MAKE POETRY WEIRD AGAIN

Nols Nathankski
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a poetry experiment by nols nathanski. poetry to disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed. an experimental queer poetry podcast where poems are made and performed automatically, pushing the boundaries of the form. each episode: a conversation with a poet, three timed automatic writing prompts done live - guest and nols both and then the open mic. no editing. no polish. just the poems that arrive. we close every show the same way: a shout out, the name of a collection a poet haven't written yet, and words of wisdom about fifty minutes is always planned - but neurodivergence does what is does. send us your poems innit

  1. 6 days ago

    HOW TO MAKE QUEER POETRY FOR 88 YEARS

    Nols meets a Willie Leo Coakley, legend of New York Queer Poetry at the Open Mic! Eighty-eight years is a long time to keep faith with a line of verse. William Leo Coakley has managed it. Poet writer and peace activist. Lover of men. Nols sits down with him to ask the one question worth asking a man who has done a thing that long: how. How do you keep the appetite? Coakley had an enemy a good one. Allen Ginsberg: the great howler, the Beat saint with his harmonium and his drug fuelled congregation, Coakley's poetry set its face against it. Coakley kept the old European hush, the rhyme, the measure. They shared a city and a century and could not abide one another. Coakley, quietly, is the one still here to tell the story. He is also the man who once put Thom Gunn into print on Helikon Press, the queer press he ran with his lover of 48 years. Thom Gunn, that other queer formalist who crossed from England to America and turned leather and grief and plague into stanzas built to hold. To have published Gunn and outlasted Ginsberg is a whole education in what poetry is actually for, and Coakley hands it over here. This is an hour with a living archive who flatly refuses to behave like one. The guest. William Leo Coakley New York poet, formalist, translator. His poems have appeared since 1958 in the Paris Review, the Nation, the London Magazine, Christopher Street and elsewhere across America, England, Ireland and Mexico, and he was chosen for the Discovery series at the 92nd Street Y Poetry Center. His poem "Horses Burning" took a prize in the Sotheby's International Poetry Competition, and his translation of Cavafy won the Der-Hovanessian Prize from the New England Poetry Club. He has recited Yeats at the Irish Repertory Theatre, Dickinson at the Botanical Garden, and his own poems at the Leslie-Lohman Museum. Publisher of Thom Gunn. Adversary, at a distance, of Allen Ginsberg.

  2. 2 Jul

    HOW TO MAKE POEMS WITH KRAZY EYES & NO BELIEF

    Recorded in Holy Week, beneath the St Pancras New church, among the 557 dead that reside there. Nols makes poems with HOLD SPACE poetry festival residents Emma Keun and Maria Cohut. Some voices you have to go down to reach. This one we recorded in the dark of Holy Week, in the crypt where sixteen poets kept their residency like a wake that refused to be sad; candlewax and cold stone and the particular electricity of people making things they were not sure they were allowed to make. What you'll hear is two poets in the season of descent: burial, waiting, the rumour of a door. Here is the resurrection joke the calendar hides since we pressed record, both have come up out of the ground and headlined the HOLDSPACE open mic. Whatever was buried in April is walking around now, taking the mic, refusing to stay quiet. Poetry to disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed, as ever. In this episode What it does to a poem to be written and read below ground — the crypt as instrument, not backdropMigration, identity, and writing in an adopted tongue (Maria's long theme, sharpened)The detective and the confessor: crime-fiction form as a way into unspeakable thingsHoly Week as a working structure for grief, not just beliefNols makes a freestyle based on emma's vape.Maria Cohut Brighton-based poet of Romanian origin, haunted (her word, and we let her keep it) by identity, migration, defamiliarisation, and the complexity of being a person among other people. Her debut collection Multiple Exposures (Flight of the Dragonfly Press, March 2026) reads migration as a mode of being and identity as a thing you develop, photographically, in layers. Her earlier chapbook Spatter Pattern (back room poetry, 2023) walks into the subject of gendered violence wearing the coat of detective fiction. Find Maria's work: Multiple Exposures (Flight of the Dragonfly Press, 2026) — via the other side of hope: https://othersideofhope.com/diary.htmlSpatter Pattern (back room poetry, 2023): https://backroompoetry.co.uk/Poems at The Hellebore: https://thehellebore.com/maria-cohut/Poems at The Hyacinth Review: https://hyacinthreview.org/author/maria-cohut/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mariac_phd/ Emma Keun Blakean Bard of the open mic is a london poet published in several major anthologies - influenced by fan fiction and queer tragedy. Emma makes every space she speaks at both sensual and spiritual while dealing with themes of embarrassment, the grotesque and the cruel haunting friction of love... A crypt resident, HOLDSPACE headliner and friend of the show! Her debut pamphlet will be released by MAKE POETRY WEIRD AGAIN - watch this space! Find Emma's work: @elkwrites000555

