Planet Poetry

Send us Fan MailGo 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!If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support and Buy us a Coffee! 

Send us Fan MailAll 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!If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support and Buy us a Coffee! 

Send us Fan MailHush 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!If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support and Buy us a Coffee! 

Send us Fan MailWe 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). 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 MailAnother absolute sparkler from our trove of first season interviews. Charlotte Gann talks about her exceptional Happenstance Press collections, Noir, and The Girl Who Cried.  Back with season four on October 12 2023Support 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 MailAnother gem from the archives to tide you over the long, hot (?) summer of 2023...the brilliant Clare Shaw was our second interviewee on the podcast back in 2020, and here she is talking to Robin about her 2018 Bloodaxe collection Flood.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 MailSummertime. 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!If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support and Buy us a Coffee! 

Send us Fan MailFollow 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!If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support and Buy us a Coffee! 

Send us Fan MailPens 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!If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support and Buy us a Coffee! 

Send us Fan MailDid 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!If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support and Buy us a Coffee!