The Act of Making

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(Theme music starts)

This is season three of The Glimpse poetry podcast. This season focused on UK poetry. I'm Hannah Lowe; I'm your new host. I'm very excited and honored to be here.

In today's episode, I'll talk a little bit about my own poetry, my writing processes, and the things that I've been interested in—why poetry is so important now more than ever—and also give you a little peek into what to expect this season.

(Music fades out)

I didn't start writing poetry until I was in my late twenties and I was teaching an anthology of poetry—Thousand Years of English Poetry—to a load of 16–17-year-olds who were pretty disengaged with poetry. So I had to work really hard to make it interesting to them. And it's possible that the only person I enthused was myself.

And then, almost coincidentally, my mum bought me an anthology, a Bloodaxe anthology, that had just come out at that time, Staying Alive. And so I was reading all this kind of very, very old, archaic poetry, but also contemporary poetry, knowing nothing about poetry whatsoever.

And then all of a sudden, I just had this urge to start writing poems, which I did, but completely in secret. I didn't know any other writers or poets or anyone that was actually artistic in any way, so I didn't tell anyone.

But I think maybe I had subject matter. You know, there was something that I wanted to write about—my dad had died about six, seven years before then, and he was Chinese-Jamaican. He didn't talk much about his upbringing or his heritage when I was a child. So there's this kind of very heavy silence after he died, and I think I started writing partly to fill that silence.

And then, after about a year of that, I signed up for an introduction to poetry class, just like an adult education class. And there were lots of people in that class, I think, like me, like poetry was a bit of a secret for them. And all of a sudden, you know, we were finding community. We used to go to the pub together after class and everything. So I made a lot of good friends in that first class, people that I still know now. And I had no access to that community before, but bit by bit, I discovered there were reading venues in London, and there were organizers in London. So I started going to different reading series, and then you see the same people. A lot of this did actually orientate around the pub, thinking about it. So there was this really very sociable element to it.

And then I also did, at that time, several Arvon courses, which is a residential writing week that you can do. And they're amazing, because they really give you space away from your life. They're all set in rural locations. And I made lots of friends at those Arvon courses as well. But I also met a poet there who later became a mentor for me, which is probably not usual, but I think at that time I was probably on the cusp of getting alright at writing poetry, and maybe he recognized something of that in me, so he sort of took me under his wing.

And then after about three, four years of this, I applied—you had to apply— to the advanced poetry workshop at the Poetry School in London, and I was delighted to get in, and that's where I met the woman who became my mentor and has been now for probably the last 20 years. And that group—and it was mainly all women—we've ended up being in workshops together for many, many years. So there's some really deep friendships, particularly from that scenario.

So as I was writing about my father—that was the thing that I was writing about—and the Chinese in the Caribbean, which certainly in the UK is like an unknown diaspora. So I was really interested in finding out more about that. So I was kind of doing a lot of historical research and then translating it into poetry. And then I did a PhD in creative writing, which definitely was based on archives, particularly around post-war migration from the Caribbean to Britain.

I ended up writing four books that were, in one way or another, linked to my father's life, and then my last book of poetry slightly changed focus. I'd been a teacher for ten years, and I've moved into academia. They're actually quite different. The academic world is quite different. What you learn at 16 to 19 and then moving to university are very different experiences. And I became quite nostalgic for my time as a teacher, so I began to sketch out some sonnets that were really about the act of teaching, classroom encounters, the students that I taught. But what I was really interested in was the intersections of social class, gender, ethnicity, multiculturalism in the classroom, and the way in which the legacies of empire still played out in my life, but also in the lives of the young people that I taught.

But the story of the Chinese and the Caribbean is never far from my mind, and so it's not really been a surprise to me that that stone still feels like it hasn't been fully turned. And so, in the latest work, I'm returning to those themes and that history again.