  3. 24 Jun

    HOW TO FIND DIVINITY IN LUST AT THE OPEN MIC

    In February 2026 Nols Nathankski had the honour of sitting down with Robert Stanley Adams: a 73-year-old Canadian poet who writes from the seam where the divine and the erotic are not two things but one breath. This podcast only happened because Robert walked out of the open mic with Nol's coat! Some books arrive late because they had to be lived first. After a chance meeting at the Word Zoo open mic one of those London nights where the holy walks in off the street a myth was made. Robert has just published The Book of Love, a summation of twenty years of writing and of spiritual-sexual practice a lifetime's apprenticeship in holy love, finally bound. He's joined by his daughter Tamar, his baby granddaughter (the youngest guest this podcast has ever hosted), and his editor Lia, the midwife of the manuscript. Together they ask the question the work itself keeps asking: why has it taken so long for a voice like Robert's to reach the world and what does it mean to give your whole life to love, and only now hand it over? Robert on the marriage of the divine and the erotic body as scripture, desire as a way of prayer. Twenty years of practice distilled into one volume. Lia on editing a life rather than a manuscript. Tamar on growing up inside this work, and carrying it forward with a daughter of her own now in the room. And the long question of belated recognition: what the world misses when it isn't listening, and what it gains when it finally is. LINKS @robert.stanley.adams@flamencolia.official@the_word_zoo MAKE POETRY WEIRD AGAIN poetry to disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed makepoetryweirdagain.com ·Ko-fi: ko-fi.com/mpwa If this episode gave you something, consider supporting MPWA so we can keep making it. Subscribe, share, and come find us at an event.

  4. 15 Jun

    HOW TO SAVE AN OLD CHURCH WITH AN OCTAVE

    This week Nols is joined by Mikey Kirkpatrick flautist, singer, composer, improviser and performer and writer, who makes work for street, stage, film and radio. Mikey records and tours internationally as Bird Radio, his singular take on new British folk (voice, flutes, loops, bones, homemade instruments and the famous red suitcase kick drum). He’s an associate lecturer at Goldsmiths and founding director of Alchemy, a collective of artists, teachers and mentors working with young people at risk of exclusion, and he teaches Music, Healing and Deep Listening for Morbid Anatomy in New York. Nols and Mikey met at the Octave Marathon at the Old Church in Stoke Newington. The event was a way to raise money to save one of the most unique arts space and consecrated church in london. Donate below or buy the album! (Nols is on it ;) ) Save The Old Church N16 Music and Community Venue - a Creative & Arts crowdfunding project in London by The Old Church Stoke Newington The Octave Marathon (Fundraiser for The Old Church Community Arts Venue in Hackney, London) | Various Artists | Bird Radio Nols and Mikey go looking for the music in everything including poetry. Mikey opens up his many daily creative practices and the threads that hold them together, and traces the extraordinary journeys behind the music and the writing. They talk about what it means to be a pillar of a creative community, and the genuinely impressive work Mikey does with young people in London building shelter for them to make, listen, and find their own voices. Find Mikey & Bird Radio • Website: https://mikeykirkpatrick.wordpress.com • The Residency (Substack): https://mikeykirkpatrick.substack.com • Music (Bird Radio on Bandcamp): https://birdradio.bandcamp.com • Alchemy at Goldsmiths: https://sites.gold.ac.uk/alchemy • Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mikeykirkpatrick MAKE POETRY WEIRD AGAIN poetry to disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed makepoetryweirdagain.com ·Ko-fi: ko-fi.com/mpwa If this episode gave you something, consider supporting MPWA so we can keep making it. Subscribe, share, and come find us at an event.

