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Planet Poetry

Author: Robin Houghton & Peter Kenny

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Love poetry? Join Robin and Peter and their guests as they read poems, chat about all things poetry and generally explore the bedazzling world of Planet Poetry. Since we started this podcast in 2020 we've interviewed dozens of poets and poetry editors, discussed all the thorny issues about the poetry world and delved into our favourite poetry past and present. We don't have sponsors and we don't interrupt the flow with ads, so if you like what we do, please buy us a coffee or two at buymeacoffee.com/planetpoetry to help keep the poddy going! Thanks!
56 Episodes
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A classic interview from the archive: Inua Ellams talking about his extraordinary book The Actual  (Penned in the Margins, 2020), a powerful, personal and often very funny collection that pokes a sharp stick at the legacy of British Empire, foolish machismo, hero culture, relationships and much more.Support the showPlanet Poetry is a labour of love, paid for out of our own pockets.If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support and Buy us a Coffee!
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.Support the showPlanet Poetry is a labour of love, paid for out of our own pockets.If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support and Buy us a Coffee!
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.Support the showPlanet Poetry is a labour of love, paid for out of our own pockets.If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support and Buy us a Coffee!
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.Support the showPlanet Poetry is a labour of love, paid for out of our own pockets.If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support and Buy us a Coffee!
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 PageThanks so much for listening to Planet Poetry in 2023. Merry Christmas and happy holidays everyone. Here's wishing you a Peaceful New Year!   Support the showPlanet Poetry is a labour of love, paid for out of our own pockets.If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support and Buy us a Coffee!
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.    Support the showPlanet Poetry is a labour of love, paid for out of our own pockets.If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support and Buy us a Coffee!
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. Support the showPlanet Poetry is a labour of love, paid for out of our own pockets.If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support and Buy us a Coffee!
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 MealingBooks 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).Support the showPlanet Poetry is a labour of love, paid for out of our own pockets.If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support and Buy us a Coffee!
Summertime. 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, paid for out of our own pockets.If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support and Buy us a Coffee!
Follow 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, paid for out of our own pockets.If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support and Buy us a Coffee!
Pens 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, paid for out of our own pockets.If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support and Buy us a Coffee!
Did 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, paid for out of our own pockets.If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support and Buy us a Coffee!
If 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, paid for out of our own pockets.If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support and Buy us a Coffee!
Keep 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, paid for out of our own pockets.If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support and Buy us a Coffee!
Strap 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, paid for out of our own pockets.If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support and Buy us a Coffee!
Stop 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, paid for out of our own pockets.If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support and Buy us a Coffee!
Hop 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, paid for out of our own pockets.If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support and Buy us a Coffee!
What's that? The airy caper of Dasher, Dancer, Prancer and their mates? No it's Planet Poetry bringing you Matthew Stewart, who - by some uncanny podcast magic - is sheltering from the sweltering heat of the Spanish sun. His collection The Knives of Villalejo provides clues to what could have coaxed a poet from the cul-de-sacs of suburban Surrey to the vineyards of Extremadura.Amid the festive banter, you'll find your podcast pals discussing a Writer's Advent Calendar from Jo Bell  and seasonal favourites Snow by Louis McNeice and [little tree] by e. e. cummings. Thank you very much for listening to us in 2022. Here's wishing you a Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and an absolutely splendiferous New Year! See you in January.   Support the showPlanet Poetry is a labour of love, paid for out of our own pockets.If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support and Buy us a Coffee!
What's that popping and blazing from your favourite podcast device? A plethora of lightbulb moments, that's what.  This episode features an in depth conversation with Sarah Barnsley whose bravura first collection The Thoughts has been published by Smith | Doorstop.  With immense originality she deals with the intrusive thoughts that are a hallmark of  obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)  as well as recovery, love and White Bears.    Meanwhile Robin tries to unfold the mysteries of Black Fens viral  a poem sequence full of musicality by Frances Presley. Peter tells us how he has fallen under the siren spell of Stigmata a collection of essays by Hélèn Cixous published by Routledge. Plus there's the usual poetry based banter, and a delicate whiff of roasted coffee beans.Support the showPlanet Poetry is a labour of love, paid for out of our own pockets.If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support and Buy us a Coffee!
Here we go again, blazing through the vast firmaments... We go all starry and stripy this week as we meet Shane McCrae - one of the US's most celebrated new poets - to be awed by the Miltonic vastness of an imagination that electrifies his collections  Cain Named The Animal and Sometimes I Never Suffered.Meanwhile Robin continues the epic theme in St Lucia, by embarking on Omeros by Derek Walcott, and Peter, enervated after a house move  is re-enthused about poetry as a whole thanks to On Poetry: Reading, Writing & Working with Poems by Jackie Wills. Support the showPlanet Poetry is a labour of love, paid for out of our own pockets.If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support and Buy us a Coffee!
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