see this continual tone of voice throughout, I think without knowing anything about history where you can study things and it can be clinical and very factual. Poetry is something that has so much emotion in it

that when you're reading poets who are in conversation with one another, you really do feel transported to that specific time and place. And I think that is the most beautiful thing as someone who does love poetry to actually feel as if you're within that world No, I completely agree. So we also have a question from one of our listeners, Kim, so thank you for asking. For GCSE essays, is it necessary to write an introduction and a conclusion?

It's a great question, Kim, and thank you for asking it. For our international listeners, or non-UK-based listeners, GCSEs, are a set of exams that are compulsory, particularly English and math, that students of the UK have to study normally when they're around 15 or 16 years old. For a GCSE essay, is it necessary to write a introduction and a conclusion? Unfortunately, I'm going to give a slightly cheeky answer. I'm going to say yes, but it doesn't need, it shouldn't be, basically. Introductions and conclusions, the higher up you go in terms of studying literature are incredibly valuable. They frame an answer, they allow you to appear confident, they allow you to situate your response.

We're talking now A level and maybe even degree level. At GCSC, they are somewhat perfunctory. Unfortunately, at A level and university level, essays have introductions and conclusions. They don't add a huge amount, especially because... because students at GCSE level aren't given loads of time to write essays, especially in exams. Coursework perhaps is a little bit different, but it's something an examiner will expect to see, so it's something you have to include. Now, oftentimes better students that are really pushing for the top grades,

they struggle with that because they are aware of the fact they're writing things that aren't adding a lot of value to their essays. To those people, and I have students like this, and unfortunately, it's just something you have to stomach. Try and get into an introduction, be clear, be concise, similar with your conclusion. but it is something you do have to include, I am afraid, but don't worry, because if you are going to pursue English later on, you'll be very grateful, sorry, for having written those instructions and conclusions because soon they will be necessary and it's no bad thing to have got a couple of years of practice under your belt. Absolutely. And I think what you said about how it frames your writing in any way is really valuable, because what it does is it sets out your aims for that essay. And when you do have limited time, even just to summarize the key points that you're going to hear, it will actually help you to stay the course as well.

Absolutely. And we've got another question for one of our subscribers, Craig. So thank you for your question, Craig. Craig would like to know, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, Maya. How do you think we can make poetry more relevant within education? As a question, I think there is so much poetic richness out there. I don't know quite how else to phrase it. There's so many writers and readers and people who are willing,

to be snapped up by a poem. But I think in schools or universities, they're not necessarily targeting the correct poems. I think as someone who is gripped by, I know exactly what I like, and I know it's going to speak to me, all it takes is one poem that 100% speaks to you for you to be then locked in for life.

One of the ones that really hit me when I was in school, we did the war and peace collections of balanced poems about specific World War II warfare and it doesn't necessarily sit the right way with you if it's not something you're that interested in but one that massively got me was half-cast by John Agar because I'm mixed race. The moment I read that I was like, wow, someone speaking to an experience that I have in a way that is just so lyrical and fantastic and that to me is an experience everyone needs to have a certain point in their life. What do you think? Yeah, I couldn't agree more.

And if any of our listeners who are interested knowing more about John Aegard, you can not only find an article on that very poem, but you can also find an extensive PDF about John Aigard in our learning library, which I more than encourage you ought to go and look at. And you're absolutely right. I think I obviously teach a lot of students

in the British education system who are going through their teenage years and encountering poetry in what is quite a clinical environment in a school environment. And the difference between a poem, often they are war poems that feels disconnected to the experience of somebody in modern Britain compared to a poem, John Eagard's poem,

checking out my history comes to mind, where it really captures something among some of the students I've taught. I think on a broader scale, I would like to see poetry brought in much earlier in the sort of lifespan of a student, if you will. I think we're very good at teaching nursery rhymes to very young students, and then we almost put the verse away for 15 years and bring it out together. It is made sometimes to feel,

childish. A hundred percent, 100 percent. And there's this odd dislocation between those kind of early songs and nursery rhymes where we're really introducing young children to the richness of language. And then it feels sometimes like we put poetry away again. And when it comes back when students are in secondary education, it's 13, 14, it comes back on some kind of pedestal. And I would like to see younger students encouraged to read silly poetry, read funny poetry, read poetry that is irreverent because there's loads of it out there, it's really good and not just get to