  5. 3 Jun

    HOW TO MAKE POEMS WHEN NO ONE KNOWS WHERE YOU COME FROM

    Nols and Ameer make poems on the first day of Hold Space Poetry festival on April fools day 2026 Ameer Azad is a Pakistani-Bengali poet and author living in London. His work often covers surrealism, social satire and spirituality. Usually seen yelling at open mics in a scary voice. In this episode, Nols and Ameer write to a set of prompts and talk through making poems when no one knows where you come from. Prompts (provided by Chloe Smith of Skibbable open mic) Shout-outs The Never PressWordspaceResonance PoetryChloe Smith / Skibbable open mic Make Poetry Weird Again is a Queer experimental poetry organisation based in north London. Poetry to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable. The Crypt Gallery and Make Poetry Weird Again Present HOLD SPACE POETRY FESTIVAL: From The Depths 1-5th October 2026. HOLD SPACE POETRY FESTIVAL DAY TICKET Tickets | Multiple Dates @ Crypt Gallery, London | Pay What You Can to £11 | OutSavvy @makepoetryweirdagain https://ko-fi.com/makepoetryweirdagain

  6. 27 May

    HOW TO MAKE CHAOTIC GNARLEY PROJECTIONS FUNNY

    Nols Nathankski and H Phillips sit down to make poems in the crypt during HOLD SPACE poetry festival. H is a London based queer and silly poet. H began her open mic journey by doing a poetry for performance course @citylit. H talks from grief through objects and absurdity. A resident at Hold Space festival. H displayed poetry on the walls of the crypt and can be found headlining at the Hold Space Open Mic on the 31st May 2026 at HWK in Hackney Wick. Follow her @haitch_speaks Nols and H make poems with prompts from the Hold Space prompt sheet. H shouts out @everythingpoetry @wordspacepoems Make Poetry Weird Again is a Queer experimental poetry organisation based in north London. Poetry to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable. The Crypt Gallery and Make Poetry Weird Again Present HOLD SPACE POETRY FESTIVAL: From The Depths 1-5th October 2026. HOLD SPACE POETRY FESTIVAL DAY TICKET Tickets | Multiple Dates @ Crypt Gallery, London | Pay What You Can to £11 | OutSavvy @makepoetryweirdagain https://ko-fi.com/makepoetryweirdagain

