Planet Poetry

Send us a textYou remember us. Of course you do! It's your pals at Planet Poetry!  Fascinating in-depth conversations with poets and poetry lovers, bardic banter and more . Now spring is in the air, we have a spanking new episode featuring writer and poet Jeremy Page. With him we'll delve into The Naming a collection that braves the shifting sands of unreliable memories and the words we use to describe them.  Plus we hear what keeps Jeremy as engaged as ever, after decades of his editorship of the The Frogmore Papers - now nearing 100 issues.  Plus Robin and Peter mull over their personal reading: from marvelling at the flying worm in the poetry of William Blake to slithering an exploratory tendril into Kay Syrad's collection of lusciously mossy poetry what is near. 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 textDing-ding. All aboard! In this episode we ride a big red bus into the heart of London's hidden histories.  Robin meets poetical dynamic duo Joolz Sparkes and Hilaire whose beautifully researched collaboration London Undercurrents gives voice to women at pivotal moments in their lives. We catch glimpses of criminal forgers, a clippie tasting heady freedom as she traverses the Thames and a girl dreaming of football glory. Meanwhile  Peter absorbs the A4 format delights of  PN Review and The Rialto pausing to read a poem by Tim Craven while  Robin revisits Ian Duhig's spellbinding  poem The Lammas Hireling. 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 textWelcome home! Now slip off your raincoat and settle down in the flickering firelight.  Listening to Janet Sutherland will suggest summer snakes hissing in the hay, as you explore the rural upbringing that has shaped the quietly-magnificent world of her four Shearsman Books collections: Burning the Heartwood, Hangman’s Acre, Bone Monkey and Home Farm. Meanwhile, your pals Robin and Peter begin 2022 eyeing a patriarchal statue in a beautiful poem by  Eavan Boland from her New Collected Poems from Carcanet . And devouring  C+nto and othered poems by Joelle Taylor to find it an elegiac, barnstorming celebration - and a just winner of the T.S. Eliot prize too. 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 textWe see you. Covered in tinsel and cavorting with Dancer, Prancer, Vixen and the rest of those red nosed reindeers.  Luckily here is a treat you can open immediately!  Our interview with two inspiring poet publishers - Sharon Black of Pindrop Press, and Di Slaney of Candlestick Press - who share the proximity of goats but have distinct approaches to publishing. Plus Di Slaney treats us to a poem from Herd Queen (Valley Press) and Sharon Black shares a poem from her perfectly-formed pamphlet  Rib  (published by Wayleave Press).   Over a mince pie, Peter and Robin chat about the early life of one-time poet laureate John Masefield and his children's Christmas classic The Box of Delights - while Robin is so uplifted by Sasha Dugdale's new Carcanet collection Deformations she's invited her on the podcast for next year. Happy holidays everyone :-)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 textYou know us. At Planet Poetry  we are always mooning around thinking about poetry instead of doing the laundry. But imagine if you had to haggle with a censor just to get your words read... Or had to account for your personal morality to an interrogator. Discovering the subtly devastating  poetry of The Kindly Interrogator by Alireza Abiz (Shearsman books translated by the author and W.N. Herbert) will remind you of the fragility of the freedom many of us take for granted.Plus you can expect a bit of Santa banter, pedantry and crows. We discuss Grief Is The Thing With Feathers by Max Porter (Faber) as well as the intriguing pamphlet  Articles of Twinship (Bare Fiction) by Peter Wallis.   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 textFabulous stories, overheard conversation and a panoply of characters? It's the sound of Planet Poetry basking in the glowing Technicolor of Martina Evans's funny, moving and brilliantly inventive new collection American Mules (Carcanet). Meanwhile a  croaky-with-Covid Robin props herself up on one elbow to re-read a favourite collection by Kei Miller. As Cop26 is in the news, Peter considers eco-poetry in the light of work by novelist Richard Powers and philosopher Timothy Morton's 'All Art is Ecological'. But wait... Where's that self-promotional trumpet? The new website at planetpoetrypodcast.com is finally UP! (And if you could tell absolutely everyone about it, that really would be awfully decent of you.)  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 textWant to face the future with strength and empathy? Of course you do! So hop aboard Planet Poetry and jet over to New Orleans to meet Ashanti Anderson and hear from her exceptional debut, Black Under.  We'll also feature Robin's encounter with the work of Scottish poet George Mackay Brown, whose centenary is celebrated by Dark Horse magazine, while Peter is won over by the excellence of The Perseverance by Raymond Antrobus. Plus we praise the fabulous The History of English podcast by Kevin Stroud, and Dave Bonta's Via Negativa blog... All this and a couple of severed heads for the win. Bargain.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 textKerpow! Planet Poetry is back for a second season, replete with box-fresh poetical guests, an assortment of musings on the muses – and even a new intro tune.We whiz across the Atlantic to meet Kim Addonizio and hear about her Vulcan mind meld with Shakespeare and Dante - and we can guarantee she will transform how you think about Florida forever. Kim's poems are featured in her Bloodaxe collection Wild Nights.  Fresh from a damp sojourn in Wales, Peter talks about being thunderstruck by R.S. Thomas and reads a poem from The Collected Later Poems. While Robin admires Shane McCrae’s collection Sometimes I Never Suffered.  It's great to be back. We missed you!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 textIs that a fanfare of brazen trumpets? Why? Well, it's our season finale! Join our audience with the regal Rishi Dastidar who tells us about the declaration of sovereignty made by his eponymous hero Saffron Jack  - a hugely impressive long poem, glittering with biting satire, postcolonial thinking, humour and logical inevitability. Then, a tad wistfully, Robin and Peter wind up Season 1, with your poetic pals taking a few moments to reflect on what they’ve learnt from making seventeen bedazzling episodes of your favourite podcast. Thank you for listening! We'll be back... 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 textWelcome back, poppets! Join us as we peer into the dreamlike cabinet of curiosities that is Helen Ivory’s The Anatomical Venus  where women are labelled  witches and hysterics, pathologised by medical science and surreally transformed into demure models with visible innards. Meanwhile, Robin enjoys the primal force of Nobel-winning poet Thomas Tranströmer in The Half-Finished Heaven and Peter feels improved after experiencing the warmth and humanity of Robert Hamberger's Blue Wallpaper. Plus your podcast pals hear about a poetry rejection received a mere two-and-a-half years after submission. Enjoy! Support the showPlanet Poetry is a labour of love!If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support and Buy us a Coffee!