Category: Roundups

New Year, new book and other news

Oof! December was a blur of concerts and all that entailed, then family stuff and various resolutions.  Between Christmas and New Year we managed not one but two mini-breaks: the first was a day in London which included an excellent guided walk of Nine Elms & Battersea with Hilaire. The next day we took off to the north Kent coast, staying in Tankerton and doing a whistle-stop tour of Thanet’s seaside towns. I love a bit of dereliction for its photo opportunities, but it is a shame to see how run-down Margate seems to be. Nevertheless it was my favourite of the places we visited, albeit very briefly. There’s a youthful, arty vibe to it.

Back on the computer, by posting a comment on a Substack a while back I seem to have got a bunch of new followers there, even though I’ve never posted an article there as far I know. I can’t spread my online time any thinner. Blog or Substack..?

Then the Blue Sky experiment. I haven’t been posting regularly there, although I still prefer it to Twitter, and have certainly come across many more interesting folks. However I’ve spent a fair bit of time monitoring new followers and blocking those that appear to be either bots or agents. They invariably present as men in their sixties, straight out of a catalogue, smiling, posing with a boat or car or something outdoorsy, usually without a biog or else it’s an AI one-liner such as ‘Enjoying all that life has to offer!’ or ‘Be kind to me I’m new here!’  They are usually following zillions of people and if they’ve posted at all it’s just vapid photos or re-posts that suggest a political agenda. I suppose a lot of people just follow back when someone follows them, which is why these fake accounts exist – to disseminate crap on an industrial scale. It was one of the things that did for Twitter and I’m sorry (but not surprised) to see it happening on Blue Sky. All we need is for all the trolls, eejits and troublemakers to start posting and feeding the bots. So let’s hope they stay away.

The collection is coming along. First round of edits & comments received from publisher. I’ll be going through them very soon. We’re still hoping to hit a March launch. Let’s see! I’ve got a few readings set up now, but need to arrange some more. First of all I’m reading at Red Door Poets on January 21st in Covent Garden, as the guest of Gillie Robic. I don’t know yet who the other readers are but I’m sure it’ll be a good night, with an open mic too, so please come if you’re in London/willing & able.

One thing I plan to do more of in 2025 is writing poems. Sounds simple, eh? I’ve got an idea for a proto-pamphlet in the pipeline, which I’d like to self-publish in hand-made form and have it to sell alongside the ‘big book’ at readings.

I’m still fully committed to Planet Poetry, despite Peter and I missing out on any ACE funding. On the other hand, we’ve got a small number of people supporting us on buymeacoffee.com for which we are inordinately grateful as it helps to relieve the financial burden. And of course my quarterly poetry submissions spreadsheet, which I wonder how long I can continue with to be honest!

Meanwhile the music continues… two one-day workshops coming up, for which I am the admin. And another unrelated project which starts next month. More on that at a later date.

Happy New Year to you, thanks for reading this blog and I hope your 2025 proves to be a goodie.

In the summertime when the weather is fine…

July seemed to pass in a soggy blur

How’s your summer going? As I recall, I went to several concerts last month, as well as a dress rehearsal at Glyndebourne, doncha know, although we couldn’t stay till the final act as Nick had a rehearsal to play for and we only have the one car. Plus, as there was a train strike that day he had to drive me several miles in the opposite direction so I could pick up a bus to get me home, then motor back to Lewes for his rehearsal. Actually train strikes and go-slows have made for a miserable month, almost as much as the weather. A day out in London ended with a four and a half hour journey back via Blackfriars, South Norwood, Balham, London Bridge, Gatwick, Lewes and Seaford, in that order (train, train, tube, train, train, train and bus). Joyous! And in other news, I finally heard back from a magazine after a 13 month wait. It was a no, in case you’re wondering.

Enough of all this negativity!

On the good news front, I finally sent out another collection submission to a publisher. Well, it might be bad news of course, but good that I sent it at least.

Also, Beth Miller critiqued my book submission letter and synopsis and asked some very difficult questions, which has led to me doing some serious re-writes. But I’m still aiming to start submitting it to agents in September. Meanwhile I’ve started plotting the next book.

Peter and I had our Planet Poetry AGM today, and we’ve lots of ideas for our fourth season which begins in October, plus, while we’re in the close season we’re going to showcase a few of our favourite archive episodes.

