Matt Bryden Poetry

Good Grief?

Ninny, the Invisible Girl, Tove Jansson

I gave a research lecture at Falmouth University this week. It was great to take the opportunity to visit the campus, try the Spring Ale at the Seven Stars and sample native oysters at the Beach House. Here’s the abstract of my paper ‘Good Grief – Literary Techniques for the Navigation of Trauma in Poetry and Song’:

In Levels of Life, Julian Barnes claims that grief – like sexual intercourse and having children – separates those who have experienced it from those who have not. Complicated grief can leave a person in a position in which, although the world keeps turning, they are trapped at the point of their trauma, endlessly replaying events in their mind to no positive end. How to break the spiral?

With reference to Nick Cave, Bruce Springsteen, Jack Gilbert, Mimi Khalvati, Ted Hughes, Maya Abu Al-Hayyat, Charles Schultz, Tove Jansson, Blade Runner and Twin Peaks, we will look at alternative approaches to regaining agency – including finding pattern in the past, thinking mythologically and seeking out the missing directly.

Can the act of writing replace a spiral with a narrative arc? Can writing about grief provide an agency lacking in life? Can, as Nick Cave claims, grief result in becoming a more total human being?

On ‘Landscape’

Great to have my poem ‘Landscape’ appear in the Ted Hughes sister journal Recklings. It won the William Soutar prize in 2020, judged by Samuel Tongue.

Here’s the essay I wrote to accompany it:

A decade ago, I was driving from Lisbon down to Aljezur in Southwest Portugal on Easter Sunday. The heat was direct and intense – service stations seemed like shrines, white and cool, with areas of shade for vehicles and air conditioning. The road surface had that shine that seemed just shy of melting. We pulled off the motorway and found a bar where we could take respite from the heat, as well as some water for some pills. My partner went inside and I waited outside. Over a low, makeshift wall, a garden sloped away before reaching up into the hills. Suddenly, a woman was beside me, washing her linen in a pool filled with fish. The suds spread into their water and gills and they went into a kind of frenzy. She didn’t seem to consider them at all.

I was imagining how I might capture this landscape in a poem – landscape in a ‘terroir’ sense: the combination of soil, climate and environment that gives character to a wine. The poem opens with an element of parody, documenting the scene in precise figures to which no one could have access: 0.032 of a person, 75,234 mgs of eucalyptus. This kind of enumeration and calculation was to miss the spirit of the landscape entirely. I had in mind Ted Hughes’s ‘Pike’ which begins in a similarly literal way: ‘Pike, three inches long’, ‘A pond I fished, fifty yards across’, before the pike make a mockery of such rational thinking: ‘one jammed to the gills down the other’s gullet’, the pond itself ‘as deep as England.’

The poem was originally titled ‘A Short History of the Staple Singers,’ after the American gospel, soul and R&B group formed in the ’50s. While they don’t hail from Portugal, I was thinking how a person carries the environment in which they are raised with them, however far they travel. I was thinking of singers because I could inhale the atmosphere outside that bar. So I turn to a singer in the final four lines and imagine how the landscape would influence her – just breathing this in, the intensity of the relentless heat, the beauty – and transform her.

‘Thinking of Blade Runner in the Turkish Quarter of Berlin’

What a pleasant surprise to learn that this poem was shortlisted by Abigail Parry for the 2024 Live Canon International Poem competition. Not least because it documents a trip from the Czech Republic to Germany eighteen years ago, when I and my then girlfriend hitched a lift from Prague to attend a christening in Hamburg. We stopped off for a few days to see her father in Berlin, which is where I was struck by the sight of people eating noodles out of paper cartons on the street, something I had only ever seen in the futurist noir setting of Blade Runner.

I can still remember the biting cold of that trip. Another reason for my surprise was that the announcement was made in the same week that David Lynch died, and the poem recalls a trip to the cinema to watch the just released Inland Empire. Being a German theatre, the exchanges in Polish were dubbed into German. My girlfriend spoke Polish and all through the film – one of his longest – she leant over and whispered a translation in my ear.

In the end, there was something episodic about our journey and I had a sense our relationship would not last long (it didn’t). I particularly loved one of the quieter moments in Ridley Scott’s film, in which Deckard rotates a photograph slightly and it flickers into a kind of life, like a gently shaken snow-globe. I imagined tilting our picture and my girlfriend and I returning to the amicable and platonic colleagues we used to be.