  7. 22 May

    HOW TO MAKE POEMS OUT OF QUEER FAILURE

    Nols takes a register of ten artists, poets, and authors who were told by courts, critics, markets, and silence that they had failed. They had not failed. This is their work. Read it. Look at it. Go toward it. Nols improvises ten poems in response to their stories and encourages you to do the same. Send your responses to nols@makepoetryweirdagain.com prompts below provide list of prompts in one sentence Markievicz Write about a love you were not allowed to name in public.Cahun Write about a self you constructed deliberately.Hall Write the first page of the book that would have saved twelve-year-old you.Turing Write about what it costs to be useful to people who do not love you.Arenas Write about something you made in secret.Blake Write about making something with your hands when the official channels were closed to you.Kafka Write about a system you are inside of.Van Gogh Write a letter to the one person who believed in you when no one else did.Akutagawa Write about a vague anxiety about your future.Angelou Write about a defeat you survived. 01 CONSTANCE MARKIEVICZ 1868–1927 · Revolutionary, painter, poet Her prison letters — written on single sheets in tiny handwriting, incorporating drawings and poems — are the primary document of her interior life. → Prison Letters of Countess Markievicz — Internet Archive (free) https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.176226 → Her political writings — Marxists Internet Archive https://www.marxists.org/archive/markievicz/index.htm → W.B. Yeats: "In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markievicz" https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43279/in-memory-of-eva-gore-booth-and-con-markiewicz Eva Gore-Booth, her sister and lifelong love, was also a poet and radical. Her collected poems are harder to find online — seek them out. 02 CLAUDE CAHUN 1894–1954 · Surrealist artist, photographer, resistance fighter The largest collection of her photographs and archive material is held by Jersey Heritage and is fully free to browse online — the best place to start. → Jersey Heritage — full Cahun & Moore collection (free) https://catalogue.jerseyheritage.org/claude-cahun/ → MoMA — six works online https://www.moma.org/collection/works/83692 → Getty Museum collection https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/person/104PH8 → Metropolitan Museum — 56 results including Aveux non Avenus https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search?q=Claude+Cahun Her written work — Aveux non Avenus (Disavowals) — is harder to find in English translation. The Met has the 1930 original in their collection. 03 RADCLYFFE HALL 1880–1943 · Author of The Well of Loneliness The Well of Loneliness (1928) is now in the public domain in the US and freely available in multiple formats. Read it. → The Well of Loneliness — Project Gutenberg (free) https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/73042 → Standard Ebooks edition — clean free epub/mobi https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/radclyffe-hall/the-well-of-loneliness → LibriVox audiobook (free) https://librivox.org/the-well-of-loneliness-by-radclyffe-hall/ The obscenity trial transcript is worth reading alongside the novel — the gap between what the judge said and what the book actually contains tells you everything. 04 ALAN TURING 1912–1954 · Mathematician, codebreaker, father of computing The Turing Digital Archive at King's College Cambridge holds nearly 3,000 images of his letters, papers, photographs, and unpublished manuscripts — free online. → The Turing Digital Archive — King's College Cambridge (free) https://turingarchive.kings.cam.ac.uk/ → AlanTuring.net — virtual archive of computing history documents https://www.alanturing.net/ → His 1936 paper "On Computable Numbers" — the foundation of computing https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/Turing_Paper_1936.pdf Andrew Hodges's biography Alan Turing: The Enigma is the definitive account and is available in most libraries. The film The Imitation Game is a simplified version — read the book. 05 REINALDO ARENAS 1943–1990 · Cuban novelist, poet, exile Before Night Falls, his memoir, is the essential starting point. It is not in the public domain but is widely available. The film adaptation by Julian Schnabel (2000) is also excellent. → Before Night Falls — Open Library (borrow free with account) https://openlibrary.org/books/OL1740458M/Before_night_falls → Wikipedia overview with bibliography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinaldo_Arenas His Pentagonia — five novels including Singing from the Well, The Palace of the White Skunks, Farewell to the Sea, The Color of Summer, and The Assault — is his major work. Most are available from Penguin. His suicide note is one of the most important documents in queer literary history. It ends: Cuba will be free. I already am. 06 WILLIAM BLAKE 1757–1827 · Poet, engraver, visionary The William Blake Archive is the gold standard — facsimiles of his illuminated books as he made them, hand-coloured, in high resolution. This is how the work was meant to be seen. → The William Blake Archive — illuminated books in facsimile (free) https://www.blakearchive.org/ → Poetry Foundation — poems and extensive commentary (free) https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/william-blake → Songs of Innocence and Experience — Project Gutenberg https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1934 → The Marriage of Heaven and Hell — Project Gutenberg https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/45315 Start with Songs of Innocence and Experience, then The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. The prophetic books (Jerusalem, Milton) are for later — they require some time to enter. Blake is buried at Bunhill Fields, Islington — a short walk from Canonbury. His grave is marked and visitable. 07 FRANZ KAFKA 1883–1924 · Prague, insurance, "burn everything" His three novels and most of his short stories are freely available online. Start with The Trial. Then Letter to His Father, which he also never sent. → The Trial — Project Gutenberg (free) https://www.gutenberg.org/files/7849/7849-h/7849-h.htm → The Metamorphosis — Project Gutenberg (free) https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5200 → In the Penal Colony — Project Gutenberg (free) https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1195 → The Castle — Project Gutenberg (free) https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/18027 Letter to His Father (Brief an den Vater, 1919) — written but never sent to his father — is one of the most devastating documents of family, failure, and self-analysis ever written. Find it in any Kafka collected works. His diaries, edited by Max Brod, are equally essential. The entry where he writes about wanting to destroy everything is worth reading alongside the novels. 08 VINCENT VAN GOGH 1853–1890 · One painting sold The complete letters to Theo — over 800 of them — are freely available online in the scholarly Van Gogh Letters edition. They are among the greatest pieces of writing in the history of art. → vangoghletters.org — complete letters, searchable, free https://vangoghletters.org/ → Letters of a Post-Impressionist — Project Gutenberg (free)https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/40393 → Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam — collection online https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/collection The letter where he writes "I cannot help it that my pictures do not sell. Nevertheless the time will come when people will see that they are worth more than the price of the paint" is Letter 686, July 1888. He painted the Starry Night, the Irises, and the Wheat Field with Crows while living in an asylum. The Van Gogh Museum has high-resolution images of all of them free online. 09 RYŪNOSUKE AKUTAGAWA 1892–1927 · Father of the Japanese short story Rashomon and In a Grove are the gateway — short, brilliant, structurally perfect. Cogwheels, his final hallucinatory work, is the one to read last. → Rashomon — Project Gutenberg (free) https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1982 → Rashomon and Other Stories — Internet Archive (borrow free) https://archive.org/details/rashomonothersto00akut → The Essential Akutagawa inc. Cogwheels and A Fool's Life — Internet Archivehttps://archive.org/details/essentialakutaga0000akut Cogwheels (Haguruma, 1927) — written in the final year of his life, published posthumously — is his masterpiece. A first-person account of breakdown, cogwheels at the edge of vision, the sense of being ground through a system. Read it last. Kurosawa's Rashomon (1950), adapted from In a Grove and the Rashomon story, is freely available on various streaming services and is itself a masterwork. 010 MAYA ANGELOU 1928–2014 · Defeat after defeat after defeat. Still. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969) is her memoir and her masterpiece. Still I Rise is the poem. Both are worth your time today. → Still I Rise — Poetry Foundation (free) https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46446/still-i-rise → Maya Angelou — Poetry Foundation full archive (free) https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/maya-angelou → On the Pulse of Morning — 1993 inauguration poem (free, YouTube) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59zGMWH3K5I → I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings — Open Library (borrow free) https://openlibrary.org/works/OL472609W/I_Know_Why_the_Caged_Bird_Sings Her autobiography runs to six volumes. The first three — Caged Bird, Gather Together in My Name, and Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas — are the ones to read in order. She did not publish her first book until she was 41. James Baldwin told her at a dinner party in 1968 that she was a poet. She had been a poet her whole life. MAKE POETRY WEIRD AGAIN poetry to disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed makepoetryweirdagain.com ·Ko-fi: ko-fi.com/mpwa If this episode gave you something, consider supporting MPWA so we can keep making it.

