Recording the poet Tommy Sissons for Plastic Language on NTS Radio
by WILL RENÉ
Plastic Language is a show on NTS Radio exploring ‘the spoken word’ – taken in a very broad sense – across a variety of recorded media. It takes as its starting point the collection of vinyl records at the National Poetry Library, where I work as a librarian. However, the remit of the show expands beyond the library’s sound collections to include examples of spoken word in pop music, performance art and more.
When the show began in 2022, its original focus was on pre-existing recordings. It was – and still is – intended as a platform to shine a light on the huge variety of intersections between text, sound and music, and is hopefully a source of inspiration and new ideas for poets working with sound.
However, it became clear in the early episodes that by focusing predominantly on commercially released recordings, created in studio environments, the show was missing an opportunity to channel the raw energy of live poetry in performance. A poem being performed is inherently bound up with the particularities of the time and place of the performance, and I wanted to make sure that Plastic Language did justice to this element of poetry in performance, as well as to the breadth of innovation, experimentation and collaboration on studio recordings.
It felt fitting to create something new and unique for this, rather than relying on archival recordings of poetry performances in traditional venues. Loosely inspired by the rich tradition of ‘soundwalking’ – defined by Hildegard Westerkap as “any excursion whose main purpose is listening to the environment… exposing our ears to every sound around us no matter where we are” (18) – I began inviting guest poets to meet and record in places that were significant to them, to present poetry as part of a wider sonic landscape.
Since 2023, guest poets have included Roger Robinson reading in Brixton, Nina Mingya Powles reading on Hampstead Heath, and Jen Calleja reading on Hastings Pier. Not only do these recordings offer listeners a wealth of evocative sounds from often unexpected places, they also present poetry in a truthful way, as a phenomenon woven into the rich, noisy, more-than-human world we live in rather than isolated in the silent, purely human realm of the studio.
For the most recent episode of Plastic Language, I was joined by the wonderful poet Tommy Sissons, who chose to record his poems on and around the Woolwich Ferry. “I wanted to record around the Woolwich South and North Woolwich area, and the ferry that links up the two places, because I think this area really captures an integral part of London’s industrial working-class history, and that speaks so much to my work,” says Tommy of his choice. “The ferry acts as this transport link for workers and has done for over a century, connecting these two historically industrial areas with a proper tradition of trade unionism.”
As with past sessions, the time we spent recording was shaped by spontaneity and surprise that came with the location. Our initial intention was to capture Tommy’s poems within earshot of the ferry, but not actually on it, to avoid the noise of the ferry drowning out the sound of his voice. While looking for a sheltered place to record, we stumbled across a doorway leading to a stairwell that led downward with no end in sight – and realised that we’d found the entrance to the Woolwich foot tunnel.
Although it wasn’t part of our original plan to record in the tunnel, we found that this was the perfect sonic backdrop for Tommy’s poems, the huge reverb of the long, empty tunnel carrying his baritone delivery beautifully. The recordings bring to mind the cavernous echo of an old church, resonating nicely with some of the imagery in Tommy’s work: “Paul the apostle was the poet favoured by the food bank volunteer / who spoke of the star her father planted as a look-out post” (‘Closing Your Epistle’); “It is the twenty-fourth summer of my redemption and I am buttered with scar to prove it” (‘Cicatrix’). There is an eeriness accentuated by the occasional sounds of activity in the background, such as people shuffling past or the doors of a lift opening and closing. We were both very pleasantly surprised with the sound of the tunnel and chose to record all of Tommy’s poems there, rather than pursue our original plan.
After this, we boarded the ferry itself to capture field recordings of its operation. Tommy didn’t read poems here; our focus was much more on listening – capturing the sounds of the place and the moment, and silently reflecting on the industrial, working-class history of Woolwich. By placing these raw sounds in dialogue with the recordings of texts being read on location, the show invites the audience to join in with this quiet, attentive listening, and hopefully, the result enriches their relationship with both poem and place.
Including these bespoke recordings in episodes of Plastic Language introduces an element of the unknown and the spontaneous into the mix, which is precisely the point. While studio recordings of tracks by poets and musicians are still ultimately the core of the show, I hope that these special recordings impart a sense of adventure and improvisation to each episode, and that they encourage audiences to listen to poems with an open and contemplative spirit.
You can listen to the episode featuring Tommy Sissons’ readings here.
Author Bio:
Will René is a librarian at the Southbank Centre’s National Poetry Library, where among other responsibilities, he manages the library’s sound collections. He produces and presents ‘Plastic Language’ on NTS Radio, a show exploring the spoken word across a variety of genres and recorded media, and ‘Endpapers’ on Noods Radio, a show of wordless music to listen to while reading and writing. He has performed at the European Poetry Festival, and makes ambient
music under the name Hack Mystic.
Thumbnail is taken from https://www.nts.live/shows/plastic-language/episodes/plastic-language-14th-may-2025.