Friday, July 31, 2015

Podcast: Fran Smith

Fran Smith joins me to talk about how she discovered poetry. She reads some of her poems and challenges us to write poems about trees. There are also sonnets which we both wrote in response to Jonathan Edwards' prompts in the last podcast.






















Wednesday, July 8, 2015

Podcast: Jonathan Edwards



Winner of the 2014 Costa Poetry Award Jonathan Edwards joins me in conversation and reads from his collection My Family and Other Superheroes. He also sets two writing prompts:

1) A sonnet with a twist – See the poem below for inspiration.
2) Observe people, places and animals. Use your pen as a camera and write a poem from your observations. This technique produced many of the poems in Jonathan's collection which you can buy here.

Share your poems in the comments below or email info@patrickwiddess.co.uk.

Brothers

You know the sort: they borrow each other’s t-shirts,
wear each other’s sweat under their armpits.
In the pub, you swear you hear one’s voice and turn
to find the other chatting up your girl,
or else you catch one, curling up his lip,
as if he’s trying on his brother’s smile,
or you go to the bar and they both show up.
One has a knackered Transit, the other jump leads.
They’ve one gym membership and their own bodies,
tell the punch lines to each other’s jokes
and if you’re fool enough to bother one,
you’ll find yourself outside with both of them.
You know the sort: the elder has a child
who’s got her mother’s mouth, her uncle’s eyes.

Jonathan Edwards