Advertise on podcast: Arji's Poetry Pickle Jar

Today we are joined by Padraig Regan. They are the author of Some Integrity (Carcanet, 2022), winner of the Clarissa Luard Award and shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. They are also the author of two poetry pamphlets, Delicious (Lifeboat, 2016) and Who Seemed Alive & Altogether Real (Emma Press, 2017). This is an amazing conversation about Padraig's new book The Matter. A book that I personally loved. We speak about the natural world, his fascination with living things and his incredible talent in descriptions. it's a good one, enjoy!

This week on the Pickle Jar we are joined by Martina Evans to talk about her PBS Choice book Drunken Driving. Martina Evans is one of Ireland's most distinctive contemporary poets and novelists. Raised in County Cork and now based in London, she is the author of thirteen books of poetry and prose. Her collection American Mules won the 2022 Pigott Poetry Prize, while The Coming Thing was shortlisted for both the Derek Walcott Prize and the PEN Heaney Prize. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, Evans is celebrated for her exhilarating blend of narrative, wit, lyricism and dark humour. Her new collection, Drunken Driving (Carcanet, 2026), is a bold, darkly comic sequel to The Coming Thing. Set against the backdrop of Pentonville Prison, the book follows its protagonist Imelda as she navigates motherhood, work and power through a sequence of inventive sonnets threaded with quotations from Dracula and prison regulations. Funny, unsettling and formally daring, Drunken Driving confronts questions of control, justice and survival with Evans's trademark verve and originality. this is a wonderful conversation and i hope you enjoy it as much as i did. If you feel like you want to subscribe to PBS use PODCAST as the discount code and get 10% off your order.

This month I'm joined by Karen McCarthy Woolf. She's is a poet and editor of multiple literary anthologies. author of three major works: An Aviary of Small Birds, that was shortlisted for the Forward Felix Dennis and Jerwood Prizes and named an Observer Book of the Year; Seasonal Disturbances, which won the inaugural Laurel Prize for ecological poetry; and Top Doll, a verse novel shortlisted for the 2024 T. S. Eliot Prize. Her work has appeared in the Financial Times and The Guardian. Also, wanted to let you know I now have a regular bi-monthly newsletter which is kind of like my attempt at a blog. Sign up at www.arji.org. You'll be pleased you did. Also, use the code PODCAST at poetrybooksociety.co.uk to gain 10 percent off your next purchase.

This week is another PBS special. We are joined by the brilliant Sarah Howe. She is a British poet, academic and editor. Born in Hong Kong moved to England as a child. Her pamphlet won an Eric Gregory Award, and her first collection, Loop of Jade (Chatto & Windus, 2015), won the T.S. Eliot Prize and was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. She is currently the Poetry Editor at Chatto & Windus and an Honorary Visiting Professor at the University of Liverpool. This episode is brought to you through Poetry Book Society. The good people of PBS are offering podcast listeners 10% off PBS Membership. Simply enter the code PODCAST (All caps) at the checkout here.

Mona Arshi's third collection of poems, Mouth was published in July 2025 by Chatto and Windus, and is the PBS Choice. So we decided to sit down for a chat about the book. Two beautifully read poems, an amazing back and forth about myths, nature and love and all in 30 minutes. If you haven't bought the book, go get it, as this interview really opens it up in a new way

Sorry about the poor frequency of this podcast at the moment. I'm doing a lot of stuff at the same time and believe it or not I have a tendency to drop the ball sometimes! Regardless, thanks for sticking by me. Today’s guest is Erica Hesketh. She's a brilliant poet, editor, and producer, she spent  eight years leading the Poetry Translation Centre, helping bring international voices to UK readers. She is the editor of Living in Language: International reflections for the practising poet, and a member of the Southbank Centre New Poets Collective 2023–24. Now her debut collection, In the Lily Room, is out with Nine Arches Press exploring motherhood, mental health, and transformation.

Happy to be back for another PBS Special. Featuring a chat with the brilliant Fiona Benson. She has published three previous collections of poetry, all of which were shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize: Bright Travellers, which won the 2015 Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize and the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry's Prize for First Full Collection, Vertigo & Ghost, which was shortlisted for the 2019 Rathbones Folio Prize and won both the Roehampton Poetry Prize and the Forward Prize for Best Collection, and Ephemeron, which was shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize and the London Hellenic Prize. Today we unpack two poems from her hotly anticipated new book, 'Midden Witch.' We talk process, witches, magic and superstition. Hope you enjoy.