14, 15, 16 years old and be told that poetry is something written by men hundreds of years ago about flowers. There's lots of that poetry out there but there's lots more besides that. So I would like to see it brought in much earlier. I would like to see it taught in a way that there's a lot more immersive and I would like to see students encouraged

to embrace the richness of language including all its silly and irreverent formats rather than just thinking poetry is something that they need to show a lot of difference to. Absolutely. I think it's one of those instances where in the classroom, like you say, it can be made to feel clinical or it can be made to feel as if it's something that you don't quite understand and you're not quite going to ever understand it. I think there are so many incredible poets that just coming out of the woodwork now that can be brought in, even if it's not a focused classroom or it's not a full English lesson that can just be made to feel relevant on topic

for things that are happening in the world or the way that certain people feel at certain points of their life. I loved, I received from a friend, The Poetry Pharmacy as a book. And that, I think, just changed my whole worldview. There is a poem for everything. And I think people are missing a trick going through life and not knowing that there's something that will instantly speak to them in that moment. moment. You and I are poetry lovers, and I'm sure many of our listeners are, or hopefully

will become, the more they listen to the podcast. But we can be in a little bit of a bubble sometimes. So you being a writer, me being a teacher and formerly an editor, does that change the way that we read poetry? Do you think that we read poetry differently to people who are perhaps dipping their toes in and out of the poetry world? And also, are you able to switch mindsets? Do you need to switch mindsets when you're reading a poem? Or are you always reading a poem as a poet? I think it's a really interesting one. I personally am of the belief that I have my kind of creative writing brain and I have my enjoyment reading brain. I don't think I necessarily go into every single poem I read with that I could have done this or I would have written it

this way because I think it just, you're always going to be more critical of the stuff that you write and it quells your appreciation in a sense. I think you can be a poet, you can be a writer, So you can be an editor. You could be someone who critiques poetry for a living and still be able to take yourself out of that box and enjoy it. How do you find it as an editor? I think it's a skill. I think that it's something I've got better at, probably.

I think probably when I was in the midst of my A levels, actually, A levels for international listeners or exams you take in the UK when you're 17, 18, which are very intense and they're very demanding. And literature was obviously one of my major subjects. And I think at that point I would have struggled to dislocate analysis from enjoyments of poetry. I think probably the experience of studying literature at university, just because of the density of the reading,

how much we were required to read, I think probably got a little bit better at that stage of being able to say, that's work and this is pleasure. It happens. That part of your brain still kicks in and you start thinking, oh, I'm fascinated about why they made this to say, you know, how does that link to the context of the time? I think it's something that you can put on ice,

if you focus on that. And I think actually reading poetry for the true pleasure of it has become better because now I'm more cognizant to the fact that I should just be enjoying it. I've developed that switch to be able to say, it's not work, it's pleasure, really embrace it, pour yourself a cup of coffee and enjoy. And do you find that it's something that I've toyed with in the last, I think, a couple of years whilst I've been at university and as someone who's grown with my poetry as well?

do you think that when you read it as someone who edits or writes, you tend to have a bit more of a wider engagement with the context as well? I think I've become more curious, certainly. I think that nothing infuriate me more than having a poem that I want to know more about and can't find the information, which is a shame because obviously, especially when you're reading up and coming poets or developing poets, often that information simply isn't there. You have a text and you have no information about them. I am pretty voracious when it comes to reading around the poem. So if I can't do that, sometimes I find that's an itch that I feel like I need to scratch. I think, I don't know whether that comes from being an editor and a student of literature or whether that's just something about me.

I think I'm like that in lots of ways in life. I need to know the story behind the story. It's not enough for me just to have the poem itself. But I think that's definitely not universal. I think plenty of people, maybe we'll talk about these and later episodes and podcasts, and plenty of academics would stress that the poem's context shouldn't be read and isn't relevant, but that's not the school of thought to which I belong. interesting I would tend to agree with you to be honest I think context whether you choose to

write about it after the fact or not is so vital to the poem and where it's situated and you can have someone who's going through ex experience and is writing a poem at that time it doesn't necessarily impact the poem's content but it does impact the creation of the poem and why it was made in the way it was made so I think that's a of thought I definitely follow you on. I do particularly love that. I think with our website as well, it's a fascinating thing to be able to look. And if I want to Google one of our poets and see just their poems, the fact that there's just so many PDFs where you can read all about the history and the specific things that made their poems what they are. No, I couldn't agree more.

