This is the last episode of the season one, and as we are heading into a long winter of uncertainty I decided that the last poem of the season should be one of hope and consolation. So this week I will look at the poem Everything is going to be

14: Reverse Suicide by Matt Rasmussen

Oct 22nd, 2020 16m 56s

Okay, a little advance warning, this poem looks at the topic of suicide, but this poem deals with the way we cope when we hear of the sad loss of a family member and the way we sometimes think about the pointless deaths of those we love.In thi

13: The Day Lady Died by Frank O' Hara

Oct 16th, 2020 28m 22s

This week we go back in time to the work of a poet who was a famed member of the New York School of poets. This poem recounts the day that Billie Holiday died and recounts the events of that day from the poet's point of view. This poem was part

12: Phenomenal Woman by Ciara Ní É

Oct 8th, 2020 24m 55s

This week I celebrate the work of another Irish poet, one who writes in both English and Irish and mixes both languages equally throughout her poems. She is part of an amazing wave of young Irish-speakers who have shown us that there is nothing

11: The Preacher's Daughter by Victoria Kennefick

Oct 1st, 2020 20m 5s

This week's episode looks at a poem that takes imagery and twists it so that everything is shifting and the reality we are confronted with is completely at odds at what we thought it was going to be. Drawing on the imagery of Alice in Wonderlan

10: The Great Hunger by Patrick Kavanagh

Sep 24th, 2020 25m 23s

This poem is an epic of Irish poetry. It takes its name from the translation for An Gorta Mór, the Irish name for the Great Famine of the 1840s that saw the death of one million Irish people, and the emigration of around two million more.This

9: Song of The Last Meeting by Anna Akhmatova

Sep 18th, 2020 19m 48s

Sometimes, a poet is able to convey with just a few simple lines, exactly what it feels like to go through and emotional break-up. In Song of the Last Meeting, Anna Akhmatova does just that. Written in 1911, when she was only 22, this poem I th

8: Something a bit different,

Sep 11th, 2020 36m 35s

So this week to celebrate the release of my newest book, I want to do something a little different. I want to share with you a selection of poems from my body of work that I am proud to have written, including a number of poems from my new book

7: Death of a Naturalist by Seamus Heaney

Sep 3rd, 2020 24m 38s

As a kid, this was one of the first poems that I ever really loved. It had everything going for it. It was about the things I did with my friends. It also had a funny twist, that made me giggle, and best of all, it used a form of the word fart.

6: Lady Lazarus by Sylvia Plath

Aug 28th, 2020 31m 13s

Sylvia Plath is one of my favourite poets, and also one of my historical crushes. If I was to meet her I would totally fanboy like mad and go like Chandler Bing in that episode where Ross and Joey are dating the same girl who just moved into th

5: Poem Without an End by Yehuda Amichai

Aug 20th, 2020 13m 24s

This week I look at a poem by the greatest poet NEVER to win the Noble Prize for Literature. Yehuda Amichai was able to write about the experience of being an Israeli and Jew during the years when the state of Israel came into being and endured

4: Adam's Curse by William Butler Yeats

Aug 14th, 2020 26m 15s

This week I visit a poem by the grandaddy of Irish English language poetry. Adam's Curse is a sad, evocative poem that laments the attitudes of people towards those in the creative fields, the pressures and expectations placed on women to fit i

3: There's Been a Death, in the Opposite House.

Aug 7th, 2020 18m 49s

This week I look at a poem by a writer who had a profound impact on my development from a hobbyist poet, to one who took the writing of poetry as a serious calling. This particular poem always appealed to me, no less because of the dark subject

2: 7th Game: 1960 Series by Paul Blackburn

Jul 30th, 2020 24m 49s

This week to celebrate the start of the baseball season, I want to look at my favourite baseball poem, 7th Game: 1960 Series. In this episode, I explain why this poem is not only the best baseball poem written to date but why, it is an amazing

1: Bullet Points by Jericho Brown.

Jul 24th, 2020 13m 21s

In this week's episode, I discuss the poem Bullet Points, by Jericho Brown. Jericho Brown is an American poet whose most recent book The Tradition published by Copper Canyon Press in 2019, won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. The poem was p