The poem was read alongside 14 others by actors from the Live Canon stable before the prize went to Dillon Jaxx for their ‘The Fisher Price Hospital’. It’s a cracking winner, but almost all the poems shortlisted shared something of an Abigail Parry flavour – full of play and tricks and sleight of hand. A great experience all round. The anthology will be published shortly and I’m really grateful that this poem will be a part of it.

Interview on A Poet’s Work

Huge thanks to poet Rachel Lewis for publishing this interview with me on her Substack A Poet’s Work. We discuss different aspects of writing about grief – the reasons, benefits and dangers. I also touch on my forthcoming collection Phantoms. I enjoyed being made to think (after a night of limited sleep, camping with my daughter in the garden). It was a great experience all round!

Magma Grassroots Launch

Really happy to have my poem ‘At the MIND Drop-in Centre, Beckenham’ appear in the Grassroots issue of Magma, edited by Lisa Kelly and Patrizia Longhitano. I particularly like Rona Luo’s poem ‘Vinegar’ and Elizabeth Gibson’s ‘They have put an oxygen mask on the seagull’ in this issue.

It was the 30th anniversary and the launch was at the Farsight Collective. Here’s me clutching my copy of Tintin and the Blue Lotus.

Poetry London Presents

Thanks to Niall Campbell for an honourable mention in the Poetry London Presents showcase for 10-line and under poems. I really admire Niall for his initiatives to get poetry ‘out there’ and his hands-on approach to editorship. Shout out to the current issue too, which contains some great poetry from Rachel Long, Deryn Rees-Jones, Chelsea Christine Hill, Maithreyi Hughes and Daniel Halpern among others.

Here’s my poem ‘Cow’ in full.

Dithering Chaps

Delighted that my fellow Fire River Poet Nicole Durman has had her first chapbook Ghosts of Nightshifts Past accepted by Dithering Chaps. You can read about it here. I’ve admired Nicole’s work for its energy and untold tales, so it’s great to see it get the attention it deserves.

Reading at the Creation Theatre, Oxford 14th October

A lovely opportunity to read at the Creation Theatre with Alan Buckley, NJ Hynes and Carl Tomlinson before popping next door to one of those pubs you never want to leave. Thanks to Helen Eastman for the invitation.

Butcher’s Dog

Hooray to have my poem ‘My mother needs a second coming out’ in Jo Clement’s singular and characterful Butcher’s Dog. Lots of great work here including that by Tiffany Atkinson and Samuel Tongue. Copies available here.

The Crank and Poetry Worth Hearing

A couple of fatherhood poems ‘Early Childhood Studies’ and ‘Fontanel’ appear alongside poems by Oz Hardwick and Kimberley White in issue 11 of Humphrey Astley’s The Crank and four poems on the theme of ‘after’ are up at Kathleen McPhilemy’s Poetry Worth Hearing including a long and interesting interview with Cahal Dallat – text here and audio here.

A Couple of Readings

Stoked to be reading with Harry Man, Tiffany Tondut and Tom Weir at the Torriano launch of Harry’s stellar collection Popular Song.

And then in Bristol for the launch of Carrie Etter’s exquisite Grief’s Alphabet.

Publications

My poem ‘Annunciation’ appears in issue 142 of Poetry Ireland Review alongside some wonderful work by Katrina Naomi, Lisa Kelly and an interview with Damian Smyth.

It’s a poem springing from Fra Angelico’s fresco from 1441, to which I was introduced in a workshop with Claire Williamson.

Recently, I have been ending readings with this poem and its message that somehow things will take care of themselves, will be alright.

Less positive is ‘Decline’, which appears in the word and image issue of Lighthouse and details a loss of vision. It’s a packed, well-edited issue and I was especially pleased to be included in a journal which references Tom Phillips, taking me back to my heady Bellenden Road days drinking in the Pelican with my lurcher Jess.

And my poem ‘Performance’ appears in issue 95 of Pennine Platform. It reads like a continuation of The Glassblower’s House, perhaps I still have a few poems to write in that vein. It’s a terrific issue, but I think my favourites are Konstandinos Mahoney’s ‘Alexi’ and  Lydia Harris’s ’I call my ox.’ 

The Glassblower’s House featured in Broken Sleep’s Books of 2023

Delighted to receive this generous, sympathetic review from Kirsten Norrie (MacGillivray)

13th January 2023, Heron Books Bristol

Thanks to Lizzie for a warm welcome for Josephine Corcoran, Isy Mead and myself in Clifton, Bristol.

