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Ep. 14. Richard Scott, 'Still Life with Snail, Oyster, Spoon and Shallot Vinegar'
80 Plays13 days ago
In this episode, we read Richard Scott's poem 'Still Life with Snail, Oyster, Spoon and Shallot Vinegar' from his collection That Broke into Shining Crystals (2025). You can buy this book, and his previous collection Soho, from your local bookshop or from Faber.
Richard Scott is the author of Soho (Faber & Faber, 2018) and most recently That Broke into Shining Crystals (Faber & Faber, 2025). He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Episode references:
- Still lives: Jan Davidsz. de Heem, 'Still Life' and N. Adama, 'Still Life of Oysters and a Prawn on a Ledge, with a Snail and a Butterfly'
- Sappho, trans. Anne Carson
- Mary Ruefle, Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures
- The Letters of Emily Dickinson
- Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge, A Treatise on Stars
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Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Books Up Close'
00:00:02
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Books Up Close, I'm Chris Lloyd. This is the close reading show for writers, readers and language
Guest Introduction: Richard Scott
00:00:09
Speaker
nerds. On today's episode I talk with Richard Scott about his poem Still Life with Snail, Oyster, Spoon and Shalott Vinegar.
00:00:17
Speaker
Richard is the author of Soho, for Faber 2018 and most recently That Broke into Shining Crystals, also Faber 2025. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Richard's Close Reading Practice
00:00:28
Speaker
Welcome, Richard. It's really nice to see you. Hi, thank you so much for having me on the podcast, Chris. It's so nice to be here. I'm very excited. to Before we get into the poem, to ask you about your thoughts on close reading. how do you feel about it as an activity, a process? And how do you feel about us reading one of your poems today? Good questions. So I love close reading. like I feel like it's a really big part of my life.
00:00:55
Speaker
I and read a poem every day well sometimes I read more than one one poem but a long time ago someone gave me some great advice which was try and read one poem a day and obviously some days you can read like 50 poems but I've always kind of stuck to that idea of whatever's going on in my life even if you know I'm busy or it's a stressful day I always make time to read one poem and I read it in um I try and read it kind of forensically or in detail I guess I perform a close reading of it. So I read it sort of three or four times and I try to sort of unlock what's going on with language or form in the poem
00:01:34
Speaker
Yeah, so I feel like close reading is a big part of my life. And that's how I begin my writing practice, by reading a poem closely. ah So I love it. i love close reading. In terms of on my own work, I, of course, try to perform close readings on my own work in in my editing practice. Like when i'm when I'm editing a poem, I try and get...
00:01:55
Speaker
close to to you know close as close to it as I can I try to form a close reading on my own poem but of course it's hard to sometimes have the necessary distance on your own work you know so it's a skill that I'm always trying to get better at and yeah I'm I'm looking forward to our conversation because I feel like ah you're going to teach me things about my poem you know Well, we'll see.
00:02:21
Speaker
I've got a very good quick question now. When you say you read like a poem a day, is that how are you finding that poem? Is there ah is it just I've got the book near me? Like, do you have a is there a method to this?
00:02:32
Speaker
yeah I mean, I guess I just kind of go through it's it's either from the book I'm kind of reading at the time or I kind of look through my bookshelves and just. pick something at random, like, yeah, it could be anything, really.
00:02:44
Speaker
Okay, just like a nice little practice. i was just wondering how you did it. I've got too many books on the go at once anyway, so I feel like the more i expand that... Yeah, yeah. We've got so many books in our lives, right? There's never... there's I never feel like I don't have something to read, you
Exploration of 'Still Life with Snail' Poem
00:03:00
Speaker
know? It's really beautiful, so...
00:03:01
Speaker
Yeah, that's exciting. I might try that and for a week, see how we go. Okay, so this poem, still life with snail, oyster, spoon and shallot vinegar is from your collection that broke into shining crystals, which if people haven't bought it yet is beautiful.
00:03:14
Speaker
i mean, Faber can never do wrong with these covers, but these colors are gorgeous. if we're going to do a proper close reading, we probably shouldn't tell listeners anything about this poem, right? We shouldn't give them context, even though I feel like there is a ton of context we could give people about this poem and about the book more broadly.
00:03:31
Speaker
So how do you feel about that tension? Like, do we do full death of the author or do you want to tell people anything about the poem before you read it? That's a good question. I mean, i some context might be helpful, but I'm also happy to kind of follow your advice on this.
00:03:49
Speaker
Yeah, I'm always in two minds of this, right? Like some people have critiqued me for not being close reading enough, right? They're like, you told us too much about the book. And then other people like, I want to know vaguely where this poem comes.
00:04:00
Speaker
So if you don't want to know context, maybe just fast forward like 30 seconds or something. But for those of you that want to know a tiny bit of context, we should probably say this book is split into three parts, right?
00:04:10
Speaker
The first part is a series of still life poems of which this is one. The second part is a radical section where you use an Andrew Marvell poem and you rewrite it. I forget the name of the form that you use.
00:04:24
Speaker
Oh, it's a vocabulary clept. That's the one. So you're using all of the words from that poem and remaking them many times. And then the third section are these poems devoted to different crystals.
00:04:36
Speaker
They're all named after a particular crystal. And there is a theme, ah kind of storyline and narrative that links those three parts. But how much of that you want to say now, I'll leave to you. Sure. ah Thank you. That's so nice. Thank you so much for reading and thinking so deeply about the book. Yes. So the poem we're about to read, it's from a sequence of poems that all refer to still life paintings.
00:04:59
Speaker
And i suppose one of the focuses of the sequence and indeed of the book is um it's about trying to find out trying to find a language through which to talk about trauma or hurt when you don't have access to normative language. So the speaker of the poems can't say directly what's happened to them, perhaps speaking directly directly.
00:05:20
Speaker
might be too painful. So they're looking around for different languages and in the first sequence, the still life sequence, they turn to the language of Ekphrasis and they use the language of these symbols from still life paintings like an oyster, a rose, a lobster and they focus down and these symbols and in response to that focus something is is revealed to them.
00:05:46
Speaker
So that might be helpful context I suppose. Oh, can I gloss two words? There's these two words in the poem, aragonite and conchiolin. And these are the mineral substances or fluids emitted by an oyster when a piece of grit or an intruder enters the shell.
