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The Seren Poetry Podcast · Alternative Stories

Rachael Clyne : 'You'll Never Be Anyone Else'

·37 min·5 clips
The conversation begins with a welcome and some careful context. The host places You'll Never Be Anyone Else in a life that has moved through poetry, eco-activism, acting, psychotherapy, and earlier writing on nature and otherness. Then Girl Golem walks back in. Through her, Rachael Clyne talks about Jewish migrant heritage, lesbian identity, domestic violence, prejudice, and ageing, but the interview never turns grimly dutiful. There is wit here, and a little bite. The episode gives the poems time to do their own work. Love is described as a hard classroom, and the reading carries that idea through first love, a husband, and a girlfriend. Small household moments start to feel loaded: cooking fallen market veg, drying without a towel, pegging washing tight. None of it is decorative. The details show what intimacy can teach, what it can cost, and how a person learns to leave. After the reading, the host turns back to the golem and lets Clyne explain the legend. Family inheritance, prejudice, and old caricatures sit close to the poems, not above them. The Schnoz brings in laughter as a reply to anti-Semitic tropes, without letting those tropes off lightly. The ending is gentle but not soft-headed. It asks listeners to celebrate themselves, be kinder to themselves, and hear the nerve in a voice that answers back.

As heard by us

A direct, humane poetry conversation with wit, bite, and hard-won self-recognition.

The episode handles Jewish and lesbian identity, migrant heritage, domestic violence, prejudice, and ageing with plain confidence. Girl Golem gives the conversation a sharp frame, and the poems keep the pressure on without losing clarity.

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Why you'd press play

Press play for poetry that pushes back at prejudice with wit and self-acceptance.

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