People need help. If someone comes and knocks on your door you try to help them… and people are knocking at the door of Europe.
In the summer of 2016 Jamie Osborn, who had just graduated from Cambridge University, went to the Greek Island Chios to work as a volunteer on a refugee camp. He found people not only lacking possessions and a home but basic respect and dignity. On this episode he talks about how he and other volunteers tried to give them their dignity back and shares some of the poems that came out of that experience.
He also challenges listeners to write a poem about borders and intimacy. Patrick shares his response inspired by an item on This American Life.
Please share your own responses to the prompt by leaving a comment on this post, emailing via the contact form or sharing on social media with the hashtag #poetrynonstop. Poems maybe published online or featured on future podcasts.
For more advice and resources on writing poetry and to support this podcast please consider purchasing Patrick’s book Poetry Non-Stop
Jamie Osborn is a poet and translator whose work has appeared in Carcanet’s New Poetries VII (April 2018) and in literary magazines including PN Review, the TLS, Poetry London, Blackbox Manifold, Perverse and elsewhere. His translations, together with Nineb Lamassu, of poems by Assyrian Iraqi refugees featured in the “Great Flight” issue of Modern Poetry in Translation and he is now a board member of MPT. He now lives in Norwich, where he works as a charity press officer and is a climate activist.
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You can read more about Jamie’s time in Chios and more poems on the Carcanet blog.
Jamie recommends the following poems and publications:
Modern Poetry in Translation
PN Review
Yousif M. Qasmiyeh interview
Poems on poetrytranslation.org especially Fouad Mohammad Fouad
He strongly, strongly recommends reading and listening to In Lampedusa by Ribka Sibhatu and translated by André Naffis-Sahely.
Poetry Non-Stop 
[…] psychosis which she explores in her pamphlet Caldbeck.Here she responds to the poetry prompt set by Jamie Osborn in the first episode to write a poem on borders and intimacy. Please submit your own response to […]
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[…] user @moontriangle responds to Jamie Osborn’s borders and intimacy prompt. To get your work featured submit responses to any of the writing […]
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