00:06:05
Speaker
And the oyster uses these substances to coat ah the intruder and turns it into a pearl. Yeah, great. We'll talk more about it as we get into it. But why don't you read the poem now for us, if you will?
00:06:18
Speaker
Still life with snail, oyster, spoon, and shallot vinegar.
00:06:26
Speaker
Oh, I should have been the snail, living phallus that can hide when threatened. But I'm the oyster, quivery ashen gill, cold jelly mess of a boy shucked wide open, invertebrate, raw,
00:06:48
Speaker
There is a whole sky at night in this spoonful of shallot vinegar. Little smarts of perpetual annihilation drizzled onto the open wound of me.
00:06:59
Speaker
I never use his name. I feel it hardening inside of me like a symptom. Oh mother of pearl,
00:07:10
Speaker
What at first appears beautiful I clothe in aragonite and conchiolin, a mineral and glittering paint brought forth from the very centre churning of myself.
Poetic Traditions and Personal Impact
00:07:24
Speaker
Thank you so much for reading that. Listeners also, we spent a really long time deciding which poem to talk about today. i think I had a short list of like 12 and I was like, this is ridiculous. I need to give Richard like two.
00:07:35
Speaker
and And then we both kind of thought about it. I think because there are so many things happening in this collection. and for me, this poem struck me on the first read, I think because...
00:07:47
Speaker
For me, it epitomizes some of the things that this book is interested in on a both kind of linguistic level, on a formal level, on an emotional level. And there were a couple of lines that I was like, oh, my Lord, there is a whole sky at night in this spoonful of shalott vinegar. I was just like, OK, I need to put this book down. I can't do this right now.
00:08:03
Speaker
So theres there is a lot of language in here that I find remarkably moving. But I guess if someone comes to this poem, right, we're doing the close reading. We're first confronted with that title, Still Life with Snail, Oysterspoon and Shalot Vinegar. Right. Before we even get to the poem, that still life bit is telegraphing to us a genre.
00:08:21
Speaker
Right. it's And obviously you you mentioned ekphrasis, right, this kind of poetic tradition of writing to visual art. So it's not just like a genre of poem, but it's also a genre of like other art making. So we're already gesturing elsewhere. and But then you've got still life with then this list of objects, which, you know, not all still lives have those kind of titles, right? Like some of them do, some of them don't.
00:08:41
Speaker
And immediately I'm thinking like, what is the relationship between a snail, an oyster, a spoon, and shluck? shallot, there we go, right? Like automatically the idea of like composition, of art making, of like you referring to other modes and genres before we've even got into the poem.
00:08:56
Speaker
And that for me is interesting, like in a readership, like how much how much does the reader need to know anything about those kind of forms or kind of like poetic expectations? Or like, do people just read the title and they're like, okay, this is interesting. Let me just jump straight in, right? Like I'm always interested in those poetic traditions that have those reference, if you like.
00:09:14
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, i definitely wanted the title to kind of be inviting or interesting, I suppose. Like you say, like a lot of still life paintings do have very ornate...
00:09:26
Speaker
titles you know one of the one of the paintings that I'm kind of referring to by Enna Dharma the title of that painting is still life of oysters and a prawn on a ledge with a snail and a butterfly and it's they've there's such sort of ornate incredible titles that i feel like draw you in and I guess I wanted to do something similar with the titles in the sequence and this poem as well I guess I wanted it to be like the eye moving ah moving across the title, like noticing these elements like the snail, the oyster, the spoon. And I wanted that to almost kind of replicate the idea of the eye moving across the still life painting and noticing the various different elements almost in their own time, these sort of ornate shining ghosts of things kind of popping out of the canvas.
00:10:13
Speaker
But I think I also, i wanted to kind of be playful as well. You know, like there's the kind of, The snail and the oyster, like potentially people might have seen something like that before in a still life painting, maybe.
00:10:26
Speaker
But the spoon and shallot vinegar, I kind of wanted that to be a kind of a bit of a surprise as well. Yeah, I mentioned that. And but also all of the things that are still life might connote to a reader, right? Like the idea of arrangement. It's all about these kind of objects, where the still life.
00:10:41
Speaker
I was I was reading this morning. I was like, what is the history of still life? When did people start doing them? um And there was like a big French tradition where they were like, oh, this is the worst kind of art right? Because it doesn't have people in it. Right. It's just a kind of like lowly thing that anyone can do because you can just paint on your table. Right.
00:10:55
Speaker
It's had a really kind of interesting history of the importance of the object, especially when often in still lives we're looking at fruit, maybe that's decomposing. You know, the still life is always interested in that kind of the idea of death or the specter of death or transience or the moment that is not quite a moment.
Poem's Structure and Emotional Impact
00:11:11
Speaker
And I feel like that's quite a key theme throughout this book. If we were to zoom out with. Yeah, I mean, it's amazing you were really, really about the still life this morning. we are I'm obsessed with still life paintings, as you can probably tell.
00:11:23
Speaker
It's kind of been an incredibly robust tradition. Like, I think maybe it kind of became incredibly popular, like in the 17th century, like people think of it primarily as a kind of Baroque genre of painting. but It started much earlier centuries before and it still is something that artists do today. And I think there is just this fascination in seeing the objects of our world or the objects of our lives presented in such a kind of vivid and shining way that I think viewers kind of always almost sort of fall into the vivid kind of lusciousness of a still life painting.
00:11:59
Speaker
And I guess I think part of the work of the sequence was also me coming to consciousness as to why still life paintings were so important to me as a viewer, because I would just go into galleries and have these extraordinary experiences where I would feel kind of stunned or shocked or like pinned to the wall by this still life painting.
00:12:18
Speaker
And I think it's I think it has a lot to do with the way the still life painting looks, how something incredibly vivid and colourful and powerful can be stilled and caught and ambered almost in varnish reminds me of how the brain freezes trauma you know so the brain freezes trauma it kind of ambers it and then it can be constantly or be unwittingly recalled or referred back to in in the person's brain.
00:12:48
Speaker
So I think there's that there's that synthesis, there's that link. And I and i think part of the work of the sequence was just me unpicking that and coming to consciousness as to why I was so attracted to these paintings.
00:13:00
Speaker
So we've got those expectations, right, as we were saying of like what the still life is, and then you begin with, oh, I should have been the snail, right? There's oh, not oh, but just oh, which you use quite a lot in your poems in in both collections.
