Welcome to The Seren Poetry Podcast, a series of conversations and readings with Seren poets.
In this edition we speak with Polly Atkin about her startlingly original second collection ‘Much With Body’. The beauty of the Lake District is both balm and mirror, refracting pain and also soothing it with distraction: unusual descriptions of frogs, birds, a great stag that ‘you will not see’. Much of the landscape is lakescape, giving the book a watery feel, the author’s wild swimming being just one kind of immersion. There is also a distinct link with the past in a central section of found poems taken from transcripts of the journals of Dorothy Wordsworth, from a period late in her life when she was often ill. In common with the works of the Wordsworths, these poems share a quality of the metaphysical sublime. Their reverence for the natural world is an uneasy awe, contingent upon knowledge of our fragility and mortality.
The podcast is presented by Rhian Edwards
The interviewer is Chris Gregory
Recordings, production, sound design and editing are by Chris Gregory of Alternative Stories
Recordings of Rhian Edwards are by Sarah Johnson
This conversation was recorded on location at Wordsworth Grasmere in the Lake District.
You can find out more about Polly Atkin by visiting her website https://pollyatkin.com/
You can follow her on social media
Twitter https://twitter.com/pollyrowena
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/pollyrowena/
Find out more about Seren and purchase books featured in this podcast by visiting the Seren website here https://www.serenbooks.com/
Follow Seren on social media
Twitter https://twitter.com/SerenBooks
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/serenbooks/
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/SerenBooks
Contact them by email at seren@serenbooks.com
This podcast is produced by Alternative Stories, a spoken word production company specialising in literary podcasts and radio programmes. To find out more about Alternative Stories, follow or hire them please follow the links below
https://linktr.ee/AlternativeStories
Contact them by email at office@alterantivestories.com
We would like to express our thanks to Wordsworth Grasmere and all the staff there for their hospitality during our visit.
If you’d like to find out more about the work of Wordsworth Grasmere, get details of how you can visit the museum or attend one of their events please use the links below.
You can visit the Wordsworth Grasmere website here https://wordsworth.org.uk/
And follow them on social media via these links
https://twitter.com/WordsworthGras
https://www.instagram.com/WordsworthGrasmere/
https://www.facebook.com/WordsworthGrasmere/
Please join us next week for a conversation with poet and vet Ilse Pedler about her collection ‘Auscultation’ which will be released on Thursday 12th October. Subscribe in your favourite podcast app to have all future editions delivered to your podcast feed the moment they are released.