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Poetry Unbound
Poetry Unbound in Conversation — Richard Scott
00:51:37
“Poetry means paying attention in a different way to the world and seeing what wisdom you're given back in return for that attention,” says Richard Scott in this conversation with Pádraig Ó Tuama, recorded during the 2025 Collective Trauma Summit. Richard’s second collection, That Broke Into Shining Crystals, features sequences that focus on two hypnotically compelling subjects: still-life paintings and crystals. From them, he’s created poems that thrum with music, memory, harm, and healing. Richard reads from his book, and he and Pádraig discuss the “surprising life” to be found in still lifes, the difference between the speaker vs. the poet, and how crystals — the beautiful result of “unimaginable” pressure and breakage — can offer us a way to think about trauma. We invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack, read the Poetry Unbound books and his newest work, Kitchen Hymns, or listen to all our Poetry Unbound episodes.
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Transcript51 lines
- [00:02]
A
Hi, friends. Padre Go Toma here. Thanks very much for listening to Poetry Unbound in between Poetry Unbound Seasons. And we have season 11 that'll start later in 2026. We have a whole host of interviews that I've done with poets over the last two years. Poetry Unbound in Conversation, we call them. I've loved the opportunity to talk to poets about their craft, how they see the world through the lens of poetry, and what this art form does for them. These Poetry Unbound in Conversation episodes deepened my curiosity about language and art. I trust they will for you too. In this episode, you'll be hearing from Richard Scott, an opera singer turned poet, editor and educator. We met to discuss his second collection of poems, that Broke Into Shining Crystals, which was released last year. The collection explores how looking at art, whether that's a still life or a shaped crystal, can be a tool toward healing, power and consolation. Just so you know, while there are no explicit details in this interview, the subject matter of the conversation does reference traumatic experiences in childhood. This conversation was recorded on the occasion of the 2025 Collective Trauma Summit. A special thanks to Thomas Hubel, Cassie Johnson and the rest of the team behind the Collective Trauma Summit for making this conversation possible. Special thanks as well to Richard Scott and his publishers, Faber and Faber. Welcome to Poetry Unbound in Conversation. I'm Padre Go Toma and here I am with the poet Richard Scott. Hello, my name is Padre Go Toma and I'm delighted to be in conversation with Richard Scott. Richard Scott was born in London in 1981 and and his debut collection, Soho, which came out in 2018, was a gaze the Word book of the year, and it was shortlisted for the T.S. eliot Prize and the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and the Costa Poetry Award as well. And his second poetry collection that Broke Into Shining Crystals, was published this year by Faber and Faber. Also, he's a lecturer in creative writing at Goldsmiths at the University of London and he runs a poetry writing group there and he also teaches poetry at the Faber Academy. So, Richard, you are so very, very welcome to this conversation.
- [02:29]
B
So lovely to be here. Thank you so much for having me.
- [02:32]
A
Pleasure. I'd like to jump right into talking about this latest book of yours, Richard, that Broke into shining crystals and 21 poems. The first 21 poems all are studies of still lifes. Still life with rose, still life with a basket of songbirds, still life with cornflour, still life with grape, et cetera. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that sequence and your focus on still life.
- [02:59]
B
Yeah, of course. Well, I guess I've always been really interested in still life paintings. I've always been really fascinated in the beauty of that world and the kind of symbols that the artists are working with. And I think writing this sequence of poems kind of brought me closer to understanding why I'm so fascinated in still life paintings. And I think it has a lot to do with how the still life painting, this kind of startling varnished preservation, evokes for me, in a way, how the brain freezes trauma. So trauma or hurt can be frozen in the brain and then recalled, albeit unwittingly, in kind of absolute clarity. But I think, you know, I'm also really interested in language. And the book for me is an exploration into language and the speaker in the poems. They can't say directly what's happened to them because speaking directly is too painful. And so they turn to different types of language. And the first type of language they turn to is ekphrasis, or the language of the still life painting. And they focus on these symbols, like a rose, an oyster, or a grape. And in response to that kind of tight lyric focus, something is revealed to them again and again.
