S3 Ep1: S3 Ep 1: Anthony Anaxagorou & Nick Laird

Faber Poetry Podcast

AND we’re back! In the first episode of the third season, Rachael and Jack welcome guests Anthony Anaxagorou and Nick Laird to the studio to discuss poetry writing, tea drinking and the ultimate battle: long poem vs short poem. Audio postcards in this episode come from Courtney Bush, Emily Berry and Anthony Joseph.
Show notes
Studio guests
ANTHONY ANAXAGOROU is a British-born Cypriot poet, fiction writer, spoken word artist, essayist, publisher and poetry educator. He has published several collections of poetry and short stories, and, in 2020, he published How to Write It, a practical guide, fusing writing tips and memoir, with Penguin Random House UK imprint #Merky Books. His most recent collection, Heritage Aesthetics (Granta) won the 2023 Ondaatje prize.
NICK LAIRD was born in County Tyrone in 1975. A poet, novelist, screenwriter, critic and former lawyer, his awards include the Betty Trask Prize, the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, the Somerset Maugham Award and a Guggenheim fellowship. Feel Free (2018) was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot prize and the Derek Walcott award. 'Up Late' the title poem from his latest collection Up Late (2023) won the Forward Prize for Best Poem. He is the Seamus Heaney Professor of Poetry at Queens’ University, Belfast.
Audio postcards featured in this episode
‘Last Night Kyle’, written and read by Courtney Bush. Her new collection, I Love Information, is published in the UK in October (Milkweed Editions, 2023).
Untitled poem, written and read by Emily Berry. Taken from her most recent collection, Unexhausted Time (Faber, 2022).
‘A Gap in Language’, written and read by Anthony Joseph. His T. S. Eliot Prize-winning collection Sonnets for Albert is out now (Bloomsbury, 2022).
About the presenters
RACHAEL ALLEN is the author of Kingdomland (Faber) and co-author of numerous artists’ books, including Nights of Poor Sleep (Prototype), Almost One, Say Again! (Slimvolume), Green at an Angle (Kestle Barton) and Material (Loose Joints). She was recently Anthony Burgess Fellow at the University of Manchester, is the poetry editor for Granta Publications, teaches Creative Writing at Queen Mary University, and her second collection of poems, God Complex, is forthcoming from Faber in 2024.
JACK UNDERWOOD is a poet, writer and critic. He is author of Happiness (Faber 2015) Solo for Mascha Voice (Test Centre, 2018) and A Year in the New Life (Faber 2021). His debut work of non-fiction, NOT EVEN THIS, was published by Corsair in 2021. He has collaborated widely with composers and artists, and his work has been published internationally and in translation. He is senior lecturer in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths College.
The Faber Poetry Podcast is produced by Rachael Allen, Jack Underwood and Hannah Marshall for Faber. Production and editing by Strathmore Publishing. Special thanks to Anthony Anaxagorou, Emily Berry, Courtney Bush, Anthony Joseph and Nick Laird. All three seasons are available to stream on Audioboom, Apple Podcasts, Spotify and other major podcast listening platforms.