Waiting for the Concrete to Yield

What lies beneath the motorway? Beneath the concrete, the glass, the endless digital noise of modern life — the ancient earth is waiting. Patiently. Permanently. And it has all the time in the world. In this episode of Alden Carrow's Poetry Podcast, we explore one of the most profound and humbling ideas in all of literature — that geological and historical permanence quietly, stubbornly resists the frantic pace of modernity. That underneath everything we build, the stone remembers. We begin with a deeply moving excerpt from 'The Ruined Cottage' by William Wordsworth — a masterpiece of Romantic verse in which a pedlar watches a cottage, and the woman who once lived in it, slowly surrendered to the earth. Moss claims the wooden bowl. Weeds reclaim the sunless plot. Nature, indifferent and magnificent, simply takes back what was borrowed. Then I share my own poem, 'Penrith' — a meditation on a Cumbrian market town built from Permian sandstone three hundred million years in the making, where rust bleeds from iron gates, old arches drift into pedestrian shadows, and the M6 motorway adds nothing but a thin, grey stratum of noise over something far older and far more patient. And in our discussion, we ask a surprising question — what happens when you take that deep, red, geological time and place it squarely in the middle of LinkedIn? 🎁 WIN A SIGNED COPY OF CUMBRIA IN VERSE — LAKES TO FELLS IN POETRY Email your guest poem suggestion to [email protected] for your chance to win a personally signed copy of my book. It could be a classic, a modern favourite, or a poem that has stayed with you for years. Every suggestion enters you into the draw — and more competitions are coming in future episodes, so keep listening. New episodes every Wednesday at 6am GMT. Slow down. Listen closely. Find the poetry in everything that refuses to yield.