- [04:22]
A
I wonder if you could read one of those for us. Still Life with Apple. It's got a longer title, but the
- [04:27]
B
one on page 22, I'd be delighted to read it. I should just say that this poem utilizes a quote from Lacan, and the quote is a symptom, is a word trapped in inside the body. Still life with apple. Ceramic dish of apples and a pomegranate. I survived by being still, still as this red apple on a wooden tabletop. And each time afterwards, after he had done what he wanted with my body, I packed all the little red apples of myself, each one slightly bruised, bumpy, pock marked, worm, scarred, spored, mouldering deep down into the ceramic dish of my body. Disassociative, I now know it's called, and didn't tell anyone who loved me. Compartmentalization, maybe. A symptom is a word trapped inside the body. And I have so many words trapped inside my body, each one red and burnished and hasn't aged at all. Words like ruined, fault, pricketties, molestation, shame. Each one painted so perfectly the color of a hot coal or a fresh Grayson. And I have so many symptoms. Or the color of an apple smuggled into St. Pelagie Prison in 1871 by your sister. Numbness. Or the color of an apple watching from the wooden tabletop of your teacher's Desk. This stillness is a kind of psychic wound as he arranges your body into a still life. Apples, ceramic dish, a cracked open pomegranate. These repetitive and distressing images, all the glistening and painful reds beginning to move, to run.
- [06:50]
A
Thank you, Richard. There is such attention to the art and ways, as you say, that the language of what needs to be but is difficult to see slips out through those. And the, you know, the emotional language of it, all too repetitive and distressing and not telling anyone who loved you for that speaker. How is it that looking at something allows other truths to be told for the speaker?
- [07:18]
B
Gosh, that's such a good question. I mean, I guess I think of these poems, the still life poems, as lyric poems. And there's kind of a group of ideas around the lyrics poem and how it might function. And one of them is this idea of kind of tight lyric focus. And I think if you. If the speaker or the poet focuses on something external to them and they focus really tightly on something, then something can be revealed. It can be an illumination, or the lyric wound might be opened in some ways. You know, a really good example of this is Rilke's poem Archaic Tools of Apollo, one of my favorite poems. And he's focusing on this distressed, ruined statue of a Greek God. He focuses so tightly. And then the last line is, you must change your life. You're like, yeah, right. It's so great, right? And that tight lyric focus on that statue. And he's rewarded with the last line. Just this feeling that like, oh, this work of art is so great. I have to change something. I have to change something about myself. And yeah, that to me, kind of typifies how a lyric poem might function in some way. You know, the focus on something external and then the. And the revelation or the lyric room being open.
- [08:45]
A
In so much of the speaker of this collection, in so many of the ways that were brought into the speaker's voice, we find somebody who has invasive thoughts about this character. You know, almost every day for some moments I think about him and then it's a reference to all us boys who've been ruined by men, and I survived by being still. All of these kinds of lines, which are an assault on attention. And what you're proposing, it seems to me, is that what some people might consider to be escapism, you know, going to an art gallery is actually a tool of survival and is a tool of the imagination that hasn't been colonized and where war hasn't been enacted on an aspect of the imagination. Do you think that too much focus on trying to say, describe the thing as it is can take away from the possibly healing aspects of where the imagination wishes to go.
- [09:43]
B
Gosh, it's really interesting. I love that way of thinking. Gosh, in a way, the poems in this book are quite procedural. So I set myself tasks to complete and one of them was going into galleries and spending time with still life paintings and looking at painting for a kind of prolonged period of time and forcing myself to kind of really look and really study and not allowing myself to kind of look away. Because often when we look at dramatic artwork, we look, you know, for a minute or two and then we kind of look away into safety almost. So I kind of wanted to prolong that kind of gaze on the painting and just to see the kind of things that would come up. And, you know, often the things that were coming up, you know, into the lyric space of the poem, they surprised me. You know, they took me by surprise. And in the editing process, you know, I would have kept them if they worked for the poem. Yeah. Because I think. I think the lyric space of the poem is really robust and it can bear the weight of intense thought, intense argument and. And, you know, the lyric wound being opened. And I'm grateful that I, you know, found still life paintings because, you know, of course they've. They've been a kind of conduit for me to explore something and to write about something. But they are also very intensely beautiful and joyful things, you know, objects too. And I want to say that too, because, like, I also look at a still life painting and rewarded by, you know, complete joy and. And. And beauty. You know, I'm thinking about like the, you know, hyper real roses painted by artists like Margarita Halloman or Rachel Rush. And it's impossible not to see one of those roses and just to kind of feel such, I don't know, feel this different kind of attention, this different way of looking at.
- [11:43]
A
I've read this book in full three times now, and I realized that at the end of reading it that I have images in my mind as to what the images that you're looking at are, the still lifes. But in my mind they're all like intensely colored. Is that true? This is me just guessing. I mean, are any of them quite sparse in terms of their coloration?
