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You're listening to Life Jacket, your literary
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buoyancy aid from Artful Scribe. I am your host,
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Antosz Wojcik. Episode 3 Where was I? Where are
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we? We drift along Time's river, noticing time's
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many things, accumulating detritus and joyful
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wrecks in the pockets of our life jackets. We
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pluck objects, jot notes and take pictures to
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maybe return to beyond the point of remembering
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their context or relevance. I've accumulated
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so much to sift and sort. The softness of it
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all makes it all the more strange. In a digital
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cloud, my days are stored with their simple marks
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and schedules. Are there digital equivalents
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of clouds, of stratus nimbus cumulus? Where was
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I? In this accumulation of things and attempts
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to categorize and embrace the chaotic meandering,
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I remain buoyant. I hope you do too, wherever
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you are. Where was I is a profound question from
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one of today's texts, a piece of vibrant, fizzy,
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interrogative memoir from writer Angelo Chicken.
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The question made me stop and think on how much
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I write in order to locate myself. and how often
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this locating just raises more questions and
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reflections on where I am and more so how or
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why did I get here. The writer is often navigating
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this existential jog with their text. It's our
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cathartic reflection on the world around us in
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order to hone in on where we stand, both in landscape
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and, to borrow Gerald Manley Hopkins' term, the
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in -scape. When we write in response to the world,
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We are crafting an outward reflection in order
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to access the inner nature of things, the thing
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often being ourself. Writing into the inner nature
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of things today are Angela Chicken and Isa Farah,
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two writers whose prose and poetry will bring
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to our ears the idiosyncrasy, rhythm and pulse
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of place. We will hear the writers locate themselves
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and in turn we will find where we are. At East
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Park, a massive pink frilly peony squeezes its
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head through black railings. The scent is overwhelming.
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Its neighbour, behind in the race, gives a chance
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to compare the before and after of them. Baby
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magpie runs along, beak -wide, whinging about
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food. The bigger bird goes about its business,
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ignoring the fuss like a parent absent -mindedly
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studying the contents of a freezer in Iceland,
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impervious or hoping the problem will go away.
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I'm after a shady spot at Metrix where I can
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read, but there's too much content in the park.
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Tiny yokey claws of bird's foot trifoil, clover
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in both hues, buttercups and plantains have me
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shrinking like Alice, down to ground level for
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the grasses too. The bees here are plentiful
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and happy. I almost get one up my sleeve in my
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keenness for the photo. Childhood memories have
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a funny habit of repeating themselves. Scent
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of rambling roses in the hedge along the road,
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green leaf mosaic overhead in the avenue of horse
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chestnuts heading for the cenotaph, dappled shade
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on the tarmac, liquid gold blinding peekaboo
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through branches and round trunks. Each park
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dreams of paradise. God bless the men who plant
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trees in whose shade they will never sit. Isn't
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that what they say? I think of this with the
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NHS, libraries, council housing, education, the
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arts, and also well, with the trees themselves.
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All that vision, planning, all the work and knowledge,
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and all for me, and for you too. No entry fee,
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free to share with everyone, yet vital to each
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should we need it. What will we plant that we
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will never see? A man on a bench playing music
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on a bamboo flute, taking me away to India or
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Pakistan maybe. I have to stop. Peace lilies
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blinding by the fountain, cyclist doubles back
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to thank the flautist, shares a few words and
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smiles, pushing off for Charlotte Place. Where
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was I? Lost in time. I could be my granddad sitting
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here watching the day studying a bird's nest
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perfect and fallen from the tree empty solitary
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wood pigeon indecisive nearby the current is
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strong these days I could get lost in these waters
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there's too much content in the park Chicken's
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text reads as though stumbling along, catalyzed
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by East Park in Southampton, a bustling place,
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alive and diverse with its inhabitants, human
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and non -human. The piece quickly evolves into
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a discursive, curious, provocational piece of
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prose which exacts the drifting, fizzy thoughts
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of someone, recognising both the beauty and the
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tensions of their surroundings. The senses are
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alive. The speaker is urgent. Time is itching
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away. The prose style leaps and bounds across
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matters, the stream of consciousness precisely
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flitting to the next thing as Chicken describes,
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each part dreams of paradise. In paradise, we'd
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hope there would be the same keenness, curiosity
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and magic that sparks in this prose. Too much
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content in the park can be an invitation to wrestle
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with what overwhelms us, as well as invite us
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to stay buoyant in the cumulative beauty of difference
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found in urban pastorals. And in the urban pastoral,
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Chicken even raises the plight of the worker,
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asking questions of social organisation and inviting
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the listener to make good of the free. public
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spaces while we can, with a knowing tension of
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how the increased need to work takes us away
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from leisure and pleasure. God bless the man
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who plants the tree but never sits in its shade.
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The speaker turns their stream of thoughts towards
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those who care and those who rarely or never
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get the time to embrace their leisure and pleasure.
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Both leisure and pleasure, we know, is rapidly
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being privatized, in the words of Catherine Liu.
