Planet Poetry – Details, episodes & analysis

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Aw! You’re squishably cute!  Yes you, dear listener. In this episode we meet Isabel Galleymore and hear from her highly original collection Baby Schema, published by Carcanet. Tempted into a big-eyed world of Disneyfied cuteness you’ll find things getting increasingly weird as Isabel examines its distorting relationship with nature, business, human relationships… and more. 

Plus Robin reports back to us from The Foyle Young Poets of the Year awards and reads the poem Loud by Indy Moon. Peter makes some excuse to read the timeless To Autumn, by John Keats.  Then, accompanied by a wailful choir of small gnats, your podcast pals are borne aloft… Till next time… Adieu!

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Kerpow! The poetry fireworks are back. We spark our fifth season into life with Danez Smith – who shares poems from their astonishing collection Bluff (published by Vintage Penguin 2024), destined to be one of the books of the decade. Danez discusses everything from Afropessimism to the power of water as a metaphor. Plus we hear poems that are conscious and politically-electrified, as well as tender and vulnerable poetry about love and the transformational power of poetry itself.   

Expect the usual back-to-school bantz from Robin and Peter, plus we dip into the poetry of exile with a fabulous poem from Sudanese poet Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi from his collection  A Friend’s Kitchen, one of the World Poet Series editions published by the Poetry Translation Centre, we hear an astonishing poem by Tony Hoagland from his final collection Turn Up The Ocean. And we’ll remember the passing of New Zealand born Fleur Adcock who died this month.  

Thanks for being here with us in our new season. It’s delightful to be back. Now... Where are those sparklers? 

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Go on. Press the button. Paul Stephenson guides us through a choice of his varied, formally diverse and moving elegies in his Carcanet collection Hard Drive -- written in the years following his partner's sudden death -- and find a curiously life-affirming  exploration of grief and its aftermath. 

Robin and Peter also make their way across Europe (simultaneously in both the 21st and the 19th Centuries) in the company of Janet Sutherland whose The Messenger House  (Shearsman Books) is a highly-ambitious  weaving of history, poetry and travelogue. At the border, we flag down Charlotte Gann to examine her  Cargo  -- a characteristically brilliant new pamphlet by  published by Mariscat Press.  And, tugging at the long roots of prosimetra, we find Boethius, Dante, David Jones and a 12th Century bloke called Hugh of Bologna.

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We are back and delighted to bring you more wonderful poetry in 2024.  So let's illuminate the new year with Tamar Yoseloff, whose  long engagement with visual art  has created a poetry that blazes out against a black backdrop. We’ll hear poems from two Seren collections  A Formula for Night her New and Selected poems and  The Black Place (2019). Plus we will get a preview of her forthcoming collection Belief Systems from Nine Arches.

And we discuss the highly impressive Self-Portrait as Othello Carcanet Poetry (2023) by Jason Allen-Paisant a deserved winner of this year’s TS Eliot prize -- and talk about a little known scribbler called William Shakespeare.

Photo of Tamar Yoseloff by Stephen Wells.

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Happy New Year! We're on our festive break, but wanted to share with you another classic interview from the archive. Here's Kim Moore talking about her Forward Prize-winning collection 'All the Men I Never Married' from Seren Books.

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Psssst! Here's a moment of reprieve from the festive frenzy... Follow Jane Clarke wobbling on an oak log slick with frost, then she smooths us down a butter path to a place of poetry. Here we revel in the beauty and quiet authority of Jane's collection  A Change in the Air shortlisted for the T.S.Eliot prize among others.

Peter finds listening to a Christmas carol to be a slippery slope to goblin greengrocers and secretive Christina Rossetti, while Robin rouses the old possum and revisits Journey of the Magi by T.S. Eliot. And, as if that weren't enough, we neatly put a bow in the red ribbon of the show, with Congregation, a Christmas poem from Jeremy Page

Thanks so much for listening to Planet Poetry in 2023. Merry Christmas and happy holidays everyone. Here's wishing you a Peaceful New Year!   

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Go on. We dare you to reach across the gulf to Planet Poetry. This time you'll find Martyn Crucefix, reading poems from his Salt collection Between A Drowning Man. This ambitious, timely work depicts  the isolation and polarisation brought about by Brexit, Populism, social media and more.  A deep and subtle work that reflects these troubled times, and yearns towards empathy.  

Then let's delight in a poem from Clare Best’s new book Beyond The Gate   and gaze into the mutable future: reporting back from a first encounter with Changing by Richard Berengarten, a magnum opus inspired by a lifetime of association with the I Ching  --  the ancient Chinese text used for divination.

But there's one thing you can be 100% sure of: the usual banter from your pals Robin and Peter as they grasp another prickly poetic nettle.    

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All aboard!  Planet Poetry is going to rattle you into a Belfast haunted by absence. Here you'll meet Leontia Flynn and discover how the upheavals of Brexit and the pandemic have been echoed by  ruptures and aloneness in her own life. Her magnificent response is the spare and intensely-moving collection Taking Liberties from Cape.

Meanwhile Peter has been reading I will Not Fold These Maps  by the Bidoon (stateless) poet Mona Kareem, whose refreshingly direct style adds a touch of surrealism to reflect the absurdity of not being a citizen of the country you were born in.  Then Robin (thanks to the marginalian) is enchanted by the astronomer poet Rebecca Elson and her collection A Responsibility to Awe from Carcanet Classic. Sampling a  poetry that places an awareness of the poet's own mortality against a backdrop of stars. 

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Hush your vuvuzela! Barnsley's own Ian McMillan lobs the keeper and helps Planet Poetry's fourth season start with a belting win.  He treats us to selections from To Fold The Evening Star, New and Selected Poems from Carcanet as well as his smith|doorstop pamphlet, Yes But What Is This? What Exactly?

Plus your podcast pals Robin Houghton and Peter Kenny strap on their boots and shin pads, and discuss everything from Spitfires to a Welsh shrine-like display for R. S. Thomas, they dip  into books by Denise Levertov, Glynn Maxwell and Han Kang,  sprinkle a few Neanderthals, a Stanza Anthology and Robin's great plunger into the mix, and... Yep! Planet Poetry is back.

Photo of Ian McMillan by Adrian Mealing

Books mentioned by Robin & Peter:
The Man Who Went into the West,  The Life of RS Thomas by Byron Rogers (Aurum 2006)
The Big Calls, Glyn Maxwell (Live Canon, 2023) The White Book, by Han Kang (Portobello Books 2018) and The Naked Neanderthal by Ludovic Slimak (Penguin 2023).

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Planet Poetry is a labour of love!
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We revisit the Spring of 2021 and Robin's interview with Kathryn Maris, principally about her collection The House with only and Attic and a Basement (Penguin, 2018).

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Planet Poetry is a labour of love!
If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support and Buy us a Coffee!