- [12:06]
B
I think. I mean, I think you're absolutely right there. Like, I think color, bright color, almost kind of hyper real color is something that I would say is definitely a feature of still life paintings. I guess the one artist in the book who kind of maybe challenges that a bit is John Simeon Chardin. And there's a few poems of mine which kind of are speaking back to paintings by him. And he's really interesting because he works with, you know, the color brown a lot, and he primed his canvases in these really sort of rich, dark brown colors. And he would move the brown paint around until somehow the arrangement of browns on the canvas spoke to the objects he was trying to paint. And so it's almost like the objects emerged from the darkness. So they do have a kind of darker hue than some of the other. Some of the other paintings. But, yeah, bright colors is definitely a feature.
- [13:06]
A
It comes across. Could you read the opening poem, Still Life with Roses?
- [13:12]
B
Absolutely. And this speaks back to those roses that I was talking about by Margaret Haberman and Rachel Rush. Still Life with rose. Like a foreskin being pulled back, the damask reveals pelvic bowl of pink fringed shadow, dense sweet meat blue coral cave puce empyrean with no vanishing point, planetary blush. So let me in. Where everything is newborn and crystalline caused and protected into that other world, that high shine place of safety arranged and sparking up like a bower. Almost every day for some moments, I think about him. The black stems, thorns that can prick so deeply, Whirl of serrated leaves all just beneath around still gorgeousness. Your petaled cumulus, your constancy helps me live. Oh, rose, keep on stunning for me, for all us boys who have been ruined by men.
- [14:45]
A
I studied theology, Richard, and in lots of religious traditions that have a tradition of iconography, whether that's of a statue or of a painting or of a calligraphy, the idea is that you're looking at that image. But in the religious imagination, something's looking back and you're being made. As you're viewing the art that's been made by an artist, it occurs to me that there's something akin to a deep yearning that occurs in this speaker's voice in this poem. So let me in. Where everything is newborn and crystalline, paused and protected into that other world that feels something like a prayer. I'm not interested in the theological idea of that, but I'm really interested in the absolute declaration of a deep desire in this opening poem. So let me in.
- [15:33]
B
Wow. I really love that idea. The idea of looking at something, that thing, the icon, looking back. Yeah, that's absolutely fascinating. I mean. Yeah, I guess so. There is. There is a kind of hopeful reaching out, you know, into the painting. You know, the speaker is Young to be. To be let in, to be protected, you know. So, yeah, I totally vibe with what you're saying. Yeah.
- [15:58]
A
So much of what you're doing in these 21 poems reminds me of a conversation that for this same summit I had with Marie Howe a number of years ago, where she too was talking about giving attention to something that's distinct, stressing in the life of the speaker and simply asking what else was happening, you know, what was happening in the next room, what was happening in the bay, what was happening in the garden. To widen the landscape of attention to what's occurring. Not to diminish what was occurring for the speaker of a poem, but really also to. Maybe some of it is distantiation, maybe some of it is artistic curiosity, maybe some of it is just frustration with something having arrested you, your attention for so long and to an act of defiance in that way. Would you say that this is something, this is a skill that you've been practicing throughout all of your artistic work to look at something and to look at what's beyond it, or is it particular in this sequence of still life that you're interested in that?
- [16:54]
B
I really love those ideas. I mean, I think for me, like, poetry is a way of paying attention to the world. Kind of slightly different way, you know, and looking at the things that. Or trying to see things that, you know, otherwise might be disregarded or walk past, you know, and trying to somehow intuit the wisdom that these objects or these things might have for the self or for the speaker of the poem. Yeah, I mean, I think there's something about. In, certainly in the still lifebones, I'm trying to kind of like deeply focus on the symbols and I think they warrant that because they're such multi layered symbols anyway. Like, the rose can mean so many different things in a painting, you know, it can mean sensuality, it can mean religious purity. It can also mean, you know, depending on how it's portrayed, it can mean like encroaching death, you know, And I think because it can also mean secrecy as well. And to look at a still life painting is in a way to kind of give your attention to those dense, multi layered symbols. I think it feels possible to press even further and to kind of unearth what the symbolism might be for you. And I'm certainly doing that in this rose poem. You know, I'm kind of looking at the rose and, you know, the speaker is asking to be protected, almost saved by the rose, you know. So I think definitely poetry means paying attention in a different way. To the world and seeing what wisdom you're given back in return for that attention.
