Our former podcaster Ryan Van Winkle returns to talk about his award-winning second collection The Good Dark (Penned in the Margins). A collection that has its origins in heartbreak, Ryan talks about his struggle to rise above an adolescent tone. He explains why despite his extensive travels abroad, his poetry never touches on his destinations. And why Snoopy is an unexpected literary influence.
Really pleased to have my poem ‘Island’ published in the new edition of HARK Magazine: The Death Issue. You can read and download the new issue in a pdf here.
The Good Dark has won the Saltire Society’s Poetry Book of the Year award. Here’s what the judges said: “Van Winkle works with the language of love and lost till it is scarcely recoverable but which still nourishes the lover’s past and present. His range is remarkable: everything invokes everything else, the tactile calls in the intellectual, one poem calls in every other poem, mundane tasks call in whole physical and emotional worlds.”
You can get a copy direct from Penned in the Margins or ask at your local bookshop.
http://www.pennedinthemargins.
Is there joy in sorrow? Can tragedy ever be funny? This month, our guest is Caroline Bird, a poet who delights in troubling sensibilities and leading her audience down the garden path before swiftly turning the hose on them. Where other poets might tell it like it is, Ryan and Caroline explore how the most meaningful poems can often be found at the far corners of things, and how poetry finds truth in a world of ‘no facts’ and ‘not saying’. Plus, more poetry sparks from Ryan! So lean in, listener, but be careful – there’s a fist aimed at your heart.
Listeners to The Line Break can also join the The Line Break group on CAMPUS, the Poetry School’s free online community for poets.
Produced by Culture Laser Productions @culturelaser
Last week my awesome friend Jane Flett interviewed me for the magazine Leopardskin & Limes, in which we discuss some of the stuff about how I write, some of my favourite poets and the struggle that comes with putting the moon in a poem.
Really delighted that The Good Dark has been selected as one of The Bottle Imp‘s Best Scottish Books. It’s in excellent company, alongside Don Paterson, Janice Galloway, Kirsty Logan, Malachy Tallack and others. You can read up on all of the selections, plus a neat paragraph on each book at The Bottle Imp.
Really delighted to have The Good Dark reviewed alongside Claudia Rankine and Matthew Siegel in the forthcoming edition of Magma Poetry.
“Many of the poems in this profoundly lyrical collection are characterised by long sentences, often breaking across the sense – with short lines and short breaths, which, if you read it as I did, might have the strange effect of making you sigh at regular intervals.”
“But ultimately it is for its sound that I found this collection most enjoyable: it is an exercise in sustained tone, possessing a consistent, melancholy music, a heart-breaking sob in its voice.”
The power of poetry comes partly from its ability to explode a language when it no longer feels adequate enough to explain the extraordinary times we live in. This month on The Line Break, Ryan talks to the Singapore-born poet, editor and translator – Alvin Pang – about multiculturalism and poetry as a force of resistance: against public expectations, political oppression and cultural efficiencies, as well as our own longings, ambivalences, lost hopes, fears and anxieties. Alvin recites a few of his extraordinary poems, and Ryan sets two more poetry sparks for you all to try out: writing family, and lashing out against bullies, bosses, and dictators.
Listeners to The Line Break can also join the The Line Break group on CAMPUS, the Poetry School’s free online community for poets.
Produced by Culture Laser Productions @culturelaser
My poem ‘I Look Up Again‘ has been published in the magazine Leopardskin and Limes, alongside an awesome illustration by Edinburgh artist and pal Faith Eliott.
Really pleased to be reading with other shortlistees for the Saltire Literary Awards. We’ll hit Waterstones Dumfries on Wednesday 12 November at 6pm, where Liz Lochhead will be joining us, before heading to Waterstones Inverness on Wednesday 19 again at 6pm, alongside Elizabeth Reeder. If you’re in the area it would be super lovely to see you.
