Chapter 1: What is the purpose of the Nothing But The Poem podcast?
Hello and welcome to Nothing But The Poem.
Welcome everybody to our Nothing But The Poem podcast, our regular dive into some poems by a poet that I've selected as part of our Nothing But The Poem discussion group who meet on the first Friday of the month online.
and that's for the Friends of the SPL.
My name is Sam Tung and I'm the project coordinator here at Scottish Poetry Library. And just by way of an introduction, if you haven't already heard one of these podcasts, the Nothing But a Poem podcasts, the way it works is that in the sessions we come together online, I share some poems with the participants and we simply discuss them.
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.
So the poet that I chose for this podcast is Andrea Gibson. They were Colorado's Poet Laureate from 2023 until their death in 2025 from ovarian cancer. One of the reasons I wanted to choose to look at Andrea's work
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.
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Chapter 2: Who was Andrea Gibson and what was her impact on poetry?
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. I know how to build a survival shelter from fallen tree branches, packed mud, and pulled moss. I could survive forever on death alone. Wasn't it death that taught me to stop measuring my lifespan by length, but by width?
Do you know how many beautiful things can be seen in a single second?
Chapter 3: What themes are explored in Andrea Gibson's poem 'In the Chemo Room'?
How you can blow up a second like a balloon and fit infinity inside of it? I'm infinite, I know, but I still have a measly wrinkle collection compared to my end goal. I would love to do a before picture, I think, as I look in the mirror and mistake my head for the moon. My dark thoughts are almost always 238,856 miles away from me believing them.
I love this life, I whisper into my doctor's stethoscope so she can hear my heart. My heart, an heirloom I didn't inherit until I thought I could die. Why did I go so long believing I owed the world my disappointment? Why did I want to take the world by storm when I could have taken it by sunshine, by rosewater, by the cactus flowers on the side of the road where I broke down?
I'm not about to waste more time spinning stories about how much time I'm owed, but there is a man who is usually here who isn't today. I don't know if he's still alive. I just know his wife was made of so much hope, she looked like a firework above his chair. Will the afterlife be harder if I remember the people I love, or forget them? Either way, please let me remember.
Obviously, when we're approaching poems that deal with or try to deal with cancer and disease in this way, we are covering a lot of ground that has been covered before. There are many people now, and obviously we're living longer with more and more illnesses.
Chapter 4: How does the poem 'In the Chemo Room' address the experience of cancer?
So writing about cancer and somebody's experience of living with and then dying from cancer is well trodden ground in a sense. But each individual poet who's writing along these lines and across this ground brings their own perspective and brings their own heart to the endeavor. When we were discussing this in the group, we were struck by the title first off. It sets us straight into the scene.
There's no dilly-dally. The title, 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. Gives you all the information you need. We're immediately there. We're in the chemo room. And then the
very striking image of wearing mittens made of ice so that the poet doesn't lose their fingernails but still taking the risk to write and that kind of encapsulates the energy that's behind this poem that although the poet is going through dire straits of course going through chemotherapy they still need to write and that's what the energy that drives this poem forward
So with that title setting the scene so strikingly, as we went through, we realized that this is an exploration of dying, an exploration of death, exploration of a terminal diagnosis, but also there was so much joy and honesty and love throughout the poem. There were so many kind of great quotable lines that you could pull out and that struck people differently in the group.
Chapter 5: What insights does the group discussion reveal about community in poetry?
One of the ones for me was the couplet that says, wasn't it death that taught me to stop measuring my lifespan by length, but by width? And quite a few of the couplets end with questions like,
And although sometimes this can be making a demand on the reader, almost as if it's kind of answer me in a kind of that the poet is demanding answers, here they're open enough to bring in the reader, bring in the listener into this conversation, into these conversations that are going on all the time.
One of the participants raised the interesting point that actually the structure of the poem and the way it looks on the page in these couplets and kind of almost quotable lines that you can you can pull out this could be actually due to the practicalities of writing in mittens with mittens made of ice that this form speaks to something of how the poem was written
that it's written in kind of ideas that are placed together, that are explored, kind of unfolding narrative, but also a standalone. So there is a kind of practicality to writing in this couplet form, this kind of longish poem written in couplets. It really feels like this could have been written there in the chemo room and that we're there while it's being written. It feels that kind of fresh,
Another point that came up when we were thinking with this poem was how little, yeah, it wasn't really about acceptance, but it also wasn't about kind of a doomed, that kind of doomed poet, that voice. which is going to be lost. It was a kind of well-won wisdom, I suppose, or hard-won wisdom, whilst also questioning.