00:13:13
Speaker
I've always been really interested in that use of that oh, right, that maybe to some readers might feel anachronistic, right, or might feel like of a particular poetic moment or like voice or tone.
00:13:23
Speaker
You might start reading this poem being like, wait, is this published in 2025? What is this? But then, like oh, I should have been the snail living phallus. You're like, OK, we're maybe in a different timeline. And I don't know, you don't have to explain why you use the O. But like I think it is an interesting opening. right It does call up another kind of poetic writing, at least.
00:13:43
Speaker
Yeah, you're such a perceptive reader. It's great. i like You're totally right. I mean, of course, you're a perceptive reader. You know, I know that about you, but also just seeing it in action kind of just like it's like, oh, yeah, gosh, yeah, you caught me because I do love to use the oh, yeah.
00:13:59
Speaker
I've been thinking about this a little bit because it does does begin the poem. I mean, for me, that... That O that I love so much, I think maybe comes from singing. You know, so my personal history as a writer, like, you know, I used to be an opera singer before I started writing poetry.
00:14:16
Speaker
And feel like the O is this sort of exclamation or something that comes from, that's almost sung. It comes from ah a sung voice. So starting the poem with the O in a way kind of makes me kind of,
00:14:33
Speaker
remember that I'm singing, you know, that singing is different to speech. It's more heightened. It's more extreme, you know. and And I do think that for me, there's a lot of um there's a lot of links between singing and and poetry like In some ways, I think of an aria or a kind of art song, the type you might sing when you're an opera singer, as being very related to a poem. they are They're both a sort of a kind of concise hot box of emotion and ah sounds and and echoes and language on the page.
00:15:08
Speaker
So, yeah, I feel like O in some way kind of gives me access to the to the to the song, I suppose. Yeah, because i was trying I've been trying to think, right, is it the Odyssey that opens, like, oh, is it like Homer that begins the, I'm sure there's like an oh the beginning of the Odyssey, right? I don't know, maybe I'm misremembering, but it does feel in that oral tradition of poems, right, as you're saying that they're kind of the song or the the declaration.
00:15:31
Speaker
and I really think it's just like a, don't know if it's a tension, but there's a niceness between, ah nice relationship between the still life and then this kind of declarative oh, right, which maybe doesn't feel as still, right? It feels quite kinetic in a way.
00:15:45
Speaker
I love that idea. Yeah, I think that, yeah, absolutely. I mean, that that's one the tensions about the still life painting. It's cool, the still life painting, but of course it isn't still. It's so vibrant and so full of life. So yeah, maybe there is something about beginning in song, beginning in motion. I mean, certainly it's activating the mouth. Oh, I, you're saying two different vowel sounds. So there's something chewy there. So yeah, I hope so.
00:16:08
Speaker
Interesting. Okay, I'm glad I got to ask you about that because I've been thinking about it for a long time. And then you have, oh, I should have been the snail. You're setting up a I should have been this thing, but clearly you haven't been it, right? So there there's already tension moving through this poem, something that you could have been, should have been, but instead this other condition has happened.
00:16:28
Speaker
And we could talk about that, but I'm way more interested in this poem about your line endings. The line endings in this poem are not like the line endings in most of the other poems in this part or the book but like oh I should have been the break snail
Metaphors and Imagery
00:16:41
Speaker
living phallus that can break hide when threatened but break I'm these unusual breaks right in places that we wouldn't expect them to be and I think as the poem progresses the breaks do change a bit like what at first break appears to be beautiful I clothe break in aragonite like it does become more normative by the end maybe but I'm root I'm super interested when I first read this poem in the
00:17:04
Speaker
like having the at the end of a line like is quite unusual and I'm interested in again like the tensions that you're setting up from the very beginning yeah great I mean so great this is so interesting I'm learning so much yeah it's true i mean there is a lot of there's a lot of enjoyment in in the poem there's a lot of kind of ah playing around with the word that comes after the line break as being something that might be surprising or might be dramatic. Yeah, definitely. I think I'm kind of doing that consciously.
00:17:35
Speaker
I want the poem to have this kind of movement throughout the poem, this kind of flow that in some ways replicates maybe... the movement of the snail or maybe the kind of the shocking of the oyster or the kind of movement of the oyster um maybe the flow of the eye across the the the canvas so yeah I think it's really important that the there is this kind of dynamic movement through the poem and that is brought about by buy the line breaks. So yeah, good spot.
00:18:05
Speaker
And when you read it, it was interesting to hear like if the breaks are very audible or not, right? And there's something quite interesting there about movement. This, I should also say for those that are listening, they're not seeing it.
00:18:17
Speaker
This is kind of like a long, thin poem. much Many of the poems in this book, they look quite different to one another, which I appreciate. But it looks very different from, for example, the third section in the book where the poems are much longer.
00:18:29
Speaker
They're kind of basically prose poems. You know, we're we're thinking about expanse in some of those, right? This kind of outward movement. And here this poem moves kind of down the page, almost like an inward movement. movement, right? it's almost like a very strict column.
00:18:42
Speaker
There's, you know, there's a few words that little bit longer, but it is quite slender and to me, a kind of maybe sharpness about it, right? Like there's a, and and ah and a quickness, even while you're not being quick in the description and the and the language.
00:18:55
Speaker
It's interesting, isn't it? Yeah, I suppose, you know, Often for me, the first line break begins, you know, the architecture of the poem, you know, so then you make decisions afterwards, you know, will you kind of continue that, continue that length? And what does that length really mean? What would it be like to continue it? What would it be like to sort alter it or vary it?
00:19:14
Speaker
And yeah, I can see myself continuing that continuing and following really that the shape of that line break on the page. So the shape as it is did feel, it felt really important to me.
00:19:24
Speaker
and And I think you're right, there is something about about sharpness on the page. I think there's also something about when you've got quite a long, thin poem like that, your end words are incredibly visible.
