In this episode, Jack and Rachael are joined by award-winning poets Raymond Antrobus and Victoria Adukwei Bulley in the studio, where they consider the multiple meanings of the word 'quiet' and the gifts that make you feel seen. Audio postcards in this episode come from Declan Ryan, Holly Isemonger and Dawn Watson.



Show notes



Studio guests



RAYMOND ANTROBUS is the author of three poetry titles: To Sweeten Bitter (Out-Spoken Press), The Perseverance (Penned in the Margins) and All The Names Given (Picador), as well as a forthcoming collection to be published by Picador. His work has won the Rathbones Folio Prize, the Ted Hughes Award, the Somerset Maugham Award, the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, and his poems have been added to GCSE syllabi. He is also the author of a children’s book, Can Bears Ski? (Walker Books), which became the first story to be broadcast on the BBC entirely in British Sign Language. Antrobus was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2020 and appointed an MBE in 2021. His debut work of non-fiction, An Investigation of Missing Sound, will be published by W&N in 2025.



VICTORIA ADUKWEI BULLEY is a poet, writer and artist. An alumna of the Barbican Young Poets and recipient of an Eric Gregory award, Victoria has held residencies in the US, Brazil and the V&A Museum in London. Her debut pamphlet, Girl B, was published by the African Poetry Book Fund in 2017. She is the recipient of a Techne scholarship for doctoral research at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her debut collection, Quiet, was published by Faber in 2022. It was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize and won the Rathbones Folio Prize for Poetry and the John Pollard Foundation International Poetry Prize.



Audio postcards



'Mayfly', written and read by Declan Ryan. His debut collection, Crisis Actor, is out now (Faber, 2023).



'My Life as an Artist', written and read by Holly Isemonger, from her collection Greatest Hit (Vagabond Press, 2023).



An extract from ‘We, Ghost Tigers’, written and read by Dawn Watson, taken from her collection, We Play Here (Granta, 2023).



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 Raymond Antrobus, Victoria Adukwei Bulley, Holly Isemonger, Declan Ryan and Dawn Watson. All three seasons are available to stream on Audioboom, Apple Podcasts, Spotify and other major podcast listening platforms.