So the latest book is based on a portrait photograph that I found—or was given actually by my half-brother—about seven or eight years ago. And it's a photograph of one of my dad's many half-siblings, all of them were Afro-Chinese, same Chinese father, but different mothers, and I'd always known about this sister, Nelsa, but I'd never seen an image of her before. And what was really striking about the image was two things. One, she's incredibly beautiful, and she's got that look that I’ve seen so rarely in the UK, but is everywhere in the Caribbean: mixed Chinese and black Caribbean, that look. But she was also wearing what appeared to be a Chinese collar, like probably the collar of a Cheongsam Chinese dress. And that really set me thinking, because my dad never talked about being Chinese. He sort of silenced the “Chineseness.” He just called himself Jamaican.

Anyway, I thought, “Well, what can I find out about this woman that died many years ago?” So I googled her, and one hit came up in The Gleaner, which is Jamaica's national newspaper, and it referred to her. She ran a restaurant in downtown Kingston called the Moby Dick, and they mentioned the restaurant, and say, “once run by the legendary Nelsa Lowe.” So immediately I was hooked into that; why was she legendary?

And then, well, it's been a big search through time and space to try and recover her story—which is a very complicated story—that links together all kinds of things to do with Jamaican society, women's lives, disability, sex work.

But one of the things I was told about her, by my dad's cousin, was that when people were ill—the Moby Dick restaurant was next door to the headquarters of The Gleaner newspaper, so lots of journalists and politicians used to eat and drink there in the 1960s—and my cousin told me that if you were ill, you would go down and see Nelsa, and she would give you some kind of soup or tea that would make you better. So I knew that that was a reference to folk medicine, which is a huge tradition in the Caribbean, carried from Africa, and then morphed in the Caribbean itself over many years. So I began to imagine what kinds of remedies she might have made, and that led me down a long garden path in researching the different flowers, plants, trees, and herbs of the Caribbean.

So I thought I would read one of these poems now, which is called Jamaican-Forget-Me-Not. But it's also really about the limitations of research and how much can ever truly be accessed.


Jamaican-Forget-Me-Not

There’s nothing much online about this flower:
one photo, its other monikers – Bush Violet,
Blue Lady. It grows in clammy soil, prefers
a sunny spot, can tolerate a drought.
I see her carrying them home to pound
their stems and petals – a pulp of purply-pink
for sore or seeping eyes, for healing wounds,
to slow a bleeding nose. They make me think

of Wordsworth’s ‘Daffodils’, which in Jamaica
the children learnt by rote, old English flower
they only ever saw in textbook pictures.
And should we only write the things we know?
And should we only write what we remember?
And will I ever see this flower grow?


One of the things that really fascinated me about these medicinal plants in the Caribbean was the many different names they have. You know, they have Latin names, which were probably given by European botanists who went there and ignored all the names they already had and just imposed their own system. But the plant that I'm reading about now, one of its names, the title of the poem, is “Shame Old Lady,” but it's also known as Sensitive Plant and Touch Me Not, Shame Plant, Live and Die, Humble Plant, Action Plant, and Shame Me Darling.


Shame Old Lady

Any passing child could touch the plant
and make it shut its khaki leaves, like two pages
of a book, or top and bottom lashes
sealed tightly closed in sleep. Who wouldn’t want
that modicum of power or wizardry –
this plant that also folds away at dusk
and opens in the light? I see a clutch
of children crouched around it – let me, let me!

Who found its other magic – that tea relieves
a stomach ache? Who knew to squeeze the leaves
for juice to heal a cut? Who gave its names?
Who tied together lady, old and shame
as though that kind of woman, gathering years,
just by the fact of aging, disappears?


When I was first writing, it felt like my lifeblood. It almost felt like I’d just wilt if I wasn't writing. And I was also in this really joyful place of discovery, of learning how to write, but also like doing all this research.

The other thing I really know—like, deeply—is that reading helps me write. I always remember I had a student once at university that said—I was saying, “Well, you must, you know, read more obviously. Do you want to write about this? You should read this.” And they said, “Look, I haven't come here to read. I've come here to write.” And I thought, “Oh no!” What I know is that the opposite is true. Like the more you read, the more you want to write, the more good reading informs good writing. And for me, the relationship between poetry and reading is so strong that even to get into the mode of poetry, I'll have to read a poem. It's almost like entering a church or a religious building. You're entering into a different territory. This is like the real stuff. This is the higher level of consciousness. It's like the best part of myself. And often, to do that, I need to access that world through someone else's poems first.