00:19:38
Speaker
And so some of them felt incredible. I mean they all feel important to me, but like, um you know, the opportunity to display words like passion and vinegar and perpetual and mother at the at the end of the line, they felt really important and and really weighted to me. um I guess I also think of this this column of words as being like a really tense helix that connects everything in the poem with a kind of energy. So I can feel that I'm trying to even though the poem has it's it's moving it's moving into lots of different areas with the kind of uh the the thinking and the argument in the inquiry i'm trying to sort of contain it all in that tense column we then move on to the next line living phallus that can hide when threatened interesting the use of like phallus as a word and not any of the more kind of
00:20:28
Speaker
prosaic words or you know just even like penis like phallus and we're not gonna get too freudian here unless you want to but you know the phallus as like symbol rather than like like the literal appendage right and and that to me that move to phallus rather than any other word does kind of keep me or the poem at least in the kind of symbolic world right and i think we should already know this because you've said Oh, I should have been the snail.
00:20:53
Speaker
so we're already working kind of metaphor and kind of symbol and then living phallus that can hide when threatened. But I'm the oyster. So we're we're moving through a very particular kind of like imagery metaphor.
Themes of Violence and Revelation
00:21:06
Speaker
I don't know. Phallus to me seems a very particular choice.
00:21:10
Speaker
this This is just so fascinating. Thank you so much for reading reading the poem so carefully like this. I get i mean as yeah i mean, writing about the phallus, writing about the queer body, bodies have been really important to me. So yeah, it's no surprise that kind of makes an appearance in this poem. um I suppose what's interesting about the word phallus is that it's some ah it's a Latinate word and something that I'm trying to do in the poem is I'm thinking about the the tension between the Anglo-Saxon words and the Latinate words. so
00:21:46
Speaker
ah phallus and Latinate words snail is an Anglo-Saxon word oyster is a Latinate word um I'm really interested in etymology of words and just how what it feels like to put words you know that have different histories and different etymologies up against each other and I think Broadly speaking, you know well, the English language is so vast and ever changing and it has so many different sources and histories and updates and stuff. But there is this idea that the English language is is mostly made up of kind of Anglo-Saxon words and Latinate words.
00:22:25
Speaker
And when we speak Normally, in a daily basis, we usually use sort of one syllable Anglo-Saxon words. And every now and then we throw in a Latinate word, a sort of multi, a longer sort of multi-syllabic word that comes from sort of Latin or Greek.
00:22:40
Speaker
But, and I think maybe if you want things to sound a little bit more heightened in a poem, you can up. the amount of Latinate language, because suddenly things feel a little bit more ornate, a little bit more extreme or heightened, or maybe even kind of Baroque, like, you know, the painting is kind of coming from this kind of um Baroque heritage.
00:23:00
Speaker
So yeah, I think maybe phallus, oyster, and words like invertebrates, these all are Latinate words. so I think I'm definitely kind of playing around with that.
00:23:11
Speaker
And you can feel the kind of tension, I think, you know, like that that phrase, invertebrate, raw, I guess that's the kind of tension I'm talking about, invertebrate, Latinate word, four syllables, versus raw, Anglo-Saxon word, one syllable. And I don't know, I hope there's a kind of tension there. Yeah, for sure. And I think that's why picked this poem, because it does seem to do a thing that you do throughout your poems, which is move very seamlessly between kinds of language or kinds of idiom or kinds of diction, right?
00:23:40
Speaker
In some of the other poems, I can't remember where, but you use like... bb like to mean like baby and like tech speak in the same poem you have like an o and a you know and a shucked wide open and a perpetual annihilation right like you're really interested in merging all of these kinds of language and and we see it here right but i'm the oyster quivery ashen gill and you're like oh Right, we've moved to a very different kind of language from those previous four lines. like But even the quivery, ashen, gill, like so much softer in sound.
00:24:12
Speaker
Cold jelly mess of a boy shucked wide open. And again, even that line, cold jelly mess is like soft, right? Like the quivery, ashen. But then we move to a shucked wide open. That hard CK moves to the kind of wide open. Then invertebrate, as you say, raw.
00:24:29
Speaker
The sound is moving us emotionally. And like, I want listeners to to think about this, right? Like the language isn't this neutral thing, but rather has real effects, right? As you read it and hear it. That's so nice. Yeah. Thank you for pickinging like picking up on all that. That's so great. I mean, that's of the things I'm really like fascinated with in language, like the sound of language and this sense of the sense of singing and this sense of when you're editing a poem, you can be trying to arrange the sounds.
00:24:56
Speaker
in a certain way or you know making the mouth move in a certain way. So it has sort of like emotional um connotations or emotional permutations. and And that to me feels like a really lyric thing. I think of the lyric poem as something which is full of echoes, full of sounds, full of arranged sounds in that way.
00:25:16
Speaker
And again, i guess this comes back to my, I guess, my sort of past as a sort of, as an opera singer, you know. Again, you know, like song and poetry feel really connected to me. you know, the they both feel like um language under pressure, you know. And when you're singing, you're putting the,
00:25:34
Speaker
the words under a sort physiological pressure, they're passing through the body and the vocal cords. Whereas when you're working with language in a poem, you're putting the line under ah different types of pressure, like um you're moving towards concision, you're moving towards rapidity, you're moving towards organising your sounds in an emotive, a muscular way.
00:25:54
Speaker
that boy shucked wide open like that's the first moment in the poem i think that it becomes clearer what the poem is gesturing towards in terms of a kind of like experience of the speaker right there's like a moment of like we're seeing some kind of violence some kind of thing that's being done to this boy and then in break vertebrate that is a line break i was like oh no the in is doing so many things but also but just breaking apart invertebrate just feels like that deconstruction of the body right or or even or not even the body but like the skeleton or the or the don't know the architecture of the body or something and and that break is so hard and then as you say a single word after that just raw full stop like we've not had a single word yet in the poem right on its own as a sentence
00:26:43
Speaker
So there's real like push pull in between all these sounds, these kinds of words, what you're gesturing towards. You know, like I could see another poem saying a boy shut wide open and then that being explained or being kind of elaborated on. But instead we get invertebrate roar.
00:26:57
Speaker
And then there is a whole sky at night in this spoonful of shallot vinegar. Like we've moved back to the painting. I don't know, this kind of this back and forth between like scale between, as you say, the kind of wandering eye, the EYE.
00:27:12
Speaker
But I guess also that wandering I, right? Like the letter I, the self, how does one look at the self? How does one look at this moment in the past? How does one look at, I don't know, like how does one describe oneself through metaphor while also resisting that metaphor and trying to be direct about it, right? And also trying to use language to kind of gesture closer to a thing that you can't get close to.
