Podcast: Christina Thatcher

Christina Thatcher talks about how writing helped her overcome a difficult upbringing and led to her moving from the US to South Wales. In the six years she has been in Cardiff she has put herself at the heart of the creative writing and spoken word scene and completed a powerful collection of poems about coping with the loss of her father. She reads from this and other work and challenges listeners to write a poem about mundane things. You can post your responses here or email info@patrickwiddess.co.uk. You can read another of Christina's poems here.

You can also hear the abuse poem I wrote in response to Reuben Woolley's prompt on the last podcast and you can read it on the Writers for Calais Refugees site here.

Christina's website is: collectingwords.wordpress.com

Christina Thatcher by Headstand on Mixcloud

Poem: Ordinary things by Christina Thatcher

Christina Thatcher is a poet, writer and educator from Philadelphia. She moved to Cardiff six years ago and is proud to call South Wales home. She will be my guest on the next podcast coming up shortly. Here is one of her poems:

Ordinary things

I'm reading poetry on the train -

it's quiet and, as the morning slips by,
blue and fleeting, you find me.
Even in the ordinary things
you find me. I buy a sandwich,
crumple its wrapper to drown out
the sound of your laugh, the sight
of your beer belly, the smell
of a piss-stained carpet. I gulp
some water and remember your
Adam's apple, how it bulged out
of your neck before I moved away.
I look around the train at the people

and want to be like them, want everything

to be quiet and easy again.

Show: 20.08.08 with Charles Billard

This show features a mix of experimental music with electronics and homemade instruments by Charles Billard - a Canadian artist and musician based in Osaka.

20.08.08 with Charles Billard by Headstand on Mixcloud

Cusp - Tic Tac Toe
Tom_A - Indie is dead
The psychotic reaction - what's under the stairs?
The Crazy World of Arthur Brown - Fire
Aidan Smith - happiness is a warm gun
People Like Us and Ergo Phizmiz - A Chase posthaste
The Kazoo Funk Orchestra - Munky Nutz
Alex Millar - Lament for Tampon Boy
Sophie Hannah - No Ball Games
Matt Widgery - The Clock Ticks
David Harsent - Toffee
Portico Quartet - Kontiki Expedition
Jet Jaguar - news
Joanna Newsom - What we have known
Dan Le Sac Vs Scroobius Pip - The Magician's Assistant
Drew Moon - Erogenous Zone
Charles Billard - Cloneliness (half hour mix)
Dion Mcgregor - Midget City
Muxu - Seeing Snow in Summer