Gail McConnell talks to Emily Berry

In the latest Poetry Review podcast, Gail McConnell talks to Emily Berry about loss, parenthood and the resource of language in her debut collection The Sun is Open. Published this September, the book works with archival material related to the life and death of McConnell's father, who was murdered by the IRA outside their home in Belfast in 1984. “Language does the work if you let it,” she observes of this "fraught undertaking". Together they discuss poetry form and performance – typography, breath, sound and “the event of the poem” – and the poets and thinkers who have influenced McConnell’s thinking: Bob Scanlan of The Poets’ Theatre, Jay Bernard, Raymond Antrobus, Denise Riley, Ciaran Carson, D.W. Winnicott and others. McConnell gives astonishing readings of her poems published in the Review: excerpts from ‘The Sun is Open’ and ‘Untitled / Villanelle’.

Om Podcasten

The Poetry Society was founded in 1909 to promote "a more general recognition and appreciation of poetry". Since then, it has grown into one of Britain's most dynamic arts organisations, representing British poetry both nationally and internationally. Today it has more than 4000 members worldwide and publishes the leading poetry magazine, The Poetry Review. With innovative education and commissioning programmes and a packed calendar of performances, readings and competitions, the Poetry Society champions poetry for all ages. "The Poetry Society is the heart and hands of poetry in the UK – a centre which pours out energy to all parts of the poetry-body, and a dexterous set of operations which arrange and organise poetry's various manifestations. It has a long distinguished history, and has never been so vital, or so vitalizing as it is now." Sir Andrew Motion