- [18:32]
A
And in a sequence of poems that is, you know, explicitly, but also obliquely referencing, you know, grooming and profound sexual assault. The speaker of this, of these poems, too, also has an ownership of the erotic. Even in the opening line of the opening poem, like a foreskin being pulled back, that there is a. It seems to me that there is an assertion of owning that which was stolen from the speaker.
- [19:02]
B
Yeah, I really like. I really like the way that you are. That you're thinking about the poems. Yeah, it's really. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, I. I suppose so. I mean, I think there is a kind of. Speaker has a kind of curiosity as well, and the speaker is looking for their future in these still life poems as well. They're analyzing a kind of stuckness or a kind of frozenness, and they're hoping for movement and they're hoping for self knowledge and whatever the future might look like.
- [19:40]
A
As we're talking, I'm aware that for some people who might be listening to this, who are maybe more familiar with working as a therapist than reading poems or hearing poems, poems being talked about. You and I are using the term the speaker. And that's a way really of being able to speak about whomever it is that is operating in the poem as the voice. And even for people who do write autobiographic poems, I think that they're also speaking about a speaker because the poem isn't you. The poem is its own thing, and the poem can do strange things. Could you talk a little bit about the artistic practice, really, of speaking about the speaker and creating a bit of distance between the poet and the speaker? In poems that have nothing to do with the poet's life. In poems that have something to do with the poet's life.
- [20:23]
B
Yeah, I think that's a really good catch. Yeah, I've definitely been seeing the speaker and. And I think. Yeah, I think it's really sort of fundamental for me to kind of like create a bit of space. And I think, you know, poets will often say different things about who they feel the speaker of the poems is. And all I can say really is that, you know, the speaker in these poems, you know, we share the same biography, but the speaker is somehow, through language, able to sing about or express things that I might not. You know, and so I think of maybe sometimes I think of the speaker as a kind of heightened, more extreme version of myself potentially, you know, like maybe like an opera singer, you know, like, you know, sometimes when you go to the opera and, you know someone's having a really extreme time, they're singing about love and death and they're thinking about really big things and they're not afraid to do that. And I guess I sort of think of the speaker of these poems as being heightened and being unafraid to say things and being unafraid to sing things. And I do think it's really important just to kind of. Yeah. Have that kind of distance that you might need. And I think it's really important, you know, to realize that the eye, when we use the first person, that's not. It's not necessarily the self, you know, something different. It's a different construction.
- [22:01]
A
You've talked about how you think about the speaker. How do you feel about the speaker of the poems?
- [22:07]
B
Oh, that's such a good. That's such a good question. I guess the first word that comes to mind is kind of a tenderness. Like, I feel kind of tenderly towards the speaker. Like a kind of general. I haven't. I suppose I haven't thought about that. Like, I do feel a kind of tenderness towards them, and I feel a gratitude towards them. They're able to sing about things that I might not be able to say. And through their explorations into language and their kind of attention on things, they brought me to a. A sort of place of greater understanding about the hurt that I gestured towards in the poems. So, yeah, I suppose I think gratitude as well.
- [23:01]
A
That's interesting. That's similar to what I felt. I felt like this as I was reading about the speaker. I felt like there was an extraordinary sense of respect toward them, that their tenderness and the tender address of the speaker also was some kind of a protective. A protective kind of music. In the midst of all of this tenderness and the awareness of what it is that might be achieved through the poems. You know, the poems also have a deep sense of resistance and rage, you know, and, you know, I wanted to be the last little ruined boy, but no one will allow it. The speaker says at one point. And then this terrible, painful line. It took me so long to ask for help that perhaps it is my fault after all. I cannot decide. And then there's also an assertion at another point where the speaker says really clearly the life of the victim is still a creative one. And in many ways it sounds like this is a voice that's trying to tell multiple truths. The truths of what can occur and the truths of a creative life and the tension between those and creating a certain kind of a lullaby. At times between those, a painful one.