And one of the things we really wanted to create with our PDF learning library is that rabbit hole experience, I call it, that ability to, you go looking for a specific term. I want to learn about a specific type of poetry, whether it's sonnets or free verse poetry, and you could find yourself two hours later reading about a particular poetic movement in France in the 17th century. And that's the kind of experience we want to create. And I'm sure some of our listeners already have, and I'm sure many others will be checking out the library in the coming days and weeks. And we encourage you and you're more than welcome. Now, Maya, I've got another question for you. And again, I think this is a really interesting question because it's something that we probably don't think about day to day

because these people and these poets are so ingrained in our worldview and our sense of ourselves as lovers of poetry. But tell us some of your favourite poets and why it is that they left their mark on you. You know what? This is always one of the hardest questions to answer because my answer changes all the time. I think for me there are poets that live continuously in my head. There are poets that have influenced me so much as a young woman when I was 14, 15, 16, Sylvia Plath. was everything. And it's interesting because looking through my writing as well, you definitely see those influences thread their way in with the motifs I was using and even just the structure of the poems. But now I would say my and Ocean Bong as well, because I think the way the writing

in all of his poems sits with me is just so beautiful and so lyrical. And I think Ocean does an incredible job of setting a scene and really digging into that sort of dreamscape element and that is something that I've always loved. Ocean Vaughang is clearly a love of ours. My favourite poet, the present company excluded, of course. For our listeners, my Dambor winner is of course my favourite poet. But aside from esteemed co-host, I think when I think that's when I really fell in love with poetry, I had that same rabbit hole experience I described earlier. I think when I first had Wuthering Heights, a novel by Emily Bronte. I became an absolute Emily Bronte. fanatic, and that definitely a love that I've kept all these years.

So the poetry of Emily Bronte was a huge influence on me and really shapes the way that I was reading at the time. I think more recently I did my master's in Irish literature, as I've said, over in Dublin, so I have a particular fondness for a lot of the poets that I studied on that course, Patrick Kavanaugh, Michael Longley, to name a couple. Federico Garthiola Lourke is a really important poet in my life. My father's side of the family is Spanish. we have our own personal history with the years around the Spanish Civil War in which

Lorca was very tragically killed and for me there's no one else ever who could have written the poems Lorca wrote and I'm sure there are a lot of poets that people love who they would say that about their favorite poets but to me there's something about Lorca's the tension between the desire and the sort of transient nature of life the that sense of yearning his poems exert I just think think there's no one who does lawker or does no one holds a candle to him. I've been reading a lot of Louise Glick recently, the great American poet who passed away a couple of years ago, won a Nobel Prize in 2020. I am a massive sucker for classical illusion. I love a retelling of a Greek myth.

Give me a Greek telling of a Greek myth every day of the week and few people do it better than Louise Glick. I think Triumph of Achilles is one of the finest poems of the last 50 years. And if any of our readers aren't familiar with it, like I said, they can go to read about the poem specifically on the site or of course subscribers can have full access to the PDF learning library which include PDFs on the vast majority of the poets that we've just listed. But yeah, Louise Glick, Triumphicquilees, I think is living in my head rent-free right now. I think it's a lovely thing to be able to pick and choose from all of these fantastic poets. I mean, there is such a wealth of writing out there and I think being able to pick things

that even as you were saying speak to your personal history is such a wealth. an incredible opportunity for anyone to have? No, I couldn't agree more. So my question for you is, in terms of our podcast and moving forward, how are we going to select the poems as we move forward? It's a great question. Because we can't just choose our favourites. Can't we? We can do whatever we want, Mike.