00:27:34
Speaker
i don't know. I think the movement across these lines, I was like, I feel pulled about too. the The kind of passivity of the boy, the kind of the shucked, we get a few more of those words, right? Like even brought forth from like near the end or drizzled onto, right? The passivity of the boy.
00:27:49
Speaker
I feel like there's a ah gesturing towards the reader being put in a position of of also not knowing what's happening. Not that there's a one-for-one equivalence there, obviously, but rather a kind of a state in the reader of where are we going?
00:28:02
Speaker
and And that uncertainty I feel is quite productive. I mean, yeah, that line break in vertebrae, I guess it it felt really important to try to to break the word like that, like there's a kind of violence in doing that and kind of like in vertebrae.
Language and Symbolism
00:28:18
Speaker
And I suppose I wanted to, I mean, thinking about it now, there is a real violence towards the oyster, right? We're looking at the oyster in the still life painting, but the oyster is always opened up. The oyster is always dying.
00:28:31
Speaker
you know so there's an absolute violence there and yeah of course it's it's pointing to to other violences and other hurts that the sequence is trying to speak to I mean one of the I found it really interesting you wanted to talk about this poem because um you know in a way it's very typical of the poems in the sequence because there is this kind of um the focus on the still left painting and kind of lyric revelation but it occurred to me when I was thinking about it maybe there's something different about it too because like often in in these poems there's a kind of the tight forensic focus on the symbols of the still life painting and then something is revealed whereas actually I feel like revelation starts really early on in the poem and like actually there's constant sort of lyric revelations like I'm the oyster, you know, boy shot wide open, you know, and it's like Revelation sort of keeps on happening all the way through this poem or something, you know, so maybe there's, I don't yeah, there's this's there's something about Revelation here, definitely.
00:29:35
Speaker
That next line, little smarts of perpetual annihilation, like what you just said could easily be like little smarts of perpetual revelation, right, throughout this poem. Like these moments of like, of understanding or semi-understanding and then moving the gaze slightly elsewhere, right? Like to say, but I'm the oyster means confronting something quite fundamental about the self and about the body and about power, Yeah.
00:30:00
Speaker
So then the speaker then turns to Quivery, Ash and Gale, Cold Jelly, right? Like it's it's like language provides a way into that thought, which seems unthinkable. I think that's right that's that's completely right. Yeah, exactly. The only way the speaker can speak about these these harms and the abuse that they have lived through is using these symbols, you know, the oyster and and the snail. It's the only way they can manage to to speak because, as I said before, speaking directly too painful. and
00:30:32
Speaker
I think there's this kind of um interest in like looking at what the symbols of the still life painting might represent, you know, like the snail, for instance, it represents so many things, you know, it could be kind of like the encroaching death and rot and spoil of the still life painting, but it also could be a symbol of religious purity because they were thought to reproduce asexually.
00:30:54
Speaker
So there's this kind of nod towards the Virgin Mary, but there's also this thing about kind of protection as well because the shell, So yeah, there's looking at the symbols of the still-like painting, but then there's ah also there's kind of the queering of them, like the utilising of the symbols, like not being afraid to use the symbols for themselves. And the oyster, which can mean you know sensuality, love, hidden knowledge, also it it becomes the boy and it becomes about her as well. So there's this constant queering and but reclamation of these symbols.
00:31:25
Speaker
Yeah, and and that's a kind of another way of describing what you do with the crystal poems later on, right, that kind of explode outwards, like how do i how do I look at one crystal and see all of the kind of symbolic resonances therein.
00:31:37
Speaker
Yeah, that's interesting. I hadn't thought about that connection before. the annihilation drizzled onto the open wound of me, which is really kind of quite transparent, in a way, language, right? And then the next line, I break, never use his name, woof.
00:31:50
Speaker
Like, that's quite the him, right? His name, like, we haven't had a his yet, right? It's all been kind of abstraction, in this poem, at least, of like, what has happened. But there's suddenly a, an agent in this poem, the his name.
00:32:03
Speaker
And also like I never use his name, this kind of the thing that the speaker won't talk about or refuses to talk about. and And that's interesting, right, in terms of what is said and what isn't said in a poem.
00:32:15
Speaker
And then i feel it break hardening inside of me break like a symptom. I was not expecting symptom as to be the thing that it's like, right, that simile also comes...
00:32:26
Speaker
kind of left field in a good way. yeah so I guess little smarfs of perpetual annihilation drizzled onto the open wound of me. I guess wound feels like a really important word in terms of this poem, because I do think of one of the things that the lyric poem can do is um open open the lyric wound, you know, this idea of focusing down on something and then something something is revealed and what is revealed can be you know self-knowledge, illumination, but also place of hurt, a place of deep feeling or deep emotion. So open wound of me, I guess, is this kind of opening of the lyric wound. And then in response to thinking about opening the lyric wound, I guess this very direct line comes, I never use his name.
00:33:13
Speaker
that yeah, I mean, was a surprise to me when I when i wrote a ah kind of opportunity for the the speaker of the poem to directly speak out and say something about the harm that is being gestured towards in the poem.
00:33:29
Speaker
And I hope that kind of shock or surprise is maybe encoded in the poem as well. And then I feel it hardening inside of me like a symptom. and This is kind of speaking, um referring to this Lacanian idea, which I talk about in other poems in the sequence.
00:33:47
Speaker
um And in one of the poems I refer to it directly It's this Lacanian idea where he writes, a symptom is a word trapped inside the body. And I love that idea in that, um the words that we have stored inside us that we cannot express actually become symptoms, actually become incredibly harmful and start to act on the body as well as the mind. So I'm kind of recalling, i guess I'm recalling that kind of Lacanian idea, the unspoken word hardens inside like
Agency, Beauty, and Larger Themes
00:34:19
Speaker
a symptom. But I guess also the inference is it maybe hardens inside like a pearl as well.
00:34:25
Speaker
Yeah, or or like the hardening of the kind of like a calcification, right? Like, the you know, ah the the kind of accretion of stuff that makes it harder to get it out. or Totally, totally.
00:34:37
Speaker
Because the body makes things, right? Kidney stones, bladder stones. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, totally. Calcification. That's a great word. that that have to be passed out, right? Again, like the still life kind of hints towards calcification, right? Like the the the stopping of time, but actually you're giving us like living phallus, right? If we're gonna go from symptom back to phallus, right?
