Uploaded June 2026 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
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.
Read Robert Crawford's poem in the LRB: lrb.me/crawfordtwep1
Find 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: lrb.me/crpoetry
ABOUT THE LRB
The LRB is Europe’s leading magazine of books and ideas. Published twice a month, it provides a space for some of the world’s best writers to explore a wide variety of subjects in exhilarating detail – from culture and politics to science and technology via history and philosophy. In the age of the long read, the LRB remains the pre-eminent exponent of the intellectual essay, admired around the world for its fearlessness, its range and its elegance.
As well as essays and book reviews each issue also contains poems, an exhibition review, ‘short cuts’, letters and a diary, and is available in print, online, and offline via our app. Subscribers enjoy unlimited access to almost 15,000 articles in our digital archive. Our website features a regular blog and a channel of audio and video content, including podcasts, author interviews and highlights from the events programme at the London Review Bookshop.
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.
Read Robert Crawford's poem in the LRB: lrb.me/crawfordtwep1
Find 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: lrb.me/crpoetry
ABOUT THE LRB
The LRB is Europe’s leading magazine of books and ideas. Published twice a month, it provides a space for some of the world’s best writers to explore a wide variety of subjects in exhilarating detail – from culture and politics to science and technology via history and philosophy. In the age of the long read, the LRB remains the pre-eminent exponent of the intellectual essay, admired around the world for its fearlessness, its range and its elegance.
As well as essays and book reviews each issue also contains poems, an exhibition review, ‘short cuts’, letters and a diary, and is available in print, online, and offline via our app. Subscribers enjoy unlimited access to almost 15,000 articles in our digital archive. Our website features a regular blog and a channel of audio and video content, including podcasts, author interviews and highlights from the events programme at the London Review Bookshop.