So there wasn't this sense that the poet had got to a point of acceptance and calm and still exploring, still wanting to know about the beautiful things that can be seen in a single second and how you can blow up a second like a balloon and fit infinity inside of it. There's still that questing that the poet's mind is trying to achieve and trying to follow.
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Chapter 6: What is the significance of the poem 'Instead of Depression'?
this gave us a sense that this is more complex, of course, much more complex than merely accepting a kind of calm acceptance. It's a lively continuing exploration and that writing and continuing to write is how to live, is to continue living. And another of the aspects that was key to this feeling, overall feeling, was that there was a community, again, inside this poem.
So we're in the chemo room, But there are other patients there. There are Jenny, who's asked that when people, and again, eminently quotable, Jenny, who 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. And that kind of humor and pathos that comes in just feels real.
So there's another patient in there, and then there's another patient's wife who was full of so much hope, she looked like a firework above her husband's chair. We felt, again, as we were working our way through the poem, that Gibson is just so good at writing stories honestly, and about the absolutely singular aspects of going through this process, but going through it with a community.
So it's particular, it's singular, but it's also communal. And constantly avoiding the risk of settling onto one emotion or one form of understanding. and allowing that pathos and humor and ridiculousness and absurdity and infinity into what is now unfortunately quite a mundane experience and situation. We were also very struck by how the poem that proceeds in couplets ended on a single line.
It again feels like, I mean, you can overread it perhaps as a, yeah, the poet has decided to end on this single line as a mark, a kind of epitaph or a mark of, this is the message you're supposed to head out of the poem with.
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Chapter 7: How does Andrea Gibson redefine the concept of depression in her poetry?
But it was just very gentle. It was a gentle kind of Finnish denouement to the poem. And it came after the couplet, Will the afterlife be harder if I remember the people I love or forget them? Either way, please let me remember. And that helped us to find a conclusion to the poem where it's not as simple as a binary, it's non-binary.
It becomes a either way and either or, please let me remember, please let me still have that connection. And with all of these poems and actually with a lot of Andrea Gibson's work, it's worth, if you're interested to find more of their work, is to find them on YouTube because they were a very proficient slam poet and winner of lots of slam competitions.
So their performance of their own work is really, really powerful. Obviously, the poems live in other people's voices and in other people's understanding, but it's really worth seeing them performed as well.
A second poem that we looked at was a very short one, but apparently, again, looking at dates, this was written many years before a kind of terminal diagnosis, but without trying to use the poet's biography as a... necessarily a way of fully understanding and getting to an exact meaning. This one was written quite a while ago, according to dates.
But when you bring the poems together in a group, they speak to one another, of course, and our brains and minds make those links. So this one is a short poem called Instead of Depression. Instead of depression, try calling it hibernation.
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Chapter 8: What are the concluding thoughts on Andrea Gibson's legacy and poetry?
Imagine the darkness is a cave in which you will be nurtured by doing absolutely nothing. Hibernating animals don't even dream. It's okay if you can't imagine spring. Sleep through the alarm of the world. Name your hopelessness a quiet hollow, a place you go to heal, a den you dug, sweetheart, instead of a grave.
There was an echo here of the conversational address that Andrea uses where the poem is always in relationship. It's intimate. It's always trying to speak more widely than simply self-reference. One of the participants here found the hopefulness of this poem around the fact that the idea that depression is a season. It's a kind of that you can hibernate through perhaps. It's a phase.
It's a time of life or a time of the kind of years of life and not the be all and end all so that the hopelessness is actually a den. It can be a place for nurture rather than complete loss.
And bringing that into a conversation with the previous poem, here it felt like the poet was in control or trying to control and develop a way of understanding depression, to give it a structure, to give it a meaning.
And that felt like a key understanding of how to read Andrea's poetry more widely, that it's always in conversation, it's always in community, a means of response to situations and to give them meaning. So that was just an insight into how we responded to these two poems. Of course, there would be myriad other responses. if you were to bring them to a group and to read them together.
But that was just an insight into some of the paths that our conversations took. You can, if you enjoyed the sense of what we do there, you can join our Nothing But The Poem group as a friend of the SPL. As I say, we meet on the first Friday of the month, so that's 12 a year, and we get to delve into
poems and poets who we might not have read before and sometimes we do actually look at some of the the high hegions of the poetry world as well and revisit poets that you might think that you know pretty well so yeah stay tuned to what we're going to be doing in the near future and come into the scottish poetry library to borrow the books and to meet the poets on the pages that are on our shelves thanks very much for listening bye for now
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