Samuel Tongue

Hello and welcome to Nothing But The Poem.

and that's for the Friends of the SPL.

We just them through twice and talk about them and see what impact they make on us.

For good or for ill, we can be quite critical when needs be, but that's all part of the conversation as to how a poem works and what it does.

is just the way in which they touched a lot of poets around the world and the impact of their death generated so many responses and so much love, to be honest, that I wanted to try and read some of their poems as part of that remembrance.

And it's also a good excuse for me, full disclosure, it's always a good excuse for me to read a poet and some poems that I haven't read before and read them with other people because that communal reading can lead to so much interpretation and so much commentary and a really kind of different perspective on things.

So in the session, we managed to read three poems together.

I'll give you some insight into two of those poems today.

First poem is a longish one.

I'm going to read it in its entirety.

These are all available online, so you can find them.

This one was on, I think it was on poets.org, quite widely published as well.

So this poem is called In the chemo room, I wear mittens made of ice so I don't lose my fingernails.

But I took a risk today to write this down.

Whenever I spend the day crying, my friends tell me I look high.

Good grief, they finally understand me.

Even when the arena is empty, I thank God for the shots I miss.

If you ever catch me only thanking God for the shots I make, remind me I'm not thanking God.

Remind me all my prayers were answered the moment I started praying for what I already have.

Jenny says when people ask if she's out of the woods, she tells them she'll never be out of the woods, says there is something lovely about the woods.