Poetry and the Turning World: Work
From The LRB Podcast by The London Review of Books
June 10, 2026 · 1h 5m
About this episode
The episode explores the relationship between poetry and work, examining how poems reflect workplace experiences and emotional labour.
Is writing a poem work? In the first episode of their series exploring the ways in which poetry responds to our personal and collective challenges, Sarah Howe and Sandeep Parmar start by considering the concepts of both work and play in the writing process. They then look at three poems that address workplace experiences. Valzhyna Mort’s ‘Factory of Tears’ and Robert Crawford’s ‘Jesus Christ endorses the new Hillman Imp’ both deploy technocratic, management speak to expose the emotional labour of manual work, in one case for someone trapped in a relentless system, in the other for someone cast out by redundancy. In 'During the Pandemic', Romalyn Ante describes the experience of being an NHS nurse at the start of the Covid pandemic and the role of language in carework. For more discussions like this try the LRB's Close Readings podcast, which covers literature from Ancient Greece to the present day. Get 25% off a 12-month subscription with the code 'POETRY25' at checkout here: https://lrb.me/crpoetry Read Robert Crawford's poem in the LRB: https://lrb.me/crawfordtwep1 Book tickets for the live recording on 8 July: https://lrb.me/poetrytickets Watch this episode our YouTube…
People in this episode
Hosts: Sarah Howe, Sandeep Parmar
Topics covered
- poetry
- work
- emotional labour
- Covid pandemic
- language in carework
- workplace experiences
Keywords
- poetry
- work
- emotional labour
- Covid
- NHS
- language
- workplace
Sponsors
The London Review of Books
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: NHS, The London Review of Books
Books & works: Factory of Tears, Jesus Christ endorses the new Hillman Imp, During the Pandemic
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