Send us a text

Surprise! We're back again and starting Season Six with a distinctive Black Country jewel from our trove of interviews. Liz Berry delighted us all in April 2023 when she spoke with Robin about her (then) new collection, The Home Child (Vintage). Hear her read from that and also from her Forward Prize-winning Black Country (2014, Chatto & Windus). Well worth hearing again. Stay tuned... There's more to come from Planet Poetry.

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

Join your podcast pals at a table at the Beachy Head pub. Enjoying a view of sloping fields down to the Belle Tout Lighthouse and the sea beyond and take a moment to reflect on another season of Planet Poetry podcasts. Over spent packets of crisps and peanuts we revisit conversations with Danez Smith, Isabel Galleymore, Richard Scott and Isabelle Baafi chosen from among the panoply of marvellous guests we've had this season.

As ever, thank you for lending us your ears. Look for us in the Autumn and for the time being, we wish you a splendid and memorable summer.

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

It's a tag team episode! With Robin and Peter meeting poet Charles G Lauder, Jr and publisher poet Jo Colley of Blueprint Poetry Press - who have published his 2025 pamphlet Year of the Rat, a profound collection informed by long engagement with Daoism. Also we speak to Jo Colley, who with Julie Hogg, runs Blueprint Poetry Press. Jo tells us what moved her about Charles's work, and shares insights into the selection and editing process and the sheer pleasure that publishing fine poets brings - as well as the balance between her own poetry practice and publishing.

Robin discovers spare and lovely work by Ritchie McCaffery, whose pamphlet Skail just published by New Walk Editions. And Peter is shocked to find himself enjoying Frank O'Hara's poem Why I Am Not a Painter.

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 was that? A bat or swallow? Something flitted past, but we can't agree on what we've just seen ... Erica McAlpine reads from Small Pointed Things (just published by Carcanet) that makes that uncertain territory her own, with meticulously crafted poems that harbour hard questions.

And talking of things that flit past your window, Peter gets an early look at White Teeth, Red Blood, selected Vampire Verses published shortly by Pushkin Press. We'll listen to John Keats's 'La Belle Dame Sans Merci', and hear why the knight is alone and palely loitering... Meanwhile Robin discovers Hope Mirrlees, and a long Modernist poem 'Paris' - which predated Old Possum's 'The Waste Land' by two years. Plus we read an affectionate poem by Tim Relf, for Father's Day.

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

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!