00:34:58
Speaker
I knew this was Oconian. um like that kind of language and and the way of thinking about the body as as deeply as you know for look on would be like a linguistic structure as much as a kind of corporeal one but also i don't know this relationship between can language make sense of the body or can it only kind of talk around the body right like how much of these poems are talking around the experience as opposed to the experience And essentially you said about wound, right? Because wound is, isn't that what trauma is in Greek, right? Like that is the the Greek for trauma or something in like its first use.
00:35:30
Speaker
And it's the wound that can't be made into language. I don't know, just, I guess, again, this tension between like what can and can't be said, what's possible to be said, or what can only be talked around language.
00:35:41
Speaker
Yeah, totally. It's really interesting what you're saying. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, like, I guess this idea, the idea of the wound also makes me think about the idea of being like wounded, wounded into song almost, you know, and I feel like the speaker is kind of wounded, wounded into song in in in this poem, you know, it's the unspoken that they're trying to to almost kind of push out this idea that song is internal pressure, trying to trying to escape, you know?
00:36:10
Speaker
Yeah. And ah from that symptom, which again is a very different kind of language, again, like I was trying to suggest that the poem is moving through kinds of language or kinds of diction of voice, You then get your our second O, O Mother line break of Pearl.
00:36:26
Speaker
but You know, like you're messing with us now, Richard. You know, that is setting up an expectation. Then you're giving us something else again, what many of these poems are doing, right? that Like, O Mother, like a declaration to the mother. And actually, no, no, it's O Mother of Pearl.
00:36:41
Speaker
What at first appears beautiful, I clothe aragonite. And the word I can't say. Conchiolan. Conchiolan. Yeah. um Yeah, I mean, you're you're right. That is kind of like, I guess there's the drama of the library, right? Oh, mother, and then of Pearl, right? So there's this yearning for the kind of mother or yearning for a kind of like um care or love that um is is is is not in the poem, you know, is this yearning for something.
00:37:08
Speaker
But then there's a kind of of Pearl comes as a kind of answer to that, I suppose, as well, because there's something incredible about the oyster being able to have an amazing amount of agency and how it transforms the intruder into into a pearl, this extraordinary thing. So actually, if the yearning for something the mother or some kind of like care actually maybe what is discovered is this kind of don't know surprising agency that the oyster um or the boy has all along the ability to kind of rethink re-figure and transform maybe but also i think there's something um trying to in some ways like evoke a kind of
00:37:54
Speaker
ancientness as well because like mother of pearl i mean people have been using mother of pearl know the inside of oysters and snail shells in art in ritual in jewelry making for thousands and thousands of years you know i think about um things that have been found in tombs from Sumerian culture or ancient Egyptian culture and have these extraordinary kind of inlaid pieces of Mother of Pearl. So there's something I think really ancient about Mother of Pearl, something trying to sort of evoke a kind of deep time or a kind of ancientness there, kind of reaching out.
00:38:32
Speaker
And these these kind of like natural substances, right? Like the crystals in the later part of the book, Mother of Pearl, Aragona, like it's referencing towards those things too, that unlike the snail or the oyster or any of the other still life objects are actually these way more permanent beautiful things right but like beauty is also part of this right there's something about what at first up appears beautiful i close so here's he's one of the only moments of like real agency for the the speaker right like he's doing the speaker is doing something for the first time in amongst all this other uh the lack of agency
00:39:07
Speaker
And I'm wondering about that kind of beauty, the aesthetic, that this poem is also about poetry itself, right? Like what looks beautiful is is more complicated, right? It's actually this process of transformation or transformation of the other, as you were saying, right? This thing inside the oyster, that that something profound can happen underneath the pretty language, right? Or the the nice language.
00:39:30
Speaker
A number of these poems seem to be talking about what poems can do or not do. Yeah, I think you say you saying all that really well. like I really vibe with what you're saying. I mean, like the the word beautiful here is, I guess I'm kind of using it in a sort of very complex way. what at first appears what at first appears beautiful.
00:39:52
Speaker
And I guess it's complex and it's surprising. And I suppose there is this kind of, the speaker is trying to make something beautiful out of what happened to them.
00:40:03
Speaker
Certainly. But i don't I don't know if that's entirely possible. I don't know if they think that is entirely possible. I think, you know, something that I thought a lot about is the idea of that lyric revelation might might lead to um self-knowledge.
00:40:22
Speaker
And there's there's ah there's a beauty in self-knowledge, in understanding something and coming closer to ah hurt that's been written about in the poems. And also the act of writing a poem, I think, well,
00:40:34
Speaker
that's writing a new home home for yourself. You know Paul Salam writes about um the poet's true homeland is their poem. And so if beauty can't be created out of something traumatic, then maybe a new homeland or a new place to live or a kind of shell can be created potentially.
Richard's Writing Process and Influences
00:40:56
Speaker
you you know those words, aragonite and conchiolin, mean, yeah, I find them extraordinarily beautiful because they're sort of, you know, scientific words that are sort of puncturing the the lyric space. And i like the idea that like a really unexpected word can sort of fracture the lyric space in this really sort of postmodern way. And they also speak to, you just as you were talking about, they speak to sort of, um,
00:41:25
Speaker
overarching themes in the book and one of the themes of the books is is this kind of being in dialogue with crystals and their healing properties. you know So Aragonite is whilst it is this mineral substance emitted by the oyster, there are also aragonite crystals, you know?
00:41:42
Speaker
So I feel like it's sort it's tying a loop with with the crystal poems, definitely. Yeah, and because i think there's something really powerful about crystallography in terms of the speaker and what the speaker is trying to access, like the crystals which have been, you know, they could be like four million years old, potentially, and they were born under enormous amounts of pressure on the earth's mantle.
00:42:04
Speaker
ah broken, continually but broken, and time again, and then reformed to emerge kind of shining. And I think there's something really, I don't know, really important about the message of the crystal.
00:42:18
Speaker
And then the very end of the poem, a mineral and glittering paint brought forth from the very centre comma churning comma of myself. Commas that haven't, you know, there are commas in the poem, but not massively, right? Like we we largely move through quite plain sentences or plain lines, I think.
