Knish by Martin Nathan and The Prison Poem by Rebecca Ruth Gould

Story Radio Podcast

We have two shorter stories this month, Knish by Martin Nathan and The Prison Poem by Rebecca Ruth Gould.

Knish by Martin Nathan

The knish is a lump of potato with pastry wrapped around it and baked. You can still buy them in Brighton Beach, Long Island, filled with kasha or beef or cherry and cream cheese or pretty much anything you want.

Like this story, it’s not what’s on the outside or on the inside that counts. It’s somewhere between the two that makes things different.

Written and produced by Martin Nathan.

Read by Luke Blackwood.

Martin Nathan has worked as a labourer, showman, pancake chef, fire technician, and a railway engineer. His short fiction has been published by Tangent Press, HCE and Grist and his poetry has appeared in Finished Creatures, Erbacce and Aesthetica.

His novel – A Place of Safety is published by Salt Publishing. In 2020 he has been shortlisted for the Woodward International Playwriting Prize and the Nick Darke Award.

The Prison Poem by Rebecca Ruth Gould

For over a thousand years, Persian poets have been writing about prison. One day, these poems stir a nervous conversation between lovers in modern Iran. “The Prison Poem” by Rebecca Ruth Gould recounts a millennium of poems in which imprisoned poets criticize their rulers.

Rebecca Ruth Gould is a writer, translator, and scholar. Her books include Writers and Rebels (2016) and the poetry collections Cityscapes (2019) and Beautiful English (2021). Her first short story collection, Strangers in Love, is forthcoming, as is The Persian Prison Poem (Edinburgh University Press). She was born in the US and now resides in the UK, where she teaches at the University of Birmingham.

Visit Rebecca Ruth Gould's website

Follow Rebecca Ruth Gould on Medium

Twitter @rrgould

Instagram @r.r.gould

The reader for The Prison Poem was Julia Lewis.

The music used in The Prison Poem was from a recording of musician Peyman Heydarian on Freesound.org by xserra and has an attribution license.