What do you mean? I think, look, I think it's, we want the podcast to be the home of poetry, just as we want Permanalysis.com and Poetry Plus to be the home of poetry. is our offering to the listeners and we want to hear what the listeners have to say. We want to know what poems they want to know about whether it's poems they love or poems they never understood at school. Poetry interacts with people at different points in their lives. People learn it at school, people hate it at school, people see it in adverts and people see it on the tube or the subway for our North American listeners. People hear it read at funerals.

And I think what I would love the podcast to be is an intersection of our loves of poetry and the way the poetry intersects with people in their everyday lives. We are going to be very receptive to what our listeners want to learn about, whether that's individual poems, whether they want us to talk about poetic movements, whether they want us to talk about the moments that poetry's appeared in film or broader visual art. We are here to be very receptive to what those people want to hear, with a few of our favourites slipped in for good measure. And I think nobody would begrudge us that. What about you? Do you have any thoughts on that? I think it's something that we've spoken about between us as well. It's a learning

opportunity for both of us. It's a really fantastic opportunity. to have as someone who does love poetry and loves talking about poetry and could probably go on for four or five hours, although I know we don't have that time. So I will restrain myself. Got it. But I think you're constantly learning about different poets and different histories. And I think for me being able to be part of that as a teacher and someone who is still learning as well is a really nice thread to go through our podcast. I think there's things that you're going to teach me, I'm sure, and I hope that there's things that I'll be able to teach you as well, especially when it comes to talking about our favourite poets and why they

mean so much to us. No, I couldn't. I'm learning from you already, Maya. We don't need to delay that. I've got a bit... And having just thrown your compote, I'm now going to throw you a difficult one. It's a big question, and we'd like to thank our listener Pablo for asking it. It's a fantastic question. Pablo would like to know if we could talk about some of the poems that have had a big impact so big that they've actually restructured the English language. I'm passing you the ball, Meyer, feel free to run with it. Oh, just ask me the hardest question we've had the whole time. Why not? It goes to the territory. I think it's a nearly impossible question, to be honest. I think having that broader scope is, I honestly, makes me lost for words. I personally,

maybe this is a bit of a cop-out answer. I think every poem in a sense changes the structure of the English language, everything that is put out there that is a slight deviation from the norm is always going to have an impact. However, I will revert back to who I was talking about before. So Dana Smith, I think, has had an incredible impact on specifically page poetry is what I call it and how you actually lay out your words on a page. There's an incredible poem that actually comes to mind where as you're flicking through their work, the page just becomes dense with ink. So you just have a mixture of the words,

his blood, my blood, becoming more and more dense. And that, to me, is a version of poetry that is visual and impactful. And I'd love to hear how that would be performed. I think that also carries across anyone who uses language. And I think, as you were saying earlier, poetry a lot of the time is pushed into that box

where it is about unfamiliar because you don't understand the people who are writing all the time that they're writing from. and it is that classic white male and stale, unfortunately. So looking at poets who use any language that is a little bit different from the deviation from standard English, I think patois has had a huge impact, especially on Black British literature and Black British poetry. I have a whole wealth of poets that I could discuss now.

But I think that integration is so key to actually changing our understanding of language and our understanding of what makes poetry? Yeah, look, it's a great question from Pablo. And again, it's worth saying that we could have an entire podcast episode on this question and we'd probably slowly scratch the surface. I think a lot of that depends on how you define restructuring the English language. I would like to just start with that as a sort of jumping off point. The idea that the English language is something that has a structure, I think is a debate in its own right.

I'm not sure language works like that. I think language is amorphous. I think language is constantly being made and remade. So it's not so much that you have a solid thing that every 200 years gets broken and put back together. It's more that every year, every time that a new word is introduced into the lexicon, every time that a song or poem or film uses a word in a different way, the word acquires new meaning and the lexicon changes.

So I think starting at that point, but that is a whole other kind of words. If I was going to think about specific examples, his name had to come up eventually. I think Shakespeare is an important reference point here. I think he didn't invent as many words as people say he did. Oftentimes he was using words that people already knew, but I think it's also fair to look at there is an English language pre-Shakespeare and an English language post-Shakespeare. And the two are vastly different.

