Planet Poetry
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!
Episodes
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...
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...
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...
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 Der...
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 log...
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 an...
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...
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 ...
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...
A revisit of Robin's interview with Caleb Parkin back in May 2022.
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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 ...
Strap 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, Lark...
Aw! 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 ...
Kerpow! 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 poe...
Rrrrrrrip! 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 entertain...
Grip 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, ...
Hear Rory Waterman describe his experience of being stuck in quarantine in Korea, where (as well as doing press ups) he used his time to begin his fourth collection Come Here to This Gate, from Carcanet Poetry. He tells us about Korea's DMZ, hilarious Lincolnshire folk tales, and we explore an exceptionally moving sequence about the death of his troubled father.
Also... Peter belatedly discovers the t...
Silent faces and displaced lives. Seni Seneviratne gives voice to overshadowed Black children, exotic pages and servants in the portraits of nobility and the mercantile class in 18th Century paintings. Other of her poised and beautiful poems, from The Go-Away Bird from Peepal Tree Press, are infused with bird imagery, and the migrations of travellers going deeper into themselves.
Meanwhile Robin jumps into ...
Staring at the mark on the wall where that painting once hung? Wondering why the moon, seen by others, has been hidden from you? You've entered the world of Absence (Cheerio Poetry 2024) by Ali Lewis. He guides us through this exceptional first collection, from the painful ache of lost love, to the possibilities unleashed by running over a pheasant.
Robin talks about poetry & walking, via Robert Fr...
Hop aboard. No time to idle in green pastures here, instead let’s follow Roy Mc Farlane as he guides us through his collection Living by Troubled Waters from Nine Arches Press weaving the toxic legacy of slavery in the complexity and warmheartedness of his own personal history.
Plus we glance at a gorgeous poem, Leaves, from Ursula K. Le Guin, mull over the latest winner of the UK’s National Poetry Competition, The ...
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