The Glassblower’s House Review by Ashley Lister in Writing News

26th September Uncut Poets, Exeter Phoenix

A lovely reading with Isabella Mead and Josephine Corcoran and fantastic open mic-ers including Mark Totterdell. Thanks to Chrissy Banks and Alasdair Patterson for the invitation and warm welcome!

7th September Fire River Poets online reading

A real privilege to be invited to read for Taunton’s very own Fire River Poets of whom I have been a member since moving to Somerset about ten years ago. How lovely to be able to stretch out like this. As well as some Glassblower’s House poems, I read some work from its shadow-volume Phantoms and a new poem called ‘Longing Marks.’ Thanks to all who attended and for Graeme Ryan for chairing.

August 2023

Three recent poems appear in issue 40 of Poetry Salzburg – ‘Far from the climate emergency’, ‘Phantoms’ and ‘Lovely Polykaste.’ The poems are taken from Phantoms, a pamphlet composed one poem a day after reading a different chapter of the Odyssey.

July 2023

‘My houseparent is weeping on a rock’ appears in Alchemy Spoon issue 10. It was great to be part of the online launch which you can watch here (my poem is about 27 minutes in) or you can buy a copy of the issue, curated by Tamsin Hopkins, here. It includes lots of great writing including poems by Elaine Ewart and Matthew Caley.

Really happy to have two poems, ‘Migration’ and ‘Nafplion’ in Issue Eight of Finished Creatures. Buy a copy here.

January 2023

Delighted to have two of my Songs for Ibba poems, set in Ibba Girls School in Western Equatoria State in South Sudan, ‘Aubade’ and ‘Departures’ appear in Dr Jennifer Wong’s A personal history of home anthology.

You can read it by clicking here.

December 2022

Over the moon that my pamphlet The Glassblower’s House is a winner of Live Canon’s pamphlet competition and will be published in 2023. Thank you to Dr Helen Eastman and the Live Canon stable.

May 2022

Some recent publications:

‘Rich and Poor in the Underworld‘ in Acumen (an outtake from my Lost and Found sequence set in Bristol temple Meads Lost Property Office and the Greek Underworld)

‘Witness’ in The Honest Ulsterman (from Lost and Found)

‘Episode’ in Finished Creatures

‘Sara’ and ‘Corsair’ in issue 6 of The Crank

‘Clark Kent revisits the Family Farm’ in Orbis.

Thanks to all the editors for selecting my work.

August 2021 Great to take part in What we read now alongside Tiffany Tondut, Konstandinos Mahoney and Sue Wallace-Shaddad

July 2020 My pamphlet about a girls school in South Sudan Songs for Ibba was shortlisted for Fly on the Wall. Update: no dice

April 2020

Some recent publications:

‘Early Days’ in Finished Creatures.

‘Divination’ and ‘Mute’ and, separately, ‘Four Weeks’ and ‘From a Former Member of Bomber Command’ in The Crank.

‘A Vision’ and ‘From One Lane of A Portuguese Swimming Pool’ in issue 231 of Stand.

‘Maridi’ was a winner of the 2020 Guernsey competition (but sadly not driven on a bus around the island).

2020

Thanks to Paul Maddern for asking me to record a few poems in lockdown for his poetry clips project linked to the annual John Hewitt festival:

January 2020

Some recent publications: ‘Centres of Gravity’ and ‘Blind Spot’ in Seisma; ‘A Confidence’ and ‘Vertigo’ in Finished Creatures; ‘Correcting a Portuguese Menu in Honest Ulsterman.’

November 2019 Cafe Writers Competition

‘A Preservation Spell’ has been commended in the Cafe Writers competition: https://www.cafewriters.co.uk/home/poetry-competition/2019-winners/

October 2019 Charroux Memoir Prize

I’m delighted to have won the Charroux Memoir prize for ‘Crossing the Owl’s Bridge.’

May 2019 William Soutar Prize

I’m delighted to have won the William Soutar Prize, with the prize of a free writing course at Moniac Mhor. Many thanks to judge Samuel Tongue for selecting my poem ‘Landscape.’ You can watch me introduce it here (not my best day!).

March 2019 Overton Poetry Prize

My pamphlet Notes towards a Greek menagerie was shortlisted for the Overton Poetry Prize 2019. I was particularly pleased by judge Carol Rowntree-Jones’s comment, ‘These poems make me want to write.’