So I think Shakespeare would have to be an important reference point. But I think we could go further back. I think we have to go back to the shift from Latin and Anglo-Norman into Anglo-Saxon. I think we can talk about Beowulf. We can talk about the Exeter book. there is no bigger shift in the structure of the English language than the shift into the English language. So I think that would have to feature in the conversation. Poets like Paul Lawrence Dunbar, the North American poets in the late 19th century, I should say. It was the first person

to use African-American dialect in traditional forms like sonnets. And again, as Maya was saying, when you use language even slightly differently, whether it's writing in dialect over standard English, that changes the way people perceive the language. It changes the way people perceive the people who use that language, we could think about when types of poetry that are associated with other cultures have come into English. So whether or not you think, as lots of people debate, whether or not Ezra Pound is the first person to write a sonnet in English and the poem in the station of the Metro, which readers can find more on the website if they like to, whether or not you agree that's the first example of haiku in English, there was a first hykud in English. Doesn't matter

which one you think it is. And taking a poetic form, it's associated with a particular culture associated with the particular language and reproducing it in your language, not only changes the language, but it changes the forms. It's a really difficult question. I think I would just finish by coming back to the poets that you began with. There will be poets writing today who are massively changing the structure of the English language, and we might not know because these things require context. They require time and distance. It's very easy for me to say Beowulf changed the English language or Shakespeare changed the English language because we have hundreds of years and thousands of years

of separation from those things and we can plot development back. So when you talk about poets like Dana Smith, we don't know the impacts that those poems are having and that future generations will be able to tell us and they'll be able to listen back to this podcast and think what fools they were. Why didn't they mention so? And you know what? I think

recently I've been reading some really what I would call experimental poetry now where actually we're moving into I don't even know how I would phrase it but non-verbal poetry. a poetry that is meant to be seen on the page. One that comes to mind is Sophia Kamaria Kinshasa.

She's a relatively new poet and she has this poem called Slow Wine and it is written in dance notation and there are no words in it. There's no English language in it. And I think also rooting back to that is the English language itself. Poetry isn't necessarily written in an English language. It's written in languages across the world. It's written in notation, it's written in symbols, it's discussed through oral tradition. You're looking at such a rich history that you're seeing being made in front of you today.

I think having access to such incredible poets who are really reinventing the wheel is an incredible thing to have. I couldn't agree more. Just following off from that, we've had an excellent question about tell us who you're reading at the moment, whether that's poets you've loved for years or poets you're just discovering. What's on your bookshelf at the moment? What's by your bedside? I've actually been going through my phase of rereading all my favourites, unfortunately. So I don't have anyone new to give you, but I would love to hear some recommendations from you.

I don't. Unfortunately, I don't have anybody that I'm reading that springs to mind that I've been reading who's contemporary. But there's a couple of things I've been reading recently. I've been reading quite a lot of Dorothy Parker. I don't know if you're familiar with Dorothy Parker, but I've gone down the rabbit hole, as I've said. It's a trait I have when you're trying to get stuff done and suddenly many pages into a book about Dorothy Parker. Dorothy Parker was a remarkable early 20th century poet,

screenwriter, political activist. As I said earlier on, I'm an absolutely sucker for classical retellings, and I encountered a poem called Penelope, which readers and listeners can look out on our site. I analyzed it for the website just last week. And the poem is a retelling, as the name might suggest, for those of you who are familiar with classical literature, it's a retelling of the journey back from Troy,

taken by Odysseus to his wife Penelope, and it's just a fabulous recasting of the way in which we perceive those figures. Odysseus, this great hero, Penelope, this loyal wife, as if loyalty is the only characteristic we should exonerate in a woman of the period. And this notion of why we are celebrating this man who, frankly, takes liberties on his 20-year absence that are unforgivable in my eyes, and I'm sure most people wouldn't be happy with their partner behaving the way that Odysseus behave. But it's a fabulous poem, and she's a really interesting poet. So recommend the poem, more than recommend

doing a deep dive on Dorothy Parker. And again, all things coming full circle. As a result of that, I decided to finally pick up Emily Watson's new translation of the Iliad. I say new. I think it's within the last five years, but it's had a reprint of late. Look, the Iliad. as you know for the listeners who aren't aware is one of the sort of foundational texts of the Western Canon an epic poem by Homer one of his two epic poems the other being the Odyssey

it tells the story of the final few weeks of the Battle of Troy featuring some legendary characters of Achilles and Odysseus and etc some listeners might be familiar with the 2004 film Troy starring Brad Pitt but if that's your entry point then we're very happy to have you. Emily Watton's new translation

is stunning the way in which she recal some of these interactions, the way in which she pays attention to some of these underdeveloped female characters, the way that she describes what are some of the most mesmerizing scenes of battle I think I've ever seen rendered in literature. Big shout out to Emily Watson and her translation of the ad friend of the podcast, and we'd love to speak to you, Emily, if you're out there listening. Yeah, please come on and chat to us. We'd love to know more.

