Planet Poetry

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

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

Send us Fan MailWhat'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 showPlanet Poetry is a labour of love!If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support and Buy us a Coffee! 

Send us Fan MailA revisit of Robin's interview with Caleb Parkin back in May 2022. Read a description and  listen to the full episode here.Support the showPlanet Poetry is a labour of love!If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support and Buy us a Coffee! 

Dai George, an academic author and poet, dives into the art of poetic thinking through his book, 'How to Think Like a Poet.' He discusses the idea of negative capability, urging us to embrace uncertainty in creative expression. The conversation highlights the importance of diverse voices in poetry, featuring legends like Langston Hughes and Audre Lorde. Injecting humor, they explore how modern poetry connects deeply with both friendship and society, all while sharing festive reflections and insights on the transformative power of poetic thought.

Send us Fan MailStrap on your best boots, and follow Martin Malone as he shoulders through the seasons on the rugged granite of Aberdeenshire's north sea coast, pondering nature, ecology, human resilience and frailty in his collection Gardenstown, from Broken Sleep Books ,  a beautiful collaboration with artist Bryan Angus. And we'll loiter in an English outfield hoping to catch poems from his Selected Poems 2005-2020, Larksong Static from Hedgehog Press about the First World War and a lonely bar in Manhattan. Meanwhile Robin and Peter continue to answer the questions poetry lovers demand to have answered: do poetry pamphlets always have to be invertebrates? And, isn't it time to be a bit less sniffy about Dylan Thomas? We'll also read a delightful poem Please Can I Have a Man from Selima Hill. Support the showPlanet Poetry is a labour of love!If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support and Buy us a Coffee! 

Send us Fan MailAw! 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!Support the showPlanet Poetry is a labour of love!If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support and Buy us a Coffee! 

Send us Fan MailKerpow! 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? Support the showPlanet Poetry is a labour of love!If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support and Buy us a Coffee! 

Send us Fan MailRrrrrrrip! Yikes! That’s the sound of the Planet Poetry rulebook being wantonly torn in half for our Season 4 finale. For one episode only Robin and Peter abandon their solemn vow and share some of their own poetry from forthcoming Pindrop and Mariscat publications.  Then, under the chalky Sussex cliffs, we bask in recollections of another glorious season peppered with wonderful conversations with superb and entertaining guests.  We want to thank you dear listener for lending us your ears. Have a glorious summer!  We’ll be back with a spanking new season in October.  Oi! That blinking gull’s got its beak in my chips!Support the showPlanet Poetry is a labour of love!If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support and Buy us a Coffee! 

Send us Fan MailGrip the square steering wheel of your Austin Allegro and let Jane Commane navigate you through the haunted places of the post-industrial Midlands. She treats us to poems from Assembly Lines published by Bloodaxe including UnWeather, quite possibly the best Brexit response we've heard.We upload this episode on the day of the UK's General Election... So as well as sprinting to the polling stations, we take a moment to delve into the idea of political poetry. Peter reads I Woke Up by Jameson Fitzpatrick a fine example of how the personal is political, and Robin revisits Adrien Mitchell's poem  To Whom It May Concern (Tell Me Lies About Vietnam). But thanks to Danusha Laméris's poem Small Kindnesses from her collection Bonfire Opera our faith in humanity is rapidly restored. Photo of Jane Commane by Lee TownsendSupport the showPlanet Poetry is a labour of love!If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support and Buy us a Coffee!