Planet Poetry

Send us a textAnother gem from the archives to tide you over the long, hot (?) summer of 2023...the brilliant Clare Shaw was our second interviewee on the podcast back in 2020, and here she is talking to Robin about her 2018 Bloodaxe collection Flood.Support the showPlanet Poetry is a labour of love!If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support and Buy us a Coffee!

Send us a textSummertime. Ho, hum. But wait! What's this on your device. Planet Poetry? Robin and Peter have descended into The Vaults to present a conversation first broadcast in October 2020 with the fabulous Pascale Petit.  Enjoy!Support the showPlanet Poetry is a labour of love!If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support and Buy us a Coffee!

Send us a textFollow us as we slip into le Quartier asiatique through a noirish wordscape, when the flutes in the musique concrète are interrupted by David Bowie, Kate Bush and Genesis… Suddenly you realise you are hearing Richard Skinner sharing poems from his collections Dream Into Play (Poetry Salzburg 2022) and White Noise Machine (Salt 2023). Wait! What’s he doing with those scissors? Oh my God… Is that the future leaking out?Cut to a potting shed of an English garden: a pot of basil, poems plastered on the wall, and a black cat dawdling by the doorway.  Flowerpot people, Robin and Peter, are to be discovered sipping beers and ruminating on Planet Poetry’s wonderful third season guests. They are wishing you a wonderful summer and thanking you for lending us your ears. If the slugs don’t get them, they’ll be back in the Autumn.  Thank you for listening!Support the showPlanet Poetry is a labour of love!If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support and Buy us a Coffee!

Send us a textPens down, everybody! Now look at me...  Today we meet poets Kate Wakeling and Rachel Piercey, editor of Tyger Tyger Magazine, who will share insights about writing poetry for children -- the language, considerations and freedoms. We'll hear Kate read from Cloud Soup and Moon Juice  (from the  Emma Press) and Rachel read her poems from the Big Amazing Poetry Book (Macmillan) We contrast this with their work in publications for grown-ups, such as Rachel's Disappointing Alice pamphlet from Happenstance, and Kate'sThe Rainbow Faults from Rialto's Bridge Pamphlets series.We pause outside the head teacher's office where Robin and Peter, in trouble again for running in the corridor, are discussing the ways poetry reached them as children and they share two excellent children's poems from Zaro Weil and Brian Patten.  Support the showPlanet Poetry is a labour of love!If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support and Buy us a Coffee!

Send us a textDid you ever repeat a word so often that its meaning ebbed away? Or look so hard at an object -- say a glass of water -- that it began to hint at unknowable mysteries?  No? Then you should join us as we meet Greta Stoddart and hear poetry from her new Bloodaxe collection Fool which will take you to an extraordinary place in your imagination where 'nothing might be what is called for'.  Meanwhile Robin and Peter, invigorated by talking to third year creative writing students, reflect on the current complexity of the publishing landscape...  and wonder if the stigma that once attached itself to self-publishing is now obsolete. Plus we pop across the English Channel to discover the poetry of Guernsey-based poet Richard Fleming.  Support the showPlanet Poetry is a labour of love!If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support and Buy us a Coffee!

Send us a textIf you have endured a childhood overshadowed by profound betrayal and abuse, how do you learn to trust again? What kind of bravery must this take?  We  feature  Clare Best reading from her poetry collections, Excisions and Each Other and also discuss her memoir The Missing List - written during the last illness of the father who had abused her as a child – described as ‘an important, essential text in the context of the #MeToo movement’. Plus we enjoy an early glimpse into her poised and beautiful collection Beyond the Gate due later this year from Worple Press.Meanwhile Robin and Peter wonder aloud if writing a novel changes your approach to poetry, and ask why there aren't more poems about work and jobs. We see how this is done with a gorgeous poem from Factory Girls an intriguing collection from Japanese poet  Takako Arai. Support the showPlanet Poetry is a labour of love!If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support and Buy us a Coffee!

Send us a textKeep the carriage curtains open as we  chug into the post-industrial midlands of The Black Country. We're in the company of Liz Berry as she coins resonant new myths from her midland's dialect word hoard. But next stop is Liverpool, following orphaned Eliza The Home Child  as she sets off for Nova Scotia in Berry's heartbreaking, just-published novel in verse about a girl sent to work as an indentured servant. Peter and Robin also report back on the winning poems they heard at  the awards ceremony for the UK's National Poetry Competition 2022 -- and Robin is inspired by an essay from Forgive the Language by Katy Evans-Bush. Support the showPlanet Poetry is a labour of love!If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support and Buy us a Coffee!

Send us a textStrap on your toughest boots.  Now dodge the speeding cars as we match strides with Robert Hamberger.  We discuss two works: his exceptional poetry collection Blue Wallpaper and his memoir A Length of Road -- recalling a time when Robert (facing a life crisis) retraced the footsteps of the 'peasant poet' John Clare who had, in 1841, escaped an asylum in Epping Forest. Robert walked the same 80 miles as John Clare,  who had walked to Northamptonshire in the vain hope of finding Mary, his first love. And Robin has been enjoying Ian Duhig's masterful New and Selected Poems  learning en route what can be made to rhyme with Castor and Pollux, while Peter tarries in the twilight of Thomas Gray's  Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard -- 'mopeing owl' and all.  Support the showPlanet Poetry is a labour of love!If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support and Buy us a Coffee!

Send us a textStop polishing that halo for a moment and listen to this! It's Mark Fiddes reading from his Live Cannon collection *Other Saints Are Available - a series of vivid and memorable footnotes to an increasingly polarised world... All via men roaring into flame from the neck up,  the haircuts of Burnley defenders, brash parakeets and much more.And what do you do, as a poetry lover, when you just can't face reading another poem? Read something about poetry of course. Peter barges through Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry essays by the fine US poet Jane Hirshfield -- while Robin entertains 'The Hatred of Poetry' by Ben Lerner.     Support the showPlanet Poetry is a labour of love!If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support and Buy us a Coffee!

Send us a textHop aboard! And join your Planet Poetry pals as we bravely embark on a new year. Strap in beside a child of six -- flying away from her family, culture and language -- to arrive, wordlessly, in a new country and a new life.  Mimi Khalvati shares poems from her exquisite Carcanet collection Afterwardness and relives the journey that utterly changed the course of her life.Robin and Peter also discuss the T.S.Eliot Prize winner  Sonnets for Albert by Anthony Joseph,  published by Bloomsbury Poetry  and rediscover the magnificent faber collection Elegies by Douglas Dunn.  Finally, your hosts summon all their courage to share their fragile writerly hopes  for the new year. Happy New Year!Support the showPlanet Poetry is a labour of love!If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support and Buy us a Coffee!