Other than that, I’m looking forward to a wee trip to London to see & hear Voces8 in a prom, not to mention a whole week away next month in Wales, plus a family get-together. And although it hasn’t been the best year for gardening, we have a bumper crop of tomatoes and even a few beans. Happy days!

A quickfire ‘personal canon’

The other evening I was in Lewes listening to Jackie Wills and Grace Nichols being interviewed by Mark Hewitt. One of the topics they discussed was the idea of having a ‘personal canon’, in other words those poets or poetry collections that have either been formative influences, or that you dip into regularly for inspiration. The talk was of how important it was to remember that poetry is very much a matter of personal taste, and that it’s pretty difficult for everyone to agree on ‘the poetry canon’, except perhaps for Shakespeare and a handful of other ‘greats’.

It made me think of the huge variety of ‘exemplar’ poems you come across in poetry workshops. On Grace’s list were Derek Walcott, Elizabeth Jennings and Sylvia Plath. She very cannily declined to mention the names of any living poets, for fear (she said) of upsetting anyone, since many of her contemporaries are her friends.

I started wondering who would be on my list. Of course, like any of those ‘desert island discs’ questions, it becomes impossible to choose between X, Y and Z. So I did it as a kind of ‘quickfire’ exercise – not taking too long to think about, just put down some names and stop when you get to 10. I too have deliberately avoided my contemporaries some of whom I think produce brilliant work.  But what will stand the test of time? That feels to me like a key ‘canon’ criterion. Having said that, there are some people on the list who are actually not dead.

So here’s my quick list, at this moment in time, but in no particular order…(*those still alive have an asterisk!)

Ted Hughes – we studied his poetry at school and I fell in love with his work, in particular his poem ‘Hawk Roosting’, waxing lyrical about it in my English exam. Oddly enough I assumed he was dead – when in fact if I’d asked our English teacher she might have been able to secure a visit, since that was a period when Hughes was reading at schools across the country.

Eavan Boland – I came late to the party on this, only discovering the late, great writer after she’d died. Boland broke away from the Irish literary status quo, writing on topics considered ‘unpoetical’ by her male contemporaries. Stunning poetry and inspirational essays.

Geoffrey Chaucer – Although the general prologue to The Canterbury Tales was on the reading list for aforementioned English A level, I wasn’t that engaged to be honest. But encountering House of Fame late in life gave me a new-found enthusiasm for Chaucer. He was educated and cosmopolitan, and yet very English, unafraid to cock a snook at the likes of Dante yet capable of the most glorious poetry. And many of his themes are very much relevant today.

*Mary Ruefle – An absolute one-off. Ruefle is famous for her erasure poetry (of which she’s written a ton) and books of essays. Poet Tania Hershman gave me a copy of The Most of It a few years back – it’s a collection of short prose pieces, although where is the boundary between prose poems and short poetic prose? Either way, her work is so crazy-creative I can’t think of a decent adjective to describe it.

Theresa Hak Kyung Cha – I came Cha’s Dictee via my podcast partner Peter Kenny. It’s a postmodern hybrid collection like no other, and years before its time. A few pages of this and for several hours I’m physically unable to write anything in neat quatrains.

*Kim Addonizio – I devoured her selected poems Wild Nights – vital, sexy, funny, moving, just extraordinary. I always, always get an injection of energy and creativity when I dip into her work.

Walt Whitman – I admit I only really got into Leaves of Grass after singing in a performance of Vaughan Williams’s Sea Symphony, featuring extracts of Whitman’s wonderful, exuberant poetry. I found the whole thing as a PDF on the web, then realised it was 674 pages. So no, I haven’t read it all.

Tomas Transtromer – spare, beautiful, always surprising. A workshopping favourite I know, but for good reason.

*Roger McGough – as a teenager I loved the Liverpool Poets and I still read McGough for his wit and humour. A nice reminder of how a light touch can pack a huge punch in political poetry.

Alfred Lord Tennyson – I never thought I’d be including a Victorian poet in this list, but In Memoriam AHH had a big impact on me, and still serves as a model of how to write about grief.

Others I seem to have left off – oh no! Dante, Heaney, Auden etc etc. Yikes.