It's another PBS pickle jar special this week featuring Richard Scott's new book. Richard Scott's poems have appeared widely in magazines and anthologies including Poetry Review, Poetry London, PN Review, Swimmers, The Poetry of Sex (Penguin) and Butt Magazine. His pamphlet 'Wound' (Rialto) won the Michael Marks Poetry Award 2016 and his poem 'crocodile' won the 2017 Poetry London Competition. Soho (Faber & Faber) is his first book. His second poetry collection That Broke into Shining Crystals is available with Faber.

We're back again. This week I'm joined by Ian Duhig, a poet who has won the Forward Best Poem Prize, the National Poetry Competition twice and been shortlisted for the T.S Eliot Prize four times.  A poet with six books to his name. A poet who continues to work with community projects pushing the power of words.  Today his book An Arbitrary Light Bulb is the winter selection for PBS and so we invited him into the Pickle Jar to talk about it.

She's the winner of the Eric Gregory. Her new debut book Food for the Dead was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for best first collection and was the winner of the Laurel Prize 2024. Today we discuss Sharon Old's poem 'True Love'. As well as talk about experimental poetry, the power of poems and everything in between. Enjoy the vibes.

Raymond Antrobus MBE FRSL was born in London, Hackney to an English mother and Jamaican father. He is the author of Shapes & Disfigurements (Burning Eye, 2012) To Sweeten Bitter (Out-Spoken Press, 2017), The Perseverance (Penned In The Margins / Tin House, 2018), All The Names Given (Picador / Tin House, 2021), Signs, Music (Picador / Tin House, 2024). His individual poems have been published in The New Yorker, The Guardian, Granta, Poetry Foundation, Lit Hub, London Review of Books, The Poetry Review, The Deaf Poets Society and elsewhere. In 2019 he became the first ever poet to be awarded the Rathbone Folio Prize for best work of literature in any genre. Other accolades include The Ted Hughes Award, Lucille Clifton Legacy Award, PBS Winter Choice, A Sunday Times Young Writer of the year Award, Somerset Maugham Award and The Guardian Poetry Book Of The Year 2018, as well as a shortlist for The Griffin Prize, T.S. Eliot Prize and Forward Prize. In 2018 he was awarded The Geoffrey Dearmer Prize, (Judged by Ocean Vuong), for his poem Sound Machine. Also in 2019 and 2021 his poems (Jamaican British, The Perseverance and Happy Birthday Moon) was added to the UK’s GCSE syllabus Today we talk about his PBS CHOICE SELECTED Book Signs, Music.

So proud to get Gail McConnell into the studio today. She's the writer of two pamphlets and one amazing book. The Sun Is Open was brought out on Penned a few years back and it really is a groundbreaking book and well worth a read. It won the The John Pollard Foundation International Poetry Award and The Christopher Ewart-Biggs Memorial Prize  and was shortlisted for the Michael Murphy Memorial Prize. It was a Poetry Book of the Month in the Guardian and in The Observer, a book of the year in the TLS and The White Review, and a poetry book of the year in The Telegraph and The Irish Times. The Sun is Open was warmly reviewed in the Dublin Review of Books, Some Flowers Soon and Blackbox Manifold. I wrote about the book in The Irish Times and further coverage appeared in The Telegraph and the Belfast Telegraph. I discuss the book in conversation with Emily Berry for the Poetry Society podcast, with Pádraig Ó Tuama for the Corrymeela podcast and on Sunday with Steven Rainey on Radio Ulster. With Conor Garrett I made 'The Open Box', an arts feature based on the book for BBC Radio 4.  Today we talk extended metaphors, animals and descriptive language in this homage to the American poet Kay Ryan. The poem is called Spiderweb. Guys. If you are reading this PLEASE SUBSCRIBE AND SHARE as it helps me a lot.

Very happy to be back with Ellen Cranitch in the Pickle Jar. She is a poet and lecturer. Her first collection, The Immortalist, was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Award for Best First Collection. Her new collection, Crystal, was published by Bloodaxe, named “Dignified, moving and sure…" by The Observer where it was named book of the month, it was also recommended by Stephen Fry and Ian McMillan. Today she brings a Prynne Poem into the Pickle Jar and we speak of line breaks, intensity and the importance of syntax.

With two books on the horizon, I'm extremely excited to bring Salena Godden into the Pickle Jar. Salena Godden is an English poet, author, activist, broadcaster, memoirist and essayist. Born in Hastings, UK, of Jamaican-Irish heritage, Godden based in London. Widely anthologised, she has published several books. She has also written for BBC TV and radio and has released four studio albums to date. Today we crack open a Nikita Gill poem to see what we can find.

Very excited to bring Bryony Littlefair into the Pickle Jar. Partly because her debut poetry collection Escape Room (Seren, 2022) was excellent. Also because her pamphlet Giraffe won the Mslexia Pamphlet Prize in 2017. But mostly because we both LOVE Tony Hoagland. So here's us geeking out over Tony Hoagland for 20 minutes!