To be fair, speaking about incredible female poets, I did actually recently read Elizabeth Jane Burnett, if you've heard of her before. Her collection swims actually really stood out to me as one that really plays with that tension between the elements and the body and her whole collection was really tactile, I want to say. The poems are essentially all based on her taking swims in different bodies of water. They speak a lot to sustainability, they speak a lot to her experience as a woman. And I think her, the way that she interconnects, the way that she interconnects, the way. movement of the water with the movement of her body through the water and the language she

uses and that sense of real immersion is absolutely brilliant. I think she's someone that I can't wait to see more of her work to be honest that I've read some of her essays as well and I think they're very insightful. But yeah, I think she's someone that actually recently I'll probably end up reading a little bit more. Fabulous. My list is long enough already but I'm always grateful to add names to the list. I know. As we're speaking, I'm making notes. Now, fabulous. That's what we like to hear. I'm sure the listeners are as well. Here's an interesting question. And it comes from one of our listeners. Given our increasingly short attention spans, do you think the shorter formats of poetry are a good match? The question actually refers to our educational needs, but I might throw it out to be a broader question. Do you think 21st century readers are predisposed to enjoy shorter poetry more? Is it wired into our DNA as a Instagram TikTok generation? You know what? I'm not sure. As someone who is, very proudly Gen Z. I am someone who occasionally will participate in TikTok and I love Instagram. I think what I've definitely seen is an advent of social media that really celebrates poetry

in a way that I've not really seen previously. I think being able to repost something and put it on your story or put it on your page in one single screenshot, is actually really accessible. And to me, I would maybe agree and say that short form content in a lot of ways makes poetry very accessible for the masses. I've personally seen people who I never would have thought would have listened to poems being read

or even gone out to buy a poetry collection, reposting things that have just spoken to them on a deeper level, I think especially with what's going on in the world, poetry is becoming such a conduit of real true raw emotion. And it's a fascinating thing to see as someone who was reading poetry before it took off on social media. I don't know how you feel about that. You're trying to take credit for the boom. I think, Myra is.

What can I say? Look, if it was easy, everyone would do it. I was reposting when it wasn't cool. That's true enough. You made it cool. Look, I think I probably tend more towards millennial. I think I'm on the cusp of Genzi millennial. I think it's really interesting.

I think one of the things that we often fall into the trap of assuming is because there is a real explosion in short-form poetry at the moment. We assume it's a new thing. I mentioned earlier on that the first English haiku, if indeed you believe Esra Pound wrote it, is 1913. You're looking at more than a century ago for those, obviously, in other languages far before that. I think one of the things, though, that I'm always curious about here is how are people interacting with poetry? So if people are reading poetry on social media, hearing poems read on TikTok, etc., those poems are likely to be shorter, absolutely. But I think increasingly, we are seeing younger people look for ways to give themselves breaks on social media. And actually, if reading something longer form, of reading something in a book that something as simple as sitting down for 20 minutes and reading something, whether it's a collection of poetry or a novel, actually is a bit of a balm from the more toxic and the more invasive elements of social media.

And, of course, things like podcasts. People, if they've reached this level of the podcast, are obviously not anti-long-form forms of entertainment. So I think there is definitely an appetite out there for longer form poetry, for longer poems, for older poems, etc. But I think so long as social media is doing what I hope it does, which is democratizing the world of poetry and allowing people to reach readers and audiences far easily, the literary world has been gate-capped, unfortunately, for a very long time. And social media, at its best, is a way to break down those boundaries.