 

Oh hello! Quick catch up

What was I doing all last month? Mostly singing (I passed my Grade 8 with merit – hurrah!), the odd party (friends with birthdays and/or launches), gardening (what was possible with the scaffolding up), executor stuff for my sister, making jam & chutney from all the rhubarb, and seeing an old friend from my adidas/Nike days who was over from the States and came to see me for a day. So a LOT of excitement. As regards poetry:

A few disappointments – the usual rejections, also my collection is somewhat in mothballs at the moment for various reasons, and may not see the light of day after all. But I’m oddly upbeat about it. I feel I’ve kind of moved on and am working on new strands. I’m bad at feeling pleased about poems for very long, they go stale on me and I just can’t bring myself to stick by them. This happens even if a poem is published somewhere – in fact especially so. I hope this is normal. Anyway, I’m sure at least some of the poems will find their way into a pamphlet or collection at some point.

On the positive side – I’ve re-joined the Poetry Book Society. I didn’t renew for several years, for various reasons. I still don’t really like the magazine they send out, and the ‘selection’ process, with different selectors every season or so, does seem to mean a lot of the same poets popping up on a regular basis. However, I do need to widen my reading in a more systematic way. It feeds into my writing but also into the podcast. We’re just coming up to our Season 2 finale, in which I interview Fiona Sampson. Fiona got me thinking about many things, for example I was inspired by the way she spoke about her tenure as editor of Poetry Review. So I’m already fired up about Season 3 of Planet Poetry.

Also positive – Richard Skinner has taken a poem of mine for the next issue of 14, a welcome acceptance email after a tranche of NOs (thank you, thank you!) Plus I have a poem out in the latest edition of Prole, and in the Autumn I’ve a poem in the 100th edition of The Frogmore Papers.

And of course I’m still plugging away at the list of poetry magazines and their submissions windows. The big quarterly update was last month, and I also send out end of the month reminders. I’ve got a good list of subscribers and people are very appreciative. So now I’m thinking about what else I can offer. Watch this space.

On poetry magazines: The A3 Review

You know how I’m a bit of a sucker for interesting poetry formats? Well, I’ve often wondered what The A3 Review was all about – a paean to the London to Portsmouth road, perhaps? Or a massive mag that won’t go through your letterbox? I bought a copy of issue #13 to find it’s neither of those. As the website says, it’s ‘a magazine that behaves like a map’ – it comes folded into A6 size, but opens out to reveal its contents.

A3 Review issue 13

In it I found poems by a number of international writers who I wasn’t familiar with, plus a pocket-sized Q & A with Roger Robinson (top tip: ‘read & write more, publish less’) and some quirky graphics. It was really interesting to see the poems spread out, so you get a visual sense of how they sit together as well as how they ‘talk’ to each other. Also in my package (sent from Spain where editor Sean Levin perhaps is based) was ‘Write About The House’, an innovative writing prompts booklet, or rather map, in the same A3 fold-out form. It’s a visual treat, as well as being packed with interesting prompts.

Write About the House by Writing Maps

How cool is this? The A3 Press has over 20 of these themed writing maps and also produces chapbooks (chapmaps?) as well as the A3 Review. Excellent value for money too.

PS: I’ve been asked if I get free copies of stuff that I review or talk about on this blog. The short answer is no, unless it’s a contributor’s copy of a magazine or a book that I’ve blurbed. This includes my quarterly list of magazine submission windows. So any ‘endorsement’ is entirely just my own thoughts.

Drum roll please, the essay is submitted (and other news)

End of my first year on the MA Poetry & Poetics

On Tuesday I submitted my Spring term essay (HURRAH!), and well before the deadline, so no stress, except for not being able to find anything on my desk under the various piles of articles, but they are now all filed away. (This is the module I’ve been studying, if you’re interested). I’ve sent back the four library books I still had. I’m catching up with blogging, emailing and various house and garden jobs.

It’s all been rather strange, distance-learning with very little contact with other students or tutors. I’ve never actually set foot in the University library. Bizarre! If I go back for the second year I’m going to enjoy mooching about the library, going for the odd tutorial, having the odd beer with course-mates and doing all the things I remember as being What Students Do. We shall see how things pan out. There’s no teaching in the Summer term, so that’s my academic year over, pretty much, and universities have been told they can’t offer any face to face teaching in Arts subjects anyway. But I’ve been very lucky. I’m already set up to work from home, I don’t have to worry about accommodation or jobs or a career. But it must have been a pretty awful academic year for most students.

