Send us a text

Still life? Not as we know it. Trembling with tension and beauty, and roses that cup darkness and secret trauma... Hear Richard Scott share from his extraordinary new collection That Broke into Shining Crystals, just published by Faber. This is brave and shining poetry, timeless and utterly contemporary.

Plus Robin and Peter dip into a verdant world, read the Imagist poem, Green, by D.H. Lawrence and, via Chroma by Derek Jarman, find ourselves on the shingle at Dungess by the nuclear power station. Robin talks breezily about Vanitas, the fleeting nature of life, and how she arranged the still life on the cover of her new book, The Mayday Diaries, skull and all...

Support the show

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

Send us a text

Chaos? We love it! Time to meet Isabelle Baafi and hear about her-hotly anticipated first full collection Chaotic Good just published by Faber. Among other things, it grapples with what it means to live a good and authentic life in a world full of challenges and unwanted expectations.

Plus Robin and Peter discuss the idea of délire - how language can at times deliriously overflow with meaning and burst the banks of logic. We'll glance again at Lewis Carroll, and reopen renowned UK poetry magazines Magma and The Rialto, and return with a gleaming pair of poems by Milena Williamson and Linda Ford. Chaos? Let's embrace it.

Support the show

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

Send us a text

Why should not old men be mad? Hear Peter Daniels, a pioneer of gay men's writing in the UK, brood on the emptiness of boxes, speculate on what those Cavalrymen are up to behind the locked doors, cope with Quixotic characters and, finally, bathe in the pure light of silent contemplation. All this from Old Men published by Salt in 2024.

Plus, we hear a little about Leland Bardwell, a perhaps neglected Irish poet and writer, and Timothy Gallagher, a writer of dramatic monologues. Peter and Robin also report back, hotfoot from the National Poetry Competition 2024 awards celebration.

Support the show

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

Send us a text

A gleam of love in hard times. Our guest Ellen Cranitch shares poems from her Bloodaxe collection Crystal, a subtle, multifaceted work arising from the discovery that her partner was addicted to crystal meth. Expect beauty, flashes of resilience and the deft capture of moments that sustain a relationship through this extreme challenge.

Robin and Peter have been rubbernecking at the recent Planetary Parade (we owe it to you dear listener because of our name) and use it as an excuse to open a celestial trove with dramatic lines from John Donne, from Odysseus Elytis transported from darkness on a highway of stars and from a heavenly (if passive-aggressive) W.B. Yeats. Then we sound a clarion note of Spring optimism from Thomas Tranströmer.

Support the show

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

Send us a text

Psssssssssst! We've invited Ruth Padel to share work from her recent Chatto Poetry collection Girl. She talks about the power of girls, the mythologies woven around them and the responsibilities they must accept. She'll take us from Mary at the Annunciation (wearing a Primark T-shirt) to glimpsing a Serpent Queen from the 88 bus.

Robin shares her long-held enthusiasm for 52 Ways of Looking at a Poem - also by Ruth Padel. And we celebrate Siegfried Baber's spanking new pamphlet The Twice Turned Earth from Poetry Salzburg, discovering a poignant poem about Star Wars collectibles.

Support the show

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

Send us a text

What's that knocking? It's the multi-talented Tishani Doshi, sharing her Bloodaxe collection A God at the Door. You'll hear supple, powerful poems fuelled by a controlled rage at the continuing oppression of women, blended with a playful optimism and dazzling ability to weave history, contemporary politics, and vivid imagery.

Plus Peter bites the AI bullet. Can Chat GPT be useful for poets? Or is AI the poet's nemesis? Robin emerges with a little colour in her cheeks, having read Bad Kid Catullus the 'filthsmith' Roman poet as re-imagined by innovative small press, Sidekick Books.

Support the show

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

Send us a text

A revisit of Robin's interview with Caleb Parkin back in May 2022.

Read a description and listen to the full episode here.

Support the show

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

Send us a text

Ah-hem. Stop thinking like that. Think like a poet! Dwell in negative capability and write in a way that reflects the sheer messiness of human cognition! That's better isn't it? We meet Dai George and talk about his book How to Think Like a Poet (Bloomsbury Continuum 2024) - where Dai creates a new and generous canon of 24 poets from Homer, Sappho, to Frank O'Hara to Audre Lourde - and looks at their lives and preoccupations.

Now the festive period is upon us, Robin and Peter are in a whimsical mood. So you can expect things like steam trains, OuLiPo and Alfred, Lord Tennyson's spirited good riddance to the old year. Merry Christmas and Happy new year to all our listeners. See you in 2025... Thanks for listening!

Support the show

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