So it's a fascinating question, and we thank our listener for it. And I think that ultimately the answer, like most of these questions, questions we're going to discuss in the podcast is, yes, no, it depends on how you frame the question, but those are the questions often are most worth asking. Absolutely. And even down to, I'm someone who gets the tube to work. And even since I'd say pre-COVID, post-COVID, there's a massive difference between seeing people just head stuck into their phones, playing games, and people who are reading physical books or listening to podcasts, I have so many friends who I know actively listen to that longer form content. So I think, like you

say it is yes, no. But there is a real appetite for it. And I think to tap into that, we absolutely need to just continue on this very good stream of putting out incredible work. I think the one thing that I will always credit social media for is being able to get your work out there without having to go through maybe more of the limiting processes of having an official publication or having to go through the channels of submitting to competitions. Like, we have an incredible tool right at our fingertips that means you can produce something, create it and put it out there as well. And the same goes for even this podcast. Yes, and I'm sure as we speak, I'm sure plenty of our listeners will be sharing this podcast with their friends and family on

social media. Or you can email or you can send a carrier pigeon. We don't mind either way, but spread the word because we're doing plenty of content. We'd love to have you here. Maya, we're getting towards the end of our questions. And I'm going to open up a big one here. which is, again, one of the questions that's coming from our listeners. What do you hope those listeners take away from the podcast? If you would like to have our listeners, if I'd like to send our listeners away, I should say, with a sort of a baton to carry forwards,

to pass on to their loved ones. What do you want them to say the podcast gave them? And how well do you think we're doing at it? First and foremost, that we're fantastic hosts, obviously. It goes about saying. I think what I'd like, of course. I think without any complication of the question, I'd love for people to listen to this and to pick up one of the poems we've mentioned,

to go to the website, go subscribe to Poetry Plus, and have a real rabbit hole moment and go through and get lost in poetry. I think there's so much to be said for people who engage with that. And I think all of our listeners who have hopefully got to this point now and have listened to this are interested and curious and I think for us as well it would be so rewarding to have people ask us questions we are also learning we're talking because we're passionate but I'd love to enter into that conversation with anyone who is listening to this and and discuss in real depth what poetry means to them what do you think your goals are I couldn't agree more I think that's we love poetry and we are not wishing to gatekeep we're wishing to share that love

and we want people to engage in it. And look, a lot of people listening, I'm sure, will have first encountered poetry at a school environment. They might not have fallen in love with it straight away, and some of them might be listening to subsequent episodes that we're going to be putting out on individual poems when we have an episode coming very soon on Myro-Angeloos Still I Rise, which I'm sure our listeners are going to really enjoy.

I think some of those people will, I hope, stay the course. The way you found poetry does not have to be the way that you leave it, I think, is the way that I often think about these things. everyone is a lot of people and I'm sure people in different countries have different educational systems but a lot of people engage with poetry primarily because it's something they have to do for school

it's something you have to do for an exam we're here to tell you that might be true and it might have been true but that doesn't mean that's the only way you can engage in it if you're curious about a poem a poet a time a movement we want to share that curiosity with you so I think

the message I would want to pass on to our listeners is you know it doesn't matter how found poetry, it matters what you do with it. So carry it forwards, tell your friends about it, post about it on social media, share the podcast, download the membership and let that love grow and see where it takes you because look where it's taken, Maya and I. Absolutely. And as you were saying earlier as well, I think we've both had people in our lives who have uncomplicated poetry for us. And that's made such a huge difference. So I think if we can be that to any listener out there who is confused or isn't sure how to start or is at the beginning,

of their journey or even halfway down the road and just needs a bit of direction. I think that is such a lovely opportunity for us to have in the grand scheme of it. Joe, I think that's our time coming to a close. As you mentioned earlier, we will obviously be talking about Still I Rise by Maya Angelou next time. For any listeners who are tuning in then, I would definitely recommend going and having a little read of it. I couldn't agree more, Maya. And for listeners who cannot wait for that podcast episode to release, you can find tons of

information about Maya Angelou and the poem. at Poemanalysis.com, sign up to Poetry Plus for exclusive access to the PDF learning library, a weekly newsletter and many more benefits beside. There's nothing further to say, apart from thank you for listening to us. Thank you, Maya, and I will see you all next time. Thanks, Joe. Have a nice night. You know.