- [24:15]
B
Thank you so much. It's really so interesting, you know, kind of quoting those bits from the poems because I have a kind of really interesting reaction to that, which is kind of like. It's almost feels kind of therapeutic in a way. Like in. You know, sometimes in a therapy session, therapists will use a word that you've used and they'll kind of quote it back to you. And it can be quite impactful. And just hearing you quote those various bits from the poem, it was sort of makes me think and sets me off spinning and. Yeah, it's really lovely that you would do that. It's very generous. And yeah, I think you're. You're right. I definitely tried to be extreme and allow the poem to. Well, I didn't set out to be extreme, but I tried to record my reactions. So the work of the first draft was certainly to record all the different thoughts, all the different arguments, all the different reactions. And then in the editing process, I would have kept them in if they kind of made sense to the poem. And I definitely feel like the poem is very robust. It can sustain numerous different viewpoints, like you're saying. And a very important one. You quoted a really important one. To me, the life of the victim is still a creative one. And that's an amazing piece of wisdom or guidance that I got from very dear friend of mine, the poet Dalget Nagra said to me, the life of the victim is still a creative one. It appears in one of the poems because, you know, it kind of allows for that kind of movement that we were talking about, you know, kind of breaking the kind of varnished stuckness of the still life painting. Actually thinking about paying attention, thinking about creativity, thinking about curiosity, you know, And I really believe, you know, that making anything creatively is a really important and beneficial and nourishing act. And I really believe that no matter what has happened to us, whatever hurt has befallen us, we still have the opportunity to be creative in whatever capacity. And that I find really thrilling and generative. And I'm very grateful.
- [26:43]
A
I was casting my eye over my notes for this conversation this morning, and I realized that in all of the notes that I'd taken with the titles of some of these still life poems, I'd made an error. Instead of writing Still Life, I'd written Still Live, which I found myself looking at it because sometimes I think those errors can reveal something back, you know, And I thought there's an imperative in that, like I am joining with the impulse of the reader to go still live, still live. And also joining with the intuition of so much of the speaker, which is about a kind of a recognition of live. And then also I found myself thinking by denying something or changing it, I'm suppressing something too. You know, I was. I was caught up so much in what these poems were doing in me, where the speaker is essentially an accompanier to me, an accompany or to my own distress. Because these are difficult poems to read even in the midst of their jouissance.
- [27:37]
B
I love. I really. I really love that you were writing down still. Still live. I think that's a really beautiful response to that. Yeah, I mean, I guess in the. That is implicit in the title of the still life. You know, life that has been stilled, but life that is in some capacity, still alive. You know, I think of the still life painting almost as a kind of beautiful, ornate shining ghost, you know, and because, you know, when you look at a still life painting, you know, whatever. Whatever the symbols are in there, if it's an oyster or a rose or a tulip, they've been dead for centuries, but somehow this representation of them has survived. So it's almost like we've got this ornate shining ghost kind of beaming back at us. And I do feel that there is. There's knowledge there, there's wisdom there, and there's life there, in spite of the object being literally dead. No. So there's a kind of haunting, and I think a haunting is a lively thing that is still full of surprising life. So still life still live. Yeah, I think it's. I think. Agree.
- [28:50]
A
The book is titled that Broke into Shining Crystals and that. That hints really to the third section. The book has three sections, and the third section is a long exploration really of. Of precious stones and crystals. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about the structure of that and the aesthetic and artistic and curious imagination and attention towards stones.
- [29:13]
B
Yes, I'd love to. So, yeah, the third section of the book. Well, it's in dialogue with crystals and I think, you know, it begins with language. It's another way that the speaker can express themselves through finding the language of crystals, crystal, medicine, geology, and. Yeah, it's another way to speak about hurt or trauma. These crystal poems are also in dialogue with Arthur Rambeau's Brisbane's Illuminations. And I guess I'm trying to speak to him or kind of channel him or as a kind of queer ancestor and ask him questions about how the speaker might live and move forward in language and attention and you know, really the idea to write about crystals came from Rimbaud. You know, I love, I love his prose poems, the illuminations, these 19th century super queer, extraordinary prose poems. They are surreal symbolists. They're almost like fairy tales that refuse to resolve that full of extraordinary language. But, you know, sitting with them for a number of years and just falling in love with those texts, I began to realize that in each of the poems he mentions a crystal or he mentions a semi precious stone, or he mentions crystalline light. John Ashbury even calls them a crystalline jumble. And I felt like he was trying to speak to me and give me this kind of wisdom or knowledge that I should investigate crystals.
- [30:53]
A
The notes section of the back of the book is really rewarding to read because you go into some, you know, you give the references to the still lifes, but you also speak about the sources that you turned to for thinking about crystals. And I wonder, yeah, if you'd be able to talk a little bit more about the investigations you made and the sources you turned to, the books you read.