00:42:39
Speaker
Maybe we've seen like one comma before now. And that little pause of brought forth from, again, this, it's almost like this innate process, right? Like the the speaker isn't doing it. It's just brought forth.
00:42:50
Speaker
But from the very center, comma, churning of myself, I feel like the very center of myself might feel like a quite a liberatory ending to the poem, maybe, right? There's something kind of like, not optimistic, but there's something kind of positive, but the churning,
00:43:03
Speaker
seems to throw that off a tiny bit for me or like at least adds more you know I think of like churning waves or this kind of churning there's like work in there right there's a kind of difficulty and I think that's like a really interesting place for the poem to like land yeah I vibe with what you're saying totally I think yeah I mean there is brought forth from the very center of myself there is this sort of like I guess what we were talking about before, that unexpected agency kind of kind of wells up and and transform and transforms and takes over the speaker, takes over the oyster.
00:43:34
Speaker
The oyster, I should say at this point, which is not dead. you know The oyster, the beginning of the poem has been shucked and we think we're looking at the oyster in a way that The oyster is just going to be eaten and is going to be completely annihilated. But actually, this, in a way, means actually the oyster can close itself again and refine the agency to bring up these mineral fluids. um But yeah, churning, I mean, yeah, I guess it's a big it's a big action. It's matter bringing forth energy. It's the transformation of the self, you know, bringing forward these fluids that come from the very self.
00:44:11
Speaker
Yeah, and I guess it felt important to have kind of caesoras there, sort commas, just to kind of like give a kind of pause in the line, the very centre churning myself. Yeah, and almost like in those caesoras, in those commas, in those pauses, there is some kind of action. The fluids are kind of being brought up from the centre of the oyster and overwhelming. Yeah.
00:44:33
Speaker
And also a moment for us to take a pause too in this moment of transcendence, change, transformation, possibility. And if this poem were on its own in a collection, right, amidst other kinds of poems, like that might be one thing, but I mean, we can't close read it without saying that it is in a sequence of other still lives, right? So we know there are more to come in this mode or in this form or in this genre. And I think that's quite important that that it doesn't feel like this is the end, right, of ah the thought experiment perhaps, or that there are other...
00:45:02
Speaker
There are other variations on this theme, whether they're all the same speaker is like another question for another day. But I hope so. yeah, yeah I hope so. i mean, it occurs to me also that there's this kind of activation of the oyster activation of the symbol, because I guess I think of the still life painting is sometimes, you know, be being containing of these objects.
00:45:24
Speaker
incredibly ornate and shining ghosts because the things that you look at in the still life painting they died centuries ago you know the oyster literally died that day or a couple days later you know so we we're looking at the ghost of something from centuries ago but in activating the the symbol there's a kind of bringing it back to life being haunted by the symbol but also kind of willing it back into to agency into you resurrecting the symbol i no No, you did talking about transforming symbols. I don't know if that's a good segue, but I want to ask you about your writing process.
00:46:00
Speaker
Like, do you have times, places? Are you writing on your like computer or by hand or on your phone? I know that the third section of this book, like you reference ah C.A. Conrad, right? And their way of like doing certain kind of crystal rituals, right? To kind of open up certain things. i'm like wondering, what is your process? Was this book a different process given the kind of subject matter or what you were doing formally and experimentally? Like, tell us about how, how do you do it?
00:46:27
Speaker
Very good questions. um So in terms of my writing in practice, I write every day. and we spoke a bit before about like my practice always beginning with close reading.
00:46:39
Speaker
But also I think in the writing of this book, my practice has been quite procedural. So setting myself tasks to complete. And one of the tasks, you know, thinking about the still life painting in particular has been going into galleries to look at still life paintings principally the National Gallery you know one of the paintings that I'm referring back to in in this poem is by Jan David Stahim and his still life painting is in the National Gallery so i would kind of you know
00:47:10
Speaker
I'd go into the National Gallery and I would experiment with what it would be like to actually be in front of a painting for hours instead of minutes, you know, so there was, there's no place to hide, you know, because often when we look at a dramatic artwork, we're doing it for 30 seconds or a minute and then we have the safety to kind of look away, but I wanted to kind of extend that and sort of see what it would be like in the process to, you know, in my process to be in front of it for hours and to just sort of feel the sensibility, the mood, the vibe,
00:47:40
Speaker
be in dialogue with these those ghosts and those
Opera Singing and Writing
00:47:43
Speaker
symbols. so So my writing practice for the book has been really procedural. So going into galleries, looking at paintings, Also, you know, working with um found text, you know, you were speaking before about Andrew Marvel and the vocabulary clept.
00:47:57
Speaker
another procedural thing I would do is I would give myself the task of trying to write about the psychological aftermath of being groomed. But through someone else's language, Andrew Marvel's words, the 188 words poem to his,
00:48:13
Speaker
call mistress So that's a kind of insight into the kind of procedural things I was setting myself to do. I guess, where do I write? Well, sometimes in galleries, um sometimes in libraries. Like i live in South East London, so I routinely do a tour of all the local libraries in South East London that will have me.
00:48:34
Speaker
And I've always written directly onto my phone or onto my computer. So nevery I've never used pen. pencil or a notebook no it's i'm interesting to know ah don't know if i want to peek behind the curtain too much but with the vocabulary clip did you arrange those 188 words in a particular like documents that you had easy access to them did you just look at the poem and see what jumped out like how do you do that yeah good good question yeah ah please So, I mean, so it involved a lot of kind of cutting cutting out of the the actual words and kind of assembling.
00:49:11
Speaker
So cutting up the words and assembling it into a new vocabulary, basically, which I would then i would then pull from. so lots of scissors and glue and time.
00:49:24
Speaker
That is the answer I wanted. Fantastic. When you have talked about being an opera singer before this, when did you first start writing or what what is your first memory of writing? That's good question. So I think my first memory of my first memory of writing would be when I was an opera singer. So when I was at music college, we would be tasked with learning, you know, learning a part, like learning and a role in an opera.
00:49:48
Speaker
And that would involve translating the libretto yourself. learning it, sitting with it, trying to embody the text, pull it apart, trying to um understand what syllables, what vowels you had to sing and try trying to access the feeling within it.
