In this episode, I discuss Arthur Rimbaud with Cliff Forshaw. We focus on Rimbaud's poem 'Vowels', translated by Cliff in his collection French Leave: Versions and Perversions, and Cliff's sequence RE:VERB which retells the life of Rimbaud in verse. Cliff also reflects on his latest book, Elemental, and reads the opening piece 'Remains' in full.

Cliff relates how he first came to Rimbaud as a school boy. He talks about the long journey he took to come to write a book of translations of (mainly) 19th century French poets. He goes on to discuss, at length, his long narrative poem RE:VERB which illuminates the life of Arthur Rimbaud, from decadent poet to merchant and gun runner in Africa. He reads from, and talks about, the opening poems in the collection ('Hooligan in Hell' and 'Alchemy of the Word'). Why is Rimbaud so interesting as a writer and as an individual? We go on to explore Cliff's interest in art and how that feeds back into his identity as a writer.

Finally, we discuss the work in his latest book, Elemental, landing on the opening poem - 'Remains' to read and reflect on. I ask him what he is planning to write/publish next.

From 'Alchemy of the Word' But also...

A Hermes Trismegistus, unseen unheard, I conjured the Alchemy of the Word; deciphered fragments of the vowels' spectrum, my mind a wand, a bow, a plectrum. I struck the rainbow's neurasthenic strings, plumbed all tenebrous, timbrous things. Then, when sounding out riddles as Gnostic songs, it came to me: I was going wrong.

Sortilege and Thaumaturgy, Tantra, Sutra, Old Grimoires Hermeneutics, Oneiromancy, Transits of Venus, Mercury, Mars, Almanacs, O Dark Abraxas, Cabbalistic Hierophants, Orphic Devotees, Eleusis, Mumbo-jumbo, Obeah, Cant, Epiphanic Hocus-Pocus, Hoodoo-Voodoo, Occult Muse, Diabolic Psychomancy, Esoteric Marabouts. From such fiendish tomes I busked the Blues, left a hobo chorus of cryptic clues. But my rational derangement of all the senses (shamanically ancient, prophetically new) left me wondering: Who was the densest, Poet or Reader? I got no reviews.

From 'Remains'

I

In Transylvania when I got that call - had been that day to Sighisoara, drawn to that famous undead batman's place of birth. Think: the Saxon cemetery high up the hill. Carved gothically upon one stone, I'd seen Ruhen in fremder Erde! Written it down. Lie still in foreign soil - but you never can: (stone blunts, moss overwrites your name) the earth remains so cold and strange. As do you. Whoever you were, laid low in the lie of the land, you are now (whatever now might mean) your own remains - just let the world, its weather, drain right through your tongue, your ribs, whatever stubbornly persists of you.

Cliff Forshaw has been a Royal Literary Fund Fellow, twice a Hawthornden Writing Fellow, and held residences in California, France, Kyrgizstan, Romania, and Tasmania. Collections include: Elemental (Templar, 2025); French Leave (Broken Sleep, 2023); RE:VERB ((Broken Sleep, 2022) and Pilgrim Tongues (Wrecking Ball, 2015) https://www.cliff-forshaw.co.uk

You can follow me on Bluesky - @cwjoneschris.bsky.social for more updates on future episodes. You can find out more about my own writing through my website - chris-jones.org.uk - or on my Substack Swift Diaries.

The end music was composed and played by William Jones.