- [31:16]
B
I mean, yeah, I mean, this book took around seven years to write. So part of that was kind of falling into the research of the. These various beautiful kind of alleyways and halls and, you know, still life paintings being one of them and crystals being another, and just immersing myself in spending time with the stones. But also in literature, you know, that that speaks to and tries to unlock some of the knowledge of the stones. You know, a big one was the Crystal Bible, you know, written by Judy Hall. There's numerous different websites where I was kind of turning to, to kind of learn more about crystals, but. But really I think mostly just spending time with the stones themselves. You know, we spoke earlier about like the idea of spending time with something external and allowing it to sort of conjure internal things. And I guess I would hope we would want our poems to be about more than one thing, you know, and so spending time with crystals definitely gave me an extra thing to write about. I'm very comfortable with crystals. My mum was a homeopath. You know, I grew up with them around the house. So for me, they do seem like extraordinary, powerful objects that you can spend a lot of time with. You know, we had a big hunk of rose quartz on top of the tv and it was almost, it was almost as fascinating as the tv.
- [32:44]
A
I mean, one of the things that occurred to me is the sensual reality regarding these two particular forms of attention. Like when you're looking at a still life in a gallery, you know, you don't touch it. Or at least you're not supposed to. Whereas with a crystal I found myself assuming that with some of them anyway, you might have been able to touch them, to feel the contours of them. Was that true for you, as you thought about crystals?
- [33:03]
B
Totally, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I definitely was able to touch crystals, you know, I carry a piece of red Jasper around with me all the time, you know, So I think interacting with them is a really big part of that, you know, and it's a really extraordinary part of it because crystals, you know, Some crystals are 4 million years old, you know, so being able to touch this extraordinary object that somehow is a kind of emblem of deep time, I think has been really transformative to my thinking. And I mean, crystal was birthed under unimaginable amounts, amounts of pressure in the earth's crust or the earth's mantle, and then it was kind of broken and reformed continually and then somehow emerges from this incredibly dark, pressurized place to be shining. You know, I think there is some kind of wisdom for me to intuit there. So definitely spending time touching the crystals, looking at the crystals, that was definitely a part of it.
- [34:07]
A
I wonder if you could read. Emerald.
- [34:11]
B
Emerald. On the hillside, little boys are twirling and looping and catching the light and falling down into the grass, which is the color of raw emeralds, shifting and bright. The field is a body wild grass rippling over breasts and muscles, the juts of a hip bone. Some of the grass is trampled down into mud like a battlefield. Screams catch the air. Some of the grass is spread over little hillocks like shallow graves. Some of the grass is cut into a bit desire lines and goat paths leading to all the places you ever dreamed of going but didn't. Emerald grass at your feet and an emerald seam in the sky constellated by flickers green pictures. The light is innocent, primitive. Its green ray aids unearthing X ray. The little boys are tearing up fistfuls of emerald grass and throwing it into the air and dancing in the green and prismatic rain. The little boys themselves seem green and made of emerald. More fairy than boy, crystalline, detoxifying. These ones are shining. All the greens are very close to your face right now. The landscape holds you like a basket. Overcome. There is no abyss. Justice. Immense patience. Recovery is possible.
- [36:05]
A
I had already written down in my notes that this reminded me of archaic torso of Apollo. That you know, you must change your life. And this, the impulse of this toward the end is not you must change your life. But those three words, recovery is possible. There is such a lush, verdant splendor in the attention to green and playing and healing in this poem and in fact, throughout the whole book in a complicated way, because it's complicated to think about assault and violation and crime together with an assertion of healing. But you hold it together. And this poem is a shining example. My God, my language is. I'm picking up on what it is that you're pouring poems are doing in me. I wonder if you could talk about some of the lines in this poem, Emerald. And you know, the ones that strike you. And then I'd love to talk about that final line, recovery as possible.