Butcher’s Dog magazine

Another nice thing was to have a poem accepted for the next edition of Butcher’s Dog magazine. Editor Jo Clement was recently being praised on Twitter for the quality and sensitivity of her rejections. It almost made me wish I’d had one. Now that’s perverse for you! I’m a new subscriber to the Dog (see more about it on this recent post) and although I’ve submitted there before this is my first acceptance, so I’m very pleased. Poetry magazines do rely on subscribers though, and I think the way it’s described on the Butcher’s Dog website puts the case for subscribing very well:

Why Subscribe?
Pre-ordering helps keep us in press. Subscribers directly contribute toward advance printing costs and press maintenance. Buy today and you’ll support the mix of emerging and established poets we strive to publish annually.

How does it work?
Prices reflect the complete checkout cost. This includes postage, packing and transportation costs for the first twelve months of your subscription, which includes two magazines: Spring and Autumn.

The virtual Needlewriters

The Needlewriters, the writers’ collective which I belong to, hasn’t been able to host its quarterly readings in Lewes, but we dipped our toe in the Zoom water last night and presented our four readers online: Julia Webb (poetry), Emily Bell (prose), Karen Smith (poetry) and Jackie Wills (prose). The readings were excellent, and we were thrilled with the turnout. Although it was free, many people very kindly made donations which has enabled us to stay in the black. Even though we haven’t had any live readings in the last year, unfortunately there are fixed costs that never go away, like web hosting. So it was a success all round. Next event in June, and then in the autumn we expect to be back in the pub and able to socialise, which personally I find impossible on Zoom.

On over-exposure and other poetry ups and downs

It’s been a busy few weeks. To tell the truth, I’m feeling a little over-exposed. You know how annoying it is: Poet X has just launched this, then it’s announced they’re going to be judging some competition or other, then someone has just interviewed them or whatever and you just think I’ve had enough of Poet X and his/her face all over my social media. All I can say is that when you say yes to an interview, or send some poems to a magazine or competition, or write a review, it’s out of your control when these things hit. Sometimes it all happens at once.*

Anyway, at the start of March I had the magazines windows spreadsheet thingy to update (no I still haven’t got a short/neat name for this. Suggestions please) three interviews to edit for Planet Poetry, and the usual shedload of reading. I’d half thought I would enter the Poetry Business pamphlet competition this year, but once I’d got out my sorry pile of poems I realised it was the usual mish-mash of unrelated material with no discernible link between any of them.

Reader, I did not enter the competition. But one very good thing came of the ‘getting out the poems’ exercise, which was the realisation that with a bit of work, I had a dozen or so poems that could be good enough to send out. So I set to on the work, then did some sending out. Let the rejections or acceptances begin. I need to move forward and the only way to get my poetry-writing mojo on is to SEND SEND SEND, thus clearing the way for NEW poems.

My uni course is still online, sadly… it looks like I’m going to do an entire academic year without setting foot in the library. Thank goodness for electronic resources, and World of Books. But the handful of us majoring in poetry & poetics have chummed up on WhatsApp, and we meet for Zoom chats too, which is almost as nice as socialising in the ‘Common Room’, or wherever the socialising takes place in normal 21st century times. I got my first term essay back with a somewhat mediocre mark and dismaying feedback. I’ve certainly had some wobbly moments on this course and that was one of them. But hey ho. I’m a grown up and can take criticism, albeit through gritted teeth. And selectively. I’m doing this for fun, right?

Something that really is fun is the Planet Poetry podcast. We recently put out the 10th episode, an interview with Inua Ellams who really blew us away. A fine poet and a lovely guy. It was so interesting what he had to say – do have a listen if you haven’t already. Co-host Peter Kenny and I have a number of interviews in the pipeline and I like to think we’re getting better at it as we go along – I’ve certainly learnt a lot, and even enjoy the editing, finding music to use in between clips etc.

*OK, since you asked (!) there’s an interview with me on Abegail Morley’s website talking about life in lockdown, recordings of three poems on Mark Antony Owen‘s marvellous Iambapoet website wave 5 (going live on Monday 15th I believe) now live – and I’m currently a ‘featured poet’ on the Chichester Poetry website. Subscribers to South magazine will shortly be receiving the latest issue with featured poet Miriam Patrick, for whom I was delighted to write an introduction. I’m sure you will have seen Miriam’s work in magazines. She’s a poet for whom I genuinely feel a first pamphlet (or collection) is well overdue. Come to think of it, I know of several people in that category… I may make a blog post of it.