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and in need of redistribution. With the simple
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mechanism of the speaker's need to find a shady
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place to read, Chicken takes us to wider contextual
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questions, for you, for me, as we sit in a place
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like a park that is the centre across time. Why
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would we want to be anywhere else? And where
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would we go if this place no longer existed?
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I know this fairy park. I did not plant its trees,
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but like Angela Chicken, I am grateful someone
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planted them. I hope the park sees more suns.
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Horns stretches to snuff, belt of fieldstuff
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of night. Red mellows yield to infinite white.
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Chiseled face belying, vying within, skin marked
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on. Watch his swan visage of dock town from.
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Passed before free -fall vanished to elsewhere
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a new watch from hooded salt -south stair Decked
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in Asiatic dye, woe in caustic balm of docktown
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still Watches beatific beam pry yesterday's pinion
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of ill Lotus chalice, drained of pristine sorrow,
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stems blood from chemical stave of worlds of
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promise of tomorrow. 6 AM strikes again from
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clock tower, pylon trail followed by wanderer
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again in dock town. Dock town. causing dust of
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mercy in scope of fine face square to zenith,
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mask of wild glee guile broken in banish, hourglass
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inked in frantic hand before melanin drum clarion
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dance quickens wanderer to stand, in hours past
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shock of dove in snare of halogen, elsewhere
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geveled dent of maddened whim, docked town tongues,
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anger in ether, rush of 12 p .m. passes suffering
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softened features, Pyre of tree billows black
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in square Staircracked salt salve of sapling
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flare Idle of east burnished in yearn of despair
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Hangs from string knotted before elsewhere Dial
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on peak of crucifix still in vermilion Doctown
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moment of wonder in meridian Doctown by Isa Farah
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Farah describes the poem as the imagined process
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of someone grappling with addiction. It's clear
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the imaginary for Farah is the window to the
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inner nature of the psyche and by extension the
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world around them. Similar to the prose of Angela
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Chicken's Archaeology of the Soul, Farah's Doctown
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renders an urban space into psycho -geographic
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poetry. The absence of pronouns sets each and
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every object into action as instigator and as
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event. If there was a poet as the channel to
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a place, it is Issa Farah. His verse reeled off
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as incantation, conjuring rainbow sway finesse
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and swan visages. Surreal and dreamy, the craft
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of this playful verse uses the internal rhymes
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and freer music of the line to push the concrete
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and abstract. The sounds of the words and the
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jazzy free -form meters are our narrator. It's
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the epitome of Ezra Pound's doctrine in a retrospect
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to compose in the sequence of the musical phrase
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and Wanda Coleman's zoning where the almost automatic
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dreamy verses rich in surprise and ethereal visions
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fished from the subconscious. Take the phrase
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dove and snare of halogen, the flight and peace
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of the dove, the entrapment and snap of the snare.
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Two concrete details reveal the inner nature
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of the halogen glare and brings us closer to
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the experience of the speaker, and to return
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to Hopkins' idea, the in -scape of someone grappling
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with addiction. It's here that Farrah's poem
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Doctown is exemplary in both its playful, incantatory
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verse and its mastery of image. The poem invites
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all poets to do away with the pronoun in their
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verse and see what story they can tell purely
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with sound. and objects in sound. Where was I?
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Two pieces that surely relocate the listener.
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I've enjoyed the deep dive and immersive place
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pieces. I hope you have too. Julie Chicken is
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a poet and writer based in Southampton. and has
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performed in London and across the South East.
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Her work often features themes of community in
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urban settings, but she is equally at home in
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nature, especially if there's National Trust
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tea and cake involved. She has worked on projects
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teaching poetry and performance in schools, and
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her work is featured on Hampshire County Council's
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Writing Hampshire website, Mapping the County
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in Poetry. Angela Chicken's piece, Archaeology
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of Soul, can be read in Modern Nature Anthology,
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responses to Derek Jarman's Modern Nature, edited
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by Joanna Bernard. Produced in partnership with
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John Hansard Gallery, Arts Council England and
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Artful Scribe. Copies of the anthology are available
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to purchase on Artful Scribe's website. Heesa
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Loyan Farah Kelly is a poet from Southampton,
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best known for Let's Make It So. His contribution
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to the Southampton City of Culture 2025 campaign
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and for founding writer -note poetry open mic,
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Issa performs with rhythm and the intention of
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synthesizing rhyme and reason. He states Doctown
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was written in 2021 and was inspired by an ex
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-friend's journey from ketamine addiction to
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sobriety. Issa hosts the Clifford Street Corner
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on Voice FM, a monthly show dedicated to poetry,
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lyrics and literature. Life Jackets is produced
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by Artful Scribe, a not -for -profit writer development
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agency based in Southampton, supporting emerging
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and continuing writers in Hampshire, Dorset and
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the Solent region. Artful Scribe is supported
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by Arts Council England. I'm your host, Antosh
00:13:08.860 --> 00:13:12.639
Vujicic. This is Life Jacket. Stay buoyant.