- [37:01]
B
Throughout writing the crystal poems, I definitely really loved playing with color because the crystals are such extraordinary shades. You know, take an emerald. You know, everyone has different experiences of emeralds, slightly different shades, the way the light hits it. So, yeah, just being able to play around with. With green, you know, and so that's how I find some of the language here, you know, wild grass, you know, and. Yeah, so I love playing with color. Yeah. I mean, occurs to me. I repeat the word emerald quite a lot. You know, naming. Naming the thing I think is really important. Naming it, making it real, trying to sort of re. See it. And I think the poem is. I mean, it's about that kind of attention, like looking into. Gazing into the crystal and trying to see the huge world that is potentially in the crystal and trying to understand some of the shamanism of the crystal. I feel like it's kind of almost like an interdimensional being and it gives us the opportunity to kind of unlock or understand different wisdom. And I think emerald pointed me towards childhood, you know, towards trying to write a different childhood for myself, you know, and the little boys in the poem, you know, the little boys themselves in green and made of emerald, more fairy than boy. Crystalline, detoxifying. These ones are shining. Yeah. I guess I'm trying to celebrate boys in this poem and create a different childhood for them in doing so. Kind of trying to create a different childhood for my. For myself. That last line, recovery is possible. It's lovely that you hear Rilke in that. Thank you. You use the word complicated when, you know, you're talking about healing. I think that's right. You know, I think it is very complicated and nuanced and different for everyone. And I'm a big Paul Celan fan and, you know, he writes. The poetry is anti biographical. The poet conjures or finds or creates new homan for themselves in. In the Poems that they write. And I wonder if there's been a kind of. If I've been trying to do something about, like, kind of to create different places for myself, to the speaker, for myself to abide and to exist and to slip into. And maybe the landscape in emerald is. Is one of those homeland for myself. You know, people often use the phrase like poems can bear witness. I think a poem can bear witness, but I'm also really interested in how the poem might bear the witness towards a greater understanding of themselves. And if, you know, if there is recovery, it begins with self knowledge or understanding. But it's complex, like you say. And that's why I think the symbol of the crystals is so useful, because crystals are broken and reformed continually in the earth's crust. And I think that trauma reshapes the brain. And so any kind of moving forward has to kind of think about how the brain has kind of been reshaped or remolded by the trauma. So there has to be a kind of honesty and a dialogue with the complexity before there's a move towards recovery.
- [40:56]
A
I've heard from time to time people might speak about the role of art. You know, the role of art towards social healing, the role of art towards personal healing, the role of art towards this or towards that. And despite the fact that your poems are addressing a speaker's trauma and a speaker's relationship with recovery, I never get the impression that this is art that's commodified into being just one thing. Is that something that you resist if anybody tries to impose meaning onto your art or onto art in general, to say that here is what it's for?
- [41:32]
B
I guess it's so idiomatic, right? I guess a poem is so many different things to so many people, and it has different purposes and it has different functions. I mean, I guess all I can say is that I'm very grateful to have found poetry because it's kind of given me access to paying attention to the world in a different way.
- [41:51]
A
You reference, though, in what you're saying, one of the epigraphs that you have at the beginning from Emily Dickinson, and grateful that a thing so terrible had been endured. I told my soul to sing. And the word that struck me so much in reading that epigraph at the beginning was told, you know, the. The. The way within which Emily Dickinson's poem is an instruction to the self. You know, we kind of don't know how the person feels. We do know how the speaker of her poem is instructing the self. And it sounds like you have gratitude towards poetry and the discipline of it, too, because clearly, you know, seven years, you said these things don't come quickly.
- [42:31]
B
Yes. Great to talk about the epigraph. I'm so grateful to Emily Dickinson. I'm such a huge fan of her poetry and poetics. And it's so interesting that you alighted on that word. I told my soul to sing. Yeah. There's something so interesting and powerful about that that it might be possible to tell the self, do something to allow the self to kind of become empowered, to believe in the self, to push yourself, you know, I love that. I mean, that quote just means so much to me. And I think of poetry and song, you know, I think of them both as language under pressure. You know, when you're singing. I used to be a singer, you know, many years ago. When you're singing, you. You're drawing the air through your body and putting it under physiological pressure, you know, from the diaphragm or through the mouth. You're kind of shaping it. And so there's the pressure that comes with the song. But when you're writing poetry, you're putting the line under different types of pressure as well. You're trying to arrange the music in it. You're thinking about assonance, alliteration, sonics, concision, rapidity. And I think pressure is key. Yeah, I think that quote definitely speaks to it. The song is only possible because something has been endured. That's what Emily Dickinson said. So. Psalms Born of endurance.
- [43:54]
A
This is a book that's populated with references to other people. Daljeet Negra, Emily Berry. The poems, the references at the back are filled with gratitude towards other people. And I felt like it was a populated book, that somehow in encountering it, I was getting a sense of the importance of friendship throughout it. And while that isn't technically part of the work of art, it's also absolutely at the heart of the work of art. And I felt like you are a person who loves and is loved through reading this. I wonder if you could talk about the necessity of those tiny little marginalia of references to the people who are important in your life throughout it.
