In which I have a poem on Radio 4

I’m on Radio 4!  This is truly thrilling for me!

I was very lucky, alongside excellent poet Elisabeth Charis, to be part of a Writing West Midlands-brokered commission to write a poem for Radio 4’s ethical and religious discussion programme Something Understood.

The programme’s theme was ‘Bread’, and it went out on Sunday 23 August, and if you’re so minded you can listen to it for the next 29 days (and counting).  The link is here, and you can hear me reading my poem Bread Generations about 6 minutes in.

Here’s the poem.

Bread Generations

The grandmothers said, it’s an art like fire –
They said this
is the very nature
of leaven.

Snare in a white bowl
your kitchen’s tiny alchemy
of airborne spores.
Observe them strengthen
through a pale brown week of bubbles,
then raise like a thin,
elastic ghost,
yeast’s reek.

For unleavened bread
has no past.

The grandmothers said, keep some starter
back in your dish
to be fed like a kitten
and watched
like a fire.

They said, think ahead, provide
for the ones that follow.

Call them in.
Break bread
together.
Re-make
a bakers’ rising.