Elusive poem
Need help to figure you out
Spend time with Helen
Though technically daring each other to write a Japanese Death Haiku during our chat, I’m hoping both Helen and I have got a little longer before we need to sum up our creative lives in seventeen syllables.
And besides, more pressing is my desire to learn about poetry and develop a greater understanding and appreciation for it.
Instead, I offer that pithy haiku to the spirits of Bashō and Li Po, and I offer to you this wonderful chat with Helen Mort.
Indeed, welcome to The Library of Lazy Thinking Podcast, with me, your host, Glenn Fisher.
As you may well know by now, in each episode, I'm joined by a guest from the world of books and culture to talk about a specific book they'd like to put in the library.
There's usually no plan and no agenda, just two people lazily thinking about literature, but on this occasion, having chatted with Helen a few times before, I did lean on her to choose one of her favourite books of poetry, as I thought it would be interesting to explore the broader concept with an accomplished poet like Helen.
She kindly obliged, and the result is insanely wonderful (especially if, like me, you were previously a little shy around the form).
If you enjoy the show and would like to support us (and get your hands on a coveted Library of Lazy Thinking bookmark, sticker, and pin badge in the process), you can upgrade your subscription on either a monthly or annual basis.
But either way, please do like and share the show—it all helps.
In this episode, as I say, my very special guest is the poet, novelist, academic (and a whole bunch of other stuff), Helen Mort. We discuss her pick for the library, the 2009 poetry collection Rain by Don Paterson.
About Helen
Helen Mort is a British poet, novelist, and academic. Her published poetry collections include Division Street (2013), shortlisted for both the T.S. Eliot Prize and the Costa Book Award; No Map Could Show Them (2016), inspired by pioneering female mountaineers; and The Illustrated Woman (2022), which was shortlisted for the Forward Prize. Mort's prose works encompass the novel Black Car Burning (2019), the short story collection Exire (2019), and the memoir A Line Above the Sky (2022), which won the Boardman Tasker Prize and the Banff Grand Prize for Mountain Literature. Her most recent publication, Ethel (2024), is a biography of Ethel Haythornthwaite, a pioneering environmentalist instrumental in establishing the Peak District National Park.
About Don
Don Paterson is the author of sixteen books of poetry, aphorism, criticism and poetic theory. His poetry has won many awards, including the Whitbread Poetry Prize, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, the Costa Poetry Award, and three Forward Prizes; he is the only poet to have won the T.S. Eliot Prize on two occasions. He is Professor Emeritus at the University of St Andrews and for twenty-five years was Poetry Editor at Picador Macmillan. He is a Fellow of the English Association, the Royal Society of Literature, and the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He received the OBE in 2008 and the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 2010.
Links to obscure (and not so obscure) things mentioned in this episode
Order Rain by Don Paterson and Helen’s most recent book, Ethel: The Biography of Countryside Pioneer Ethel Haythornthwaite, from my local independent bookshop in Sheffield here.
Find Helen on Instagram here.
Find Glenn on Instagram here.
Find The Library of Lazy Thinking on Instagram here.
About the Library
The Library of Lazy Thinking is a place to hang out and learn more about books. If you’d like to support the library and get access to everything here, you can become a paid member (and get an exclusive The Library of Lazy Thinking bookmark, sticker, and pin badge). All support goes back into the library, helping to organize live events, exclusive merchandise, and more podcasts.
About Glenn
Glenn Fisher is a writer—wait, Glenn Fisher is me. I’m the one writing this. Let’s drop the third-person act. My writing has been published in Lunate, The Paris Bitter Hearts Pit, 3am Magazine, Dogmatika, and Litro Magazine. I write about books and interview other writers and artists here in The Library of Lazy Thinking. I live in Sheffield and work as a freelance copywriter. I have had a best-selling non-fiction book published on the subject called The Art of the Click. It was published by Harriman House and shortlisted for Business Book of the Year. It has been translated into Simplified Chinese and Korean. I also have a dog called Pablo. He is harder to translate. Indeed, most of my life revolves around trying to understand his often unreasonable demands. Meanwhile, I am currently working on my first novel about a man who accidentally kidnaps a pig. Brave/insane agents: hit me up.
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