Skip to content

Cluster index: Laura Potts

‘Last kind words.’

Peter Riley: ‘The song was recorded in 1930 in a makeshift studio in Grafton, Wisconsin, and issued by Paramount Records as‘ Last Kind Words Blues’ on one side of a 78 rpm shellac disc with the musician’s name given as “Geeshie Wiley”. It’s not a simple lyric. It’s not about slavery, but slavery is there in it. It’s about the victims of war, but forgets that and after verse four goes off into transferable formulae (floating verses).’

Two new poems.

Laura Potts: ‘Bottle and Bible. Now this is pleasurable. Somewhere/on the other side of the night I am hearing you say…’

The Picture in Ireland.

Laura Potts: ‘You warned the living of the dead.
And said that prayer you’d never said, but it was lost instead.
And in those gobbet-drops of flesh wept Our Lady overhead.’

The Wise Child.

Laura Potts was a BBC New Voice for 2017. Her first BBC radio drama was ‘Sweet The Mourning Dew’ and aired at Christmas 2017, and she received a commendation from The Poetry Society in 2018.