Teaching Creative Writing
00:50:05
Speaker
So I think for me, my first memories of writing seriously were sitting in the library at music college and just translating these poems or these librettos myself and just trying to really understand them and embody them and of course the these weren't my words or something but I think that process was um incredibly formative to me yeah fascinating I know that you teach creative writing at Goldsmiths where I once studied and then only in retrospect did when I first started teaching at Hertfordshire where i teach now you were there in my office and I didn't quite know who you were and I was like who is this random person that keeps coming in once a week
00:50:46
Speaker
but it was you and I didn't know that until afterwards so I should have said hello at the time. and Is there anything you do in the classroom like creative writing wise like a prompt or lesson that you might share with listeners that they could like try or think about? and This podcast I'm trying to think about people who don't have necessarily access to those creative writing classrooms like is there something that people could try?
00:51:06
Speaker
so yeah I teach I teach creative writing both at Goldsmiths and at the Faber Academy and Yeah, teaching creative writing is one of my absolute passions. I love it. feel so lucky to be able to kind of, yeah, just just share poems and and and share ways of thinking about work and ways of finding your own voice.
00:51:26
Speaker
Yeah, so I feel... Very lucky to be able to do that. And um yeah, it's great that we met at Harbourshire. Nice that we're saying hello properly now. Yeah, so a class that i um a class that I often teach to students quite early on is I introduce them to the tropes or certain ideas around the lyric poem.
00:51:46
Speaker
because I believe lots of the ideas contained within the lyric poems, such as a kind of musicality or writing in lyric time or um harnessing lyric focus or thinking about revelation, illumination, opening the lyric wound, I believe that they have the power to sort impact all different types of poems and all different types of writing. So I often teach a kind of introduction to the lyric and the tropes of lyric poetry.
00:52:13
Speaker
And, you know, one of the things one of the things I do when we do that class is we look at ah a poem or a fragment by Sappho, which is ah it's just 11 words. it's So go, so we may see, lady of gold arms, do you?
00:52:34
Speaker
And that's the Sappho fragment translated by Anne Carson. And we look at that poem, it's just 11 words, but we look at what incredible work that poem does, how it's got a kind of musicality, how it's written in lyric time, it's got this thinking voice, it also contains this kind of bum vocabulary of silence and and the unsaid or the inferred, it's concrete, it's got images,
00:53:00
Speaker
It contains revelation, epiphany, deep feeling. So we look at those 11 words and we're like, we look at just how something that's so concise might be able to do so much. And then we, as part of the class, we'll have done a writing exercise. And then the second part of the writing exercise, I always say,
00:53:19
Speaker
Can you now try to lose half the words on the page to be really concise in a sort of like enforced and sort shocking way? And often it just demonstrates just what pure concision can do and actually how sometimes we don't need as many words as we think we do. Sappho's fragments certainly demonstrate that.
00:53:43
Speaker
um And um I think students find it really, really freeing to be able to take away as well as generate. I'm going to do that this afternoon because I have a poem that's way too long and I don't know what i'm doing with it. So I'm going to delete and see what happens.
00:53:57
Speaker
Fragmentise it. Yeah, exactly. Let me end with giving you the space to recommend some books, some things to our listeners. What old things, new things, things that are not yet out.
00:54:09
Speaker
Oh, good questions. What would i I, mean, there's so many, there's so many books that. ah In terms of books that kind of speak directly to creative writing, um i was thinking of a book that I think is completely amazing is Madness, Rack and Honey by Mary Rufal.
00:54:25
Speaker
So those are her collected lectures from teaching and they are just completely virtuosic and creative and thoughtful. Like there's there's a lecture she gives on beginnings and it's just full of so many beautiful ideas as to how might begin a poem and actually how a poem begins off the page and actually see how potentially, you know, our our lives are one long sentence from birth until death. It kind of, it's mind blowing. It's a mind blowing lecture. I really recommend it.
00:54:54
Speaker
Something else I've been reading recently are the the letters of Emily Dickinson. So I've been rereading these. They've been um ah republished again by Harvard. And I think they are extraordinary. So they just contain such amazing wisdom. um one of my favourite letters, she writes, I had a terror since September.
00:55:15
Speaker
I could tell to none. And so I sing as the boy does by the burying ground because I am afraid. And I know she she's just completely, she's amazing. And and that idea that, the just the idea that that she could tell no one and so she sings has just been so important to
Book Recommendations and Influences
00:55:34
Speaker
me. difference between speech and song and poetry, I think, and harnessing those differences and being aware that you can actually sing about and write about things that you might not be able to speak about has been really transformative to me. So I really recommend her her letters.
00:55:51
Speaker
Another book, of May May Bersenbrugger's Treatise on Stars, which is just an extraordinary collection by... an amazing poet i absolutely who I absolutely love. And she um she's writing about stars and cosmology, but actually she's also writing about the power of the imagination and how when we look at the stars, we can actually travel there, not just in our minds, but also in our bodies. So she's talking about the transformative act of looking and naming. And she's puncturing the lyric space with extraordinary language from science and from astrology. So I really recommend recommend the treatise on Star Wars.
00:56:28
Speaker
Well, those are amazing recommendations. Thank you. i will link all of them as usual in the notes. So you can go and look up all the things we've talked about today. I feel like we've referenced a lot. And I will link to the paintings that this poem engages with.
00:56:41
Speaker
Though, as I told Richard, like I started to look at the the paintings when I first started reading the still life poems. And then actually was like, I don't even know need to look at this painting, which sometimes I do with like a cray stick. And then sometimes I didn't.
00:56:53
Speaker
So I don't know. I'll leave it up to you. I'll link them. And if people want to look at them, they can. If not, they don't have to.
Show Closure and Listener Engagement
00:56:58
Speaker
But I think it's an interesting part of the the reading process. ah But Richard, thank you so much for your time today. i've really enjoyed this.
00:57:11
Speaker
It's been so joyful to talk to you. Thank you so much Chris, for your kindness and your insights. Please subscribe. Leave a review and share with people you know. You can also follow the show and me on Instagram at Books Up Close and on YouTube.
00:57:26
Speaker
And if you can, please do fill out the feedback form linked in the show notes. It's really helpful to us. You can get show transcripts and more information by subscribing to the Substack.
00:57:38
Speaker
This show is made possible by an Impact Accelerator Award from the University of Hertfordshire and the Arts and Humanities Research Council.