March 2019 Salade

My poem ‘Approach’ appears in the beautifully-produced Salade produced by Vittoria Cavazzoni & Déborah Gaugerenques.

You can purchase a copy here.

Royal Society of Literature Writing Matters Award 2018

I was delighted to receive a Literature Matters prize for my Lost and Found project, which uses a residency at Bristol Temple Meads Lost Property Office as the basis of an investigation into what makes us human.

The sequence of poems links the Lost Property Office with the Greek Underworld. It was launched at a reading for the Exeter Classics Association before an audience including Dr Sharon Marshall and Professor Daniel Ogden in May 2019.

In 2021, I also gave a reading for Oxford University’s Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama Series of readings by contemporary poets engaging with the classics alongside poets Vasiliki Albedo, Kym Deyn, and Mehmet Izbudak:

23rd July 2018 Paper Swans Pamphlet Competition

My pamphlet Sister-Wives was long-listed for the the Paper Swans prize 2018. It’s great to be on such a strong list.

19th July 2018 The Writers’ Cafe

I have four poems up at the Portraits issue of the Writers’ Cafe. Many thanks to Marie Lightman. You can read them here

20th June Research Stipend

I have been awarded a stipend by Exeter University to visit their Charles Causley archive, held at the Old Library. I will be exploring Causley’s correspondence with writers located in the South West, as well as his drafting process.

19th June 2018 Exmoor Society Poetry Competition

I was highly commended in the Exmoor Poetry Competition 2018 for my poem ‘An Imposition.’ Congratulations too to fellow Fire River Poet Graeme Ryan, whose poem ‘May 17th’ was also highly commended.

1st June 2018    Reading at Cyprus Well 5 – 6 pm

In March, I had the pleasure of spending five nights at the home of Charles Causley in Launceston, Cornwall as part of a research project into his links with John Keats. The first poem in Causley’s Collected Poems is titled ‘Keats at Teignmouth’ and 2018 is the 200th anniversary of Keats’s visit to the seaside resort to support his brother Tom, who was dying of TB.

I will be giving a talk as part of the Charles Causley Festival reflecting on the link between the two poets, as well as talking about Causley’s work for children, which I have used in my workshops with children for many years, and giving an account of my own experience at the house.

It was a wonderful experience, like slipping into another man’s shoes, walking his rounds, taking in his views.

 

The site of ‘In the Willow Gardens’ with a view from the allotments up to the castle of Robert of Mortain

Leaving the Well

Poetry Ireland

My poem ‘The Lookout’ appears in issue 123 of Poetry Ireland, edited by Eavan Boland.

The Poetry Map

Is launched!

About: https://thewritingplatform.com/2018/05/introducing-poetry-map/

Shortlisted for the Turn On Literature Prize: https://turnonliterature.eu/works/2017/08/04/the-poetry-map/

Click the link at the top of the website to access it!

The Keats-Shelley Prize 2017 

My poem ‘Supporting Actor’ has been shortlisted for the Keats-Shelley Prize 2017.

The Bridport Prize 2017

My poem ‘The Lookout’ has been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize 2017.

Archived news

April 2017               Poet in the Garden, Ashbourne Festival

September 2015     ‘Leaping onto a Lark’s Back – the Work of Ted Hughes and R. J. Lloyd’ (paper)

Dreams as Deep as England, The Ted Hughes conference, Sheffield University

March 2015           ‘Working off Radar – Glyn Maxwell’

New Generation to Next Generation conference, Oxford Brookes University

September 2014    Dylan Thomas Centre, Swansea

May 2014               Poets and Players – John Rylands Library, Manchester
                               (with Fiona Sampson, Nabila Jameel; music by Arian Sadr)

June 2014             Made in Greenwich gallery with Patrick Early and Rosemary Johnston

    
June 2014              Lit Live! Peckham Pelican – Goldsmiths Creative Writing students, alumni and staff, including Richard Scott, May-Lan Tan, Rachel Long, and special guests: poet Martha Sprackland, and spoken word artists Inua Ellams and Jacob Sam La Rose

1st August 2014    John Hewitt Festival Market Place Theatre Armagh, with Vona Groarke

A terrific few days at the John Hewitt festival in Armagh, meeting some lovely people including Frances Leviston, Paul Batchelor, Miriam Gamble, Vona Groarke and the more familiar faces of Paul Maddern, Damian Smyth and Anne-Marie Fyfe who so kindly invited me in the first place.

