Durham researcher helps bring forgotten working-class poet to life in acclaimed podcast

Death of a Poet explores the life and work of John Nicholson, a nineteenth-century working-class poet from West Yorkshire who was once famous across the region but is now largely overlooked.

Produced by the University of Leeds, the four-part series combines literary scholarship with music, environmental sound, local knowledge and storytelling. The Guardian described it as a “lovely podcast” featuring actors, artists and enthusiasts exploring Nicholson’s dramatic life and work.

Dr Adam Bridgen, Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow in Durham’s Department of English Studies, contributed historical and literary context to the series. We spoke to him about his interest in Nicholson, how the podcast developed and the importance of rediscovering overlooked working-class writers.

Could you tell us a little about your own research and how you first became interested in John Nicholson and his work?

My research focuses on labouring-class poetry and environmental thought in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. I'm interested in how working people used poetry to represent their relationships with landscape, labour, community and social change, a project I began as a Brotherton Fellow at the University of Leeds, before joining Durham at a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow.

What first drew me to Nicholson (1790-1843) was the combination of his extraordinary local reputation and his relative obscurity today. As a wool-sorter his poetry emerged directly from the industrial and rural landscapes of West Yorkshire, and yet his drowning in poverty, in the Aire river marked a tragic end to a remarkably active life and wide range of topics he wrote upon for local audiences as well as wealthy industrial patrons. That combination made him a fascinating subject both as a poet and as a historical figure.

What was it about Nicholson’s life, writing or character that particularly captured your imagination?

What fascinates me most about Nicholson was the tension between his remarkable talent and the difficulties that shaped his life. He was a musical prodigy (how he wooed his first wife) and a poet later who would become famous in his region; at the same time, his wife died in childbirth just two years later, and Nicholson then struggled for stability as a single father and poet, something which only worsened with the highs-and-lows of the success and his battles with alcohol.

He was a poet with a powerful attachment to place, and his writing captures the Yorkshire West Ridings landscape with incredible energy. At the same time, his life was marked by hardship, insecurity and personal struggle. For this reason we also see a tension in his poetry between verse written for patrons, such as his celebration of industrial prowess in his Low-Moor Iron-Works (1829), and his criticism of its social effects — published elsewhere. In the The Factory Child (1831) Nicholson described the impact of factory conditions on children’s bodies: ‘Hated by steam, their constitutions lost, / Then turn’d out shivering to the winter’s frost?’ (p. 44).

How did the idea for the podcast series first emerge, and how did you become involved?

The podcast grew out of an earlier project, Poetry or Bust: Tony Harrison on the Trail of “The Bingley Byron”, an exhibition at Leeds University which explored Nicholson's afterlife, reputation and place within local cultural memory (Tony Harrison wrote a play about Nicholson which was performed in Salt’s Mill, Saltaire in 1993). Building on that exhibition, Leeds’ Cultural Collections curator Dr. Rebecca Wade and their Media Relations & Production Manager, Rowland Thomas, were interested in developing a new format that could bring together both literary scholarship and the voices of people from Nicholson’s former stomping grounds.

Indeed, rather than relying solely on academic perspectives, the project draws on the knowledge and memories of local historians, Nicholson enthusiasts, and descendants connected to his story, all situated within the Bingley landscape that helped shape his life and reputation. The result is a podcast that is as much about communal memory and place as it is about literary history.

My involvement came through my time as a Brotherton Fellow and my discussions with Rebecca and Rowland. They asked if I’d like to speak on Nicholson’s life and, in particular, his poetry — and to situate it in time in relation to other important working-class poets of the land, like John Clare. As an editor of The Collected Correspondence of John Clare (scheduled 2030), I contributed key historical and literary context informing the shape of the series, and particularly the focus on music and balladry (featured in Episode 1, and particularly Episode 4).

The podcast uses sound, music, landscape and storytelling to bring Nicholson's world to life. How was this distinctive approach developed, and what was the experience of contributing to the series like for you?

One of the most exciting aspects of the project was its commitment to thinking beyond traditional forms of literary criticism and biography. Nicholson's poetry is so closely connected to particular landscapes, communities and oral traditions that a podcast offered unique opportunities to evoke those connections through sound as well as words. The use of music, environmental sound and narrative storytelling allows listeners to encounter Nicholson’s world in a much more immersive way. Rather than simply hearing about a place, they can experience something of its atmosphere and texture. Rowland Thomas’s editing and experience with field recordings was key here. A good example is at the close of Episode 4, where the shifting sounds of a waterfall partner one of Nicholson’s poems: it’s really beautiful!

What do you hope listeners will take away from the series, and why do you think it is important to revisit overlooked working-class writers such as Nicholson today?

I hope that this series, and the surprising level of interest we’ve received — being listed among the ‘Best Podcasts of the Week’ at the Guardian — will draw more radio and sound producers towards recovering the local and literary lives of working-class poets. They are an important but unfairly overlooked part of our literary and cultural heritage, and also offer important ways of thinking about our connection to nature and the processes which have gradually distanced us from it. My more ambitious hope is that podcasts like this will also inform how we might improve our relationship with nature going forwards, supporting the work of ‘Right to Roam’ writer-activists like Guy Shrubsole and Nick Hayes.