Matthew Paul: Poetry & Stuff

On Tuesday, I had the great pleasure of reading at Five Leaves bookshop in Nottingham, alongside two lovely poets whose poetry I love: Kathy Pimlott and Peter Sansom. As Kathy mentioned during her reading, she and I met because we were both participants in the Poetry Business Writing School run by Peter and Ann Sansom. I think our sets of poems complemented one another’s. I’m very grateful to Ross Bradshaw of Five Leaves and Tim Fellows of Crooked Spire Press for introducing our readings. Here’s a photo taken afterwards:

I have two readings coming up in October, at the Dusty Miller, Mytholmroyd, on the 7th, and at the Museum in the Park, Stroud, on the 23rd. Both are free events, with no ticketing. Details are available here.

I’ve been reading Peatlands (Arc Publications, 2014), written by Pedro Serrano, the Mexican poet, and translated by Anna Crowe, both of whom I was due to be reading alongside in Mytholmroyd. (They have been replaced by Kim Moore and Molly Prosser.) In his poem ‘El Arte de Fecar’ / ‘The Liminating Art’, he writes, ‘Shitting is like the art of writing: / you have to give it thought and just so long / for everything to come out good and strong.’ I can’t argue with that.

I’ve also been (re-)reading Us (Faber, 2018) by Zaffar Kunial, as it’s the chosen book for this month’s Poetry Book Club. In these days when the media are encouraging the open racism of far-right fuckwits, his poems exploring what it means to belong have taken on added importance. I’ve also re-worked my way through the poetry oeuvre of Seamus Heaney, accompanied again by Stepping Stones (Faber, 2008), Dennis O’Driscoll’s seminal interviews with him. For me, Heaney remains a paragon of how a poet can negotiate the politics and events of their time.

I’m also savouring Flint Country (Saraband, 2025, available here) by Laurence Mitchell, whose East of Elveden blog (here) I have long enjoyed. It’s a lovely, heartfelt meditation on the character, history and importance of flint in Norfolk, Suffolk, Sussex and beyond.

Finally, I’m very grateful to Jonathan Taylor, who featured two poems from The Last Corinthians on the Creative Writing at Leicester site, here. I should mention again that Jonathan’s short-story collection Scablands (Salt, 2023), available here, is one of my reading highlights of the year.