2013

15th January Family Tales, the Ivy House 40 Stuart Road, Greenwich

24th January Speaky Spokey, Brighton

23rd January Bath Spa University, workshop and reading

29th November  Boxing the Compass London launch, Keats Memorial library with Beatrice Garland

2nd November  Boxing the Compass launch + writing workshop, Derwent Poetry Festival, Matlock Bath

21st October  New and Established Showcase, The Troubadour; Fiona Moore, Hannah Lowe, Angela France, Robert Peake, Hilda Sheehan, Alison Brackenbury, Kate White

October   ‘Liberty and Fidelity in Logue’s War Music’, BAKEA History and Literature Symposium, Gaziantep, Turkey

13th December Wheatsheaf, 25 Rathbone Place, London W1T 1JB

A candlelight reading at the Wheatsheaf, featuring an impressive line-up of poets from near and far, including Matt Bryden, Kimberly Campanello, Vahni Capildeo, Harry Man, Mohan Rana, Tiffany Anne Tondut and Jennifer Wong. The reading was hosted by Gale Burns.

October 2013 The Desire to Sing after Sunset, a translation of Taiwanese poet Ami with interpreter Ingrid Fan, appeared in a print run of 1,000 copies. Poems and translations were presented with facing texts illustrated throughout by Ami’s artwork.

A colourful little parrot

lands on my elementary yellow hat.
I never thought he would die,
he is winged. 
I can't catch him even though my hands rise high.

He became rigid that winter. 
At four o’clock
the pale yellow light
makes people sad. 

My first pet.
I felt he loved me deeply;
he listened to my call,
flew to me after school. 

I used rolls to make a little coffin, 
dug several soup-spoons deep; 
buried him close to the trees 
where we talked. 

The trees are now parking spaces.
I grow up gradually,
wave my own wings,
though I am past flying.

Modern Poetry in Translation, Transitions, Series 3 Number 18

Hear ‘Cure’: https://soundcloud.com/matt-bryden/cure?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

and ‘I walk on old bone street’: https://soundcloud.com/matt-bryden/i-walk-on-old-bone-street?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

2012

June     Goldsmiths peer seminar – ‘Why Be a Translator?’

April    Goldsmiths peer seminar – ‘On First Looking into Logue’s Homer’ 

Further back in the recesses of time: my blog

Soundcloud

Amber Ablett’s 2013 Song Sheets project

P13 – A short film shot by Tebello Rose of seven poems based loosely on the P13 bus route between New Cross and Streatham NOTE not sure what happened to this, it used to be on Youtube

1. Bystander

2. Peckham Post Office

3. The Ballad of Goose Green

4. The Westbury Horse

5. Classroom

6. Goners

7. Walking Up Vestry Street, After Midnight

List of online poetry publications (many now defunct):

Online Poems

‘After Daphnis and Chloe’ and ‘I Lost My Igloo’ at Enchanting Verses

‘Testament,’ ‘Unlooked for, the deer’ at The Garo

‘Keeping the Birds in the Air’ in Visual Verse 

‘Breakfast,’ ‘He whistles,’ ‘Nights,’ ‘Duties,’ ‘Clientele,’ ‘School Party,’ ‘George’ at Peony Moon

‘Should The People But Come Above Ground,’ ‘If People Think,’ ‘The Night Sky,’ ‘’Over There,’ ‘Handicap’ at Peony Moon

‘Bazaar,’ ‘Raciborz Poland,’ ‘Brest Litovsk’ at Shadowtrain

‘Clothes’ and ‘Three Poems for Jack Kerouac’ in The Lake 

‘Fixed Stars’, ‘A Ritual’ and ‘I have split mind again’ in CALM

‘Ab’ – Magma

‘Sonnet,’ ‘The Furniture Game’ – Goldfish

‘Rabbits,’ ‘The Proposition,’ ‘One Pane’ – Goldfish

‘The Smile,’ ‘Summer School,’ ‘Pulling Together’ – Shadowtrain

‘All Talk,’ ‘Nine Weeks,’ ‘Portents,’ ‘He can talk his way through life’ – Great Works

‘No distance,’ ‘The Reading,’ ‘Triptych’– nth position

Prose

‘Correspondences’ in Versopolis

‘Fat Charlie the Archangel Sloped into the Room’ in CALM

‘Logue’s Homer in Enchanting Verses

Various thoughts on writing for Arvon Teachers as Writers Project

Reflections on staging Reports from the Judenplatz

One Pane (essay) – Open Notebooks

Interviews for Fire River Poets