Just over three years ago I was sitting in the garden of a Kentish Town bar being interviewed by two special people, David and Lizzy Turner of Lunar Poetry Podcasts. Like myself with Proletarian Poetry (I was that night hosting an event at the Torriano Meeting House with Tim Wells and Anna Robinson), LPP had been going for less than a year, interviewing different poets about their poems and craft. David’s style of interviewing is one of the most laid back, yet incisive techniques I have come across; a great interviewer makes the interviewee feel they are just having a conversation, as opposed to a simple Q&A, and David does this with such aplomb.

Since their inception in October 2014, the LPP series has archived well over 200 poets spanning 116 episodes and 8 countries. It stands as the UK’s most definitive archive of current poetic voices. In 2017 LPP was shortlisted for a British Podcast Award – Represent Category, recognising the producers’ efforts to reach audiences often ignored by mainstream media.

To mark this great achievement, David and Lizzy have edited a selection of twenty-eight poets in the anthology, ‘Why Poetry?‘ published by Verve Poetry Press.

The full list of poets included, a number of whom have appeared on PP, are: Travis Alabanza, Sandra Alland, Khairani Barokka, Zeina Hashem Beck, Leo Boix, Mary Jean Chan, Donald Chegwin, Grim Chip, Rishi Dastidar, Susannah Dickey, Nadia Drews, Joe Dunthorne, Harry Josephine Giles, Melissa Lee-Houghton, Keith Jarrett, Anna Kahn, Luke Kennard, Sean Wai Keung, Nick Makoha, Roy McFarlane, Paul McMenemy, Kim Moore, Helen Mort, Abi Palmer, Amerah Saleh, Giles Turnbull, Lizzy Turner, Jane Yeh.

Released on September 27th, you can pre-order the anthology here.

To whet your appetite, here is the poem ‘And what’s in yours?’ by Lizzy Turner from the anthology. Lizzy hosts a podcast herself, called ‘a poem a week’, another great platform for poets to highlight their work.

Lizzy Turner is a poet living in Bristol, though her heart belongs to South London. She co-edits the Lunar Poetry Podcast, and produces its companion podcast A Poem A Week. She has co-edited ‘Why Poetry? The Lunar Poetry Podcasts Anthology’. Her work appears in various publications online and in print.

And what’s in yours?

What frightens me is
I can’t see exactly
what’s stuck on the
inside of my body,
what, alongside coffee staining,
bad thought never quite sloughed,
curdling on a raw wall,
what might interrupt my
blood at a later date,
something sitting in there,
a gristle rock,
no memory of mine
but with its own,
haunted little misery of a thing,

I’m scared to think
inside of my body,
feel from the surface
quiet bumps which don’t
reveal the features underneath,
what event made my
waist bend in like this?
pulled me together and
where did it go?
I think of how the
things get in and get
transported through the system,

I fear the poisons which
won’t leave the body fully,
clawmarks in the padding
round the exits, scars
of substance, abuse of the
flesh by the brain,
what damage, what consequences,
what strange becoming of my body
while I sleep?