Frank Skinner's Poetry Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

Frank loves a hard-drinking, hard-smoking Polytechnic lecturer like Martin Bell, especially when he is offering poetic praise to Groucho Marx. The poems referenced are ‘Ode to Groucho’ by Martin Bell and ‘The Second Coming’ by W.B. Yeats.

Jo Shapcott sends Frank, an enthusiastic tree-hugger, into a sap-soaked frenzy. The collection referenced is ‘Of Mutability’. The poems referenced are ‘I Go Inside The Tree’, ‘My Oak’ and ‘Cypress’.

Frank indulges his obsession with the Anglo Saxons as he reads Geoffrey Hill's Mercian Hymns.

Did he or didn't he? Frank investigates Robert Browning's 'My Last Duchess'. The other poem referenced is 'The Pied Piper of Hamelin' by Robert Browning.

Nature gets horny and reflective. Frank is excited about the poetry of Jean Sprackland. The collection referenced is 'Green Noise'. The poem referenced is 'April' and the sequence referenced is 'The Lost Villages'.

Frank examines statues and statutes with Percy Bysshe Shelley. The poems referenced are 'England in 1918' and 'Ozymandias'. The essay referenced is 'A Defense of Poetry'.

Frank howls at the moon with Sylvia Plath. The poems referenced are 'The Moon and the Yew Tree' and 'Ariel. TW: mentions of suicide.

Frank celebrates the razor-sharp poetic mind of Don Paterson. The poem referenced is 'Rain'.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning shows Frank that it's hard to be a mother and a poet and a revolutionary. The poem referenced is 'Mother and Poet'.