And finally, I’d like to mention a couple of poets I’ve discovered via the excellent Live Canon Friday lunchtime readings, whose work I’ve really enjoyed: Laura Theis and NJ Hynes. These readings are every Friday at 1pm and have been excellent – next Friday the line-up is Marcus Smith, Jill Abram, Andrea Holland and Cherie Taylor Battiste. Recommended.

(PS just noticed I’ve used THUS and two instances of WHOM in this blog post. All this academic reading must be rubbing off on me.)

On poetry magazines: Stand, Agenda, The Dark Horse

This is the second in my mini-series on UK & Irish poetry magazines. The three featured today are all long-standing publications.

Stand magazine

Stand started up in 1954, when, according to the website,  “Jon Silkin used his £5 redundancy money, received after trying to organise some of his fellow manual workers, to found a magazine which would ‘stand’ against injustice and oppression, and ‘stand’ for the role that the arts, poetry and fiction in particular, could and should play in that fight.”

What a brilliant story. Jon Silkin died in 1997 and the magazine has had a number of editors over the years, and a long association with the University of Leeds that continues to this day. John Whale is the current managing editor, and each edition seems to include a nice mix of both well-established and newer poets. It runs to around 150 pages and the landscape layout, while interesting, offers I suspect some challenges. The name of every contributor since 1999 appears on the website!

Agenda magazine

Another small magazine with a big reputation is Agenda, founded by William Cookson in 1959, with a big input from Ezra Pound, no less. Cookson’s recollection of how the journal came into being appears on the website, and is a fascinating read. I particularly liked the detail that Pound thought the fifth issue was ‘particularly boring’ and he suggested Cookson should stop, “but he soon relented, sending £5 towards the printer’s bill to help me to continue, writing, ’Oke Hay / Fluctuat. But get some GUTS into the next issue, and something that isn’t watered down E.P.'” Priceless.

The current editor Patricia McCarthy does much to promote young poets in the ‘broadsheet’ section, and the magazine (again more of a book really, at 160 pages) is a blend of poetry, reviews and editorial (and GUTS of course). Most issues are themed, and its ‘retrospectives’ are particularly interesting.

The Dark Horse journal

And finally for now, The Dark Horse. This is a journal I’ve been aware of for a while but only recently sent for a copy. Billing itself as ‘Scotland’s Transatlantic Poetry Magazine’, it clearly has gravitas –  there is work in this recent issue by heavyweights including Michael Longley and Dana Gioia.  I also really enjoyed the essays, including a harrowing tale of ‘cancel culture’ by Jenny Lindsay and an extract from Hamish Whyte’s memoir of his thirty-year friendship with Edwin Morgan.

The Dark Horse was founded in 1995 by Gerry Cambridge, who is still its editor, and clearly also the driving force behind its design and impressive production values. Incidentally he wrote this interesting piece entitled Why we do it – on editing a poetry magazine.

So no fireworks this week then? Hmmm

What a week. That election (can’t bring myself to watch). Another lockdown starts. Planet Poetry Episode 2 coming up. And I’ve just turned 60.

Planet Poetry

Peter Kenny and I were thrilled and touched by the feedback on our podcast first episode. Episode 2 goes live on Thursday, when I’m interviewing Clare Shaw (yeah, baby!) and Peter meets editor of Channel magazine Elizabeth Murtough.

Meanwhile we’re having an editorial meetup tomorrow in Lewes, the day before what would have been Bonfire Night but is now the day before lockdown. The Bonfire Boys and Girls have been told by their societies not to congregate or let off any ‘rookies’, but I can imagine the pubs will still be a tad busy. What are we thinking of? It should make a colourful recording.

Search for Planet Poetry wherever you subscribe to podcasts, or you can listen to episodes here after they are live.

The York MA

I’ve handed in my first assignment! Not that it carries any marks, it’s just a chance for them to make sure we can put one word in front of another, know how NOT to plagiarise and NOT to being a sentence with ‘and’. And I hope I’ve passed.

Whether I’ll make it to another ‘face to face’ seminar this term is anyone’s guess, but it’s looking unlikely. Ah well. More zooming.