It's been the greatest privilege of my life to meet other poets, and I've met them in all kinds of circumstances, like I've already mentioned, writing workshops and stuff, but also through readings or just, like, commissions that different poets have been involved in, and I've been involved in as well. Over the years, I've made so many good friends, and we've had so many funny experiences together, enriching experiences together, deep conversations about writing. And so some of the people that are featured in this podcast are really dear friends of mine.

But I was very mindful of the question, “How can you even begin to represent UK poetry, which is very broad and vast and ever-evolving?” So I was also asking questions about what would be included or what needed to be included. And the first thing that came to mind is that there needed to be poems from the different regions of England, so both the south and the north, but also from Wales and Scotland.

Listeners can expect to hear a real range of voices and very beautiful voices. I have a chance to hear a range of regional accents, which is sometimes unusual, and I think the experience will be like what you sometimes get in poetry workshops, where people read their poems aloud, and you move around the group, and you have time for thought and giving feedback, but you've been transported completely. You've been into someone else's heart and in their mind. And you might have traveled halfway across the world or just down the road, but you've been somewhere else. So I think listeners will be transported.

And thinking about ideas of lineage and mentoring, it was also important to me to include older poets who I've either been in direct conversation with and guided by in person or through their writing. And I think the selection of poets in this season also represent lots of other factors in terms of UK society, but also sexuality, also different histories of diaspora and migration and social class as well, which is always a big thing here in the UK.

I subscribe to Percy Shelley's claim that poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. And in times of such political and social chaos, I think it's almost the poet's duty to speak. And poems don't have to be overtly political—although they can be, and thank God for those poems—but they can also speak to all kinds of facets of our imagination. And I think where things are becoming increasingly polarized, like definitely, certainly in this country but also globally, poetry taps into empathy. It creates an empathetic response. And when people can't see their way through or past dogma and political ideology and propaganda, they might find their souls and their heart touched by poems and may be able to see things from a different perspective through a poem. And they might find themselves intellectually engaged.

You know, one of the reasons I love the sonnet, which is one of the forms I've written in, is because it's rhetorical. It poses a problem in the first part, and in the second part, it often provides some kind of answer. Well, I'm not saying that poets have got all the answers, but they are vehicles in which to explore our contemporary lives. We're all born creative as children. We're all creative. We love to play and nursery rhymes and make up rhymes, sing, dance, and we're kind of educated out of it. That's just part of the system. But it's good for us as humans to come back to creativity. It's a balm for the soul and the mind. So there are the poems that need to be written, that are the political poems, however they're doing it, but there's also just the act of making, which is deeply humane and connects us to each other.

I'm a big lover of poetry podcasts. I've listened to them for many years, and I find, you know, these sort of short podcasts that give you an insight just into the world of a poem can be so powerful. They feel a little bit like prayer to me.

So this podcast is called The Glimpse, and you know, in a way the title gives it away—it's a glimpse into a poet's life, the way they work and think, and they'll be sharing one of their own poems, but they'll also be sharing a poem that has really influenced them. So the idea, I think, of lineage will be really embedded into the podcast, and there'll be an opportunity to hear poems read, which I think is so important.

Poetry began as an oral form, and it's really wonderful to be able to hear poems spoken aloud. There's nothing like hearing a poet read their own work, which might be quite a different experience, and how you would find it on the page, just reading it yourself. But also to hear poems that are beloved by these writers read aloud, the different cadences and intonations and the intimacy that comes with that kind of listening experience.

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The Glimpse is a production of the Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation. I’m your host, Hannah Lowe. Our Senior Producer is Jennifer Wolfe. Kat Yore is our technical director and mixing engineer. Editorial Director Amanda Glassman is our curator and production coordinator. Amy Holmes is the foundation’s Executive Director and our co-founders are Cathy and Peter Halstead.

Thanks for listening.