  8. 20 May

    HOW TO MAKE POEMS THAT DELVE INTO THE SUBLIME

    Nols Nathankski delves into the sublime with Molly O'Leary Molly May O’Leary is an interdisciplinary performer. Her art has always and already been from/for the body but she has recently been approaching its rebellious and growing multi-dextrous power more directly… with ever-increasing glee and ever-evolving results. follow her on @mollymayinsta for developments The pair discuss philosophy, depression and the arts in ireland. They make (and dont make!) poems from prompts by Adam RW of storytime and from the crypt. This episode was recorded online in March 2026 after Nol's planned trip to Dublin was cancelled. Check out Molly's work here; https://mollymayoleary.bandcamp.com/ Make Poetry Weird Again is a Queer experimental poetry organisation based in north London. Poetry to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable. The Crypt Gallery and Make Poetry Weird Again Present HOLD SPACE POETRY FESTIVAL: From The Depths 1-5th October 2026. HOLD SPACE POETRY FESTIVAL DAY TICKET Tickets | Multiple Dates @ Crypt Gallery, London | Pay What You Can to £11 | OutSavvy @makepoetryweirdagain https://ko-fi.com/makepoetryweirdagain

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a poetry experiment by nols nathanski. poetry to disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed. an experimental queer poetry podcast where poems are made and performed automatically, pushing the boundaries of the form. each episode: a conversation with a poet, three timed automatic writing prompts done live - guest and nols both and then the open mic. no editing. no polish. just the poems that arrive. we close every show the same way: a shout out, the name of a collection a poet haven't written yet, and words of wisdom about fifty minutes is always planned - but neurodivergence does what is does. send us your poems innit

Information

  • Creator
    Nols Nathankski
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    81
  • Rating
    Explicit