Episode
Episode 30: Mary Jean Chan - Queering clarity through poetry
- Published
- Oct 6, 2025
- Duration seconds
- 4066
- Processing state
not_requested- Canonical source
- https://shows.acast.com/the-poems-we-made-along-the-way/episodes/68e2aea68ade82e20e15c136
Actions
POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-poems-we-made-along-the-way-7032462/episodes/episode-30-mary-jean-chan-queering-clarity-through-poetry/transcription-requests
Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode.GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-poems-we-made-along-the-way-7032462/episode-30-mary-jean-chan-queering-clarity-through-poetry.md
Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource.
Summary
On today’s episode of The Poems We Made Along the Way Gregory Kearns speaks to Mary Jean Chan about clarity, truth vs fact in a poem and the drafting process as a form of play. Mary Jean Chan is the author of Flèche (Faber & Faber, 2019), which won the Costa Book Award for Poetry. Bright Fear (Faber, 2023), Chan's second book, was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection, the Dylan Thomas Prize and the Writer’s Prize. They co-edited the anthology 100 Queer Poems (Vintage, 2022) with Andrew McMillan and served as a judge for the 2023 Booker Prize. Chan is currently Departmental Lecturer in Poetry on the MSt in Creative Writing at the University of Oxford and a Research Fellow at Harris Manchester College, Oxford. Flèche: https://www.faber.co.uk/product/9780571348046-fleche/ Bright Fear: https://www.faber.co.uk/product/9780571378906-bright-fear/ 100 Queer Poems Anthology: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/445204/100-queer-poems-by-chan-edited-by-andrew-mcmillan-and-mary-jean/9781529115338 Credit for Mary Jean’s photo: Ray Burmiston You can also use our affiliate link for Bookshop to find most of the books by most of the guests from the show. They are organised into lists for each series. If you use this link we get a fraction of the money you spend: https://uk.bookshop.org/lists/series-four-the-poems-we-made-along-the-way We’d also recommend enquiring with your local bookshops or libraries as well. Please give the show a five star rating on whatever podcasting app you are listening to this on. Tell us what you thought of this episode by posting on Instagram. You can find us @ThePoemsWeMade. Make sure you don’t miss future episodes by subscribing and if you enjoyed this episode consider sharing it with a friend or anyone…