Submissions, writing etc

Bad news! I’ve nothing out to mags at the moment. But I do have a dozen or so poems that have been rejected numerous times this year, so I ought to go back to them really, but I’m enjoying reading and writing about real poets at the moment, too much really, to bear looking at my own attempts, but that’s OK. It’ll happen.

Actually I had a poem in The Frogmore Papers recently, and I’ve two poems forthcoming in Prole next month I think, all of which I’m very grateful for, so I shouldn’t be moaning anyway.

The updated ‘Guide’

It’s out! My updated version of ‘A Guide to Getting Published in UK Poetry Magazines’ is here and I’ve sent out the pre-orders. Can I tempt you to a copy? Or someone you know? What else are we doing to do during lockdown except write and send out our poems? It’s a mere £6 including UK postage (£1 extra to send to the EU and £2 extra to North America).

Comps news

No, I’m not reneging on my vow to NOT enter single-poem comps this year. I did waver a bit when it came to the National Poetry Comp deadline, but as someone said on Twitter, having made the long list last year I rather feel lightning won’t strike twice (unless you’re Ian Duhig of course, who actually WON it twice). But that shouldn’t stop you, of course! I’ve been asked to promote the Cafe Writers Competition which closes 30th November (1st prize £1,000) and there are a plethora of magazines with their windows wide open this month, but more about that in a forthcoming post.

New podcast, plus new updated ‘Guide to getting published in UK poetry mags’

Eeek!

I’m trying to fight a sense of overwhelm at the moment even though it’s all good things that are overwhelming me. Keeping my weekly work commitments going and doing all the reading and cogitating required for my course, which this term is a whistle-stop tour of the English Lit canon (week 3: Virgil & Ovid, Week 4: Chaucer and Dante, etc), plus thinking up a topic for my first essay. Finishing up the updated version of my 2018 ‘Guide’ – see below – I KNOW, why do that now? But there you are, it’s done. And of course the Planet Poetry podcast (see below) about to launch on the apparently auspicious date of October 21. Help!

Recent reading

Although I have the latest issues of Poetry, The Poetry Review and The Frogmore Papers to read, sadly they have been scarcely opened.  At the moment I’m tackling Chaucer’s ‘The House of Fame’ – now that’s a great title! – my first bit of Middle English untangling since school, where I think we spent an entire year reading just the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. Then there’s Dante’s De Vulgari Eloquentia which I need to be ‘ready to discuss’ on Monday morning. Gawds.

Before the madness really set in I did enjoy Rachel Long‘s My Darling from the Lions (Picador), which is up for the Forward Prize I think. I struggled a bit with Shine, Darling (Oxford Road Books) by Ella Frears, also up for the Forwards and now also on the TS Eliot shortlist, so maybe I should give it another go. Lovely to see Sasha Dugdale on that list too – I haven’t read her latest collection but I really enjoyed Joy (Carcanet 2017).

A Guide to Getting Published in UK Poetry Magazines - 2nd edition

Updated ‘Guide to getting published in UK Poetry Magazines’

It’s been two years since the first edition, which sold out rather quickly, so I felt the time was right for an update. If you didn’t buy it the first time, or missed out, now’s your chance.

If you do have the 2018 book and are wondering whether its worth getting the new one, I can tell you that much of the content is the same, BUT

  • I’ve consulted more magazine editors and have included their insights
  • I’ve updated and expanded the magazine profiles (some have gone, others are in) and the resources section
  • The layout and organisation is (I think) improved and clearer

The cover price is £6 including UK postage – see this page for all the info about what’s in it, and to buy. Publication date is November 1st but you can preorder now.

If you’d like it sent to an address outside the UK, or would like to order more than one copy, do drop me a line first and I can confirm what the postage will be. Many thanks.

Planet Poetry the new podcast from Robin Houghton & Peter Kenny

The Podcast!

It’s here… well, the trailer is up, Episode One to follow very soon… Planet Poetry is a wee project from myself and Telltale poet pal Peter Kenny. We’re on a learning curve figuring out stuff like ‘why does Robin sound like she recorded this in the bathroom’ and ‘what the heck is that whining sound and how to we nix it’. But the main thing is, we’ve managed to pin down some fascinating poets for a chat, and that plus Peter’s and my musings on things poetical means we’re hoping each episode is an entertaining 40 mins or so. I hope you are enticed to have the odd listen, or even subscribe!

It’s a bit frightening, putting our voices out there, but we’re having fun doing it (so far!)