- [44:33]
B
Gosh, that's so. That's such a lovely reading of the book. And it's. And I'm so grateful to my friends, you know, my friends who have supported me, you know, as a person and as a poet and. Yeah, you know, I'm so grateful to. You know, I dedicate poems to Dalget Nagra and to Emily Berry and to Anna Lowe. And, you know, it speaks about their support, both as poets and as friends. You know, I think that my friends and relying on people and their wisdoms is one of the things that made the book possible. That's lovely that some of that is discernible in the book, because I mean, it. Those dedications, I really, really. I really feel them. And yeah, I'm so. I'm so grateful. And that advice from Dalget in the life of the Victims to have created one constantly rings in my head. Grateful.
- [45:34]
A
In a while, I'm going to bring us to a finish and ask you maybe to read Some Still Life with Plums. But I wonder, is there anything that surprised you about this book since it's come out? Maybe something that's in it or some of the places that it's gone?
- [45:47]
B
I mean, I. I'm just so. I'm so grateful to be able to read from it and to be able to have conversations about the book. And. Yeah, you know, I mean, talking to you today, you know, is. Is a beautiful thing that's come. Come from, you know, the book. And I'm really grateful to be talking to you. And, you know, I'm constantly learning about the poems because when I talk to someone or have been doing, you know, over the last six months, you know, they might say a phrase or a word, and it just kind of opens it up for me again. It allows me to kind of re. See and rethink it. So I'm grateful for those kind of learning encounters. And, you know, the. The other thing, I suppose that I've been really joyously surprised about is so many people have come up to me and said, like, oh, I have a favorite crystal. My grandma gave me this crystal. And, like, I really feel like there's this world of crystals operating underneath all of us where everyone sort of has a relationship to them and people have been opening themselves and telling those stories. So it's really beautiful.
- [46:55]
A
Well, Richard Scott, I'm so grateful for your time, for the intense labor of this work and the music that comes through. These are poems that invite, you know, whenever I read them, I find myself mouthing them because they are. They're delicious. Demand on the tongue. It's a music of recitation that's present in them. And thank you so much for your generosity in writing and giving time today. I wonder if you'd finish with reading Still Life with Plums.
- [47:23]
B
I'd love to. I mean, thank you so much for reading the book so deeply and thinking about it and for your really generous thoughts. About it. So I'm so grateful. So thank you. So yeah, I'll read this poem and I guess I'm talking about the poem starts with thinking about the bloom on a plum and that is a kind of waxy protein still life with plums, melon, peaches and moss covered branches and all those plums a startling shade of thunder like look at the bloom on those plums. I never understood before how you could call discoloration this full body scar, a bloom, blossom and a melon in shadow. Like something that hasn't been grasped yet. Like how maybe transference sends me into the arms of these difficult men who will hurt me and not let me heal. Maybe how to be happy when happy is not even a thing I want to be like these peaches you haven't even noticed yet. Each one a yoky ginger dawn coming up and tinting up everything this crackled gold. Oh to be peachy keen I will be again and it's not my fault that he found me because I was moss green downy singing of life like these branches, the last symbol that snapped me open with a kind of just being carried in from the garden realism, still life yet still growing. So keep on growing. Richard
- [49:22]
A
Richard Scott thank you very much.
- [49:24]
B
Thank you.
- [49:42]
A
Richard Scott grew up in London. Before turning to poetry, he studied to be an opera singer. He has won many prizes and his most recent collection is that Broke into Shining Crystals, published by Faber. Deepest thanks to Thomas Hugo, Cassie Johnson and the rest of the team behind the Collective Trauma Summit for hosting and organizing this conversation. Poetry Unbound is Andrea Prevot, Carla Zanoni, Daryl Chen, Sparrow Murray, Chris Heagle, Bill Siegmund and me, Padre Gautuma. Our music is composed and provided by Gautham Srikerson and Blue Dog Sessions. These episodes episodes were made in New York City on unceded Lenape land. Special thanks to Will Salwen, Adam Morell and Sam Girardi at Digital Island Studios in Manhattan. Thanks as well to Frederick Courtright of the permissions company. Poetry Unbound is an independent non profit production of the On Being project, founded and led by the wonderful Krista Tippett. Poetry Unbound is made possible by a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation. Our other funding partners include the Liana foundation, the Bidale Foundation, Engaging the Senses foundation, and the listeners who give so generously via On Being and Substack. Poetry Unbound would be nothing without the listening community. Thanks to all who listen and those who engage with the weekly Substack Newsletter. For links to that Substack and To find out more about Pudge Unbound books and events, visit poetryunbound.org SAM.