Frank Skinner's Poetry Podcast

The lead singer of Frank’s favourite band introduced him to the poetry of Richard Brautigan, and it is a gift that keeps on giving. TW: mention of suicide The novel referenced is “Trout Fishing in America”. The collection of poems referenced is “The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster”. The poems referenced are “Widow’s Lament”, “Love Poem”, “Kafka’s Hat”, “I Cannot Answer You Tonight in Small Portions” and “The Winos on Potrero Hill”. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Frank gets excited about the brilliant 17th Century poet, George Herbert. The poems referenced are “The Collar” and “The Pulley”, both by George Herbert. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Frank explores poems stowed away in prose, as revealed by Nicole Sealey and Emma Filtness. The collections referenced are “The Ferguson Report: An Erasure” by Nicole Sealey and “This Savage Language” by Emma Filtness. The poems referenced are “Page 260” and “Page 5”. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Frank celebrates the joys of wallowing in a big fat poetry anthology, in this case "A Century of Poetry in the New Yorker: 1925-2025". The poems referenced are “My Great-Grandmother’s Bible” by Spencer Reece and “How to Listen” by Major Jackson. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Frank loves the clay, machinery and scary religion in the poetry of Jack Clemo. The poems reference are ‘A Calvinist in Love’, ‘Christ in the Clay-Pit’, ‘The Excavator’ and ‘Sufficiency’. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The poet, Greta Stoddart, instructs Frank on the deeper meanings of three tulips in a milk bottle. The poems referenced are ‘Fool’ and ‘Three Tulips in a Milk Bottle’. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Frank joins a secret society with Pebbles Flintstone and the poet, Scott McKendry. The poems referenced are ‘Keepers of the Pedigree’ and ‘Hi-Vis’. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Frank finds the beauty in Amy Clampitt's poetry and written-off cars. The poem referenced is ‘Salvage’ from ‘The Kingfisher’. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The poet, Rebecca Goss, shows Frank life in a rearview mirror. The poems referenced are ‘Pheasant in Rear-View Mirror’ and ‘Sylvia’ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Frank shares a pulpit with RS Thomas. The poems referenced are ‘Border Blues’, ‘Service’ and ‘Poetry For Supper’. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Frank is very moved by what the poet, Mona Van Duyn, can do with an eraser. The poem referenced is ‘The Creation’ by Mona Van Duyn. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Frank and the poet, Craig Raine, explore a disused botanical garden. The poems referenced are ‘A Martian Sends a Postcard Home’, ‘Listen With Mother’ and ‘The Old Botanical Gardens’ by Craig Raine. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Frank and the poet, Wislawa Szymborska, discover how many people actually like poetry. The poems referenced are ‘Plato, or Why’ and ‘Some Like Poetry’ by Wislawa Szymborska. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Frank spends a day in Belfast, wallowing in the poetry of Seamus Heaney. The poem referenced are ‘Personal Helicon’ from ‘Death of a Naturalist’ and ‘Limbo’ by Seamus Heaney. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A poem by Ruth Padel results in Frank staring, for 15 minutes, at an embroidery of an elephant. The poem referenced is ‘Mary’s Elephant, Elizabeth’s Spinet’ from ‘The Soho Leopard’ by Ruth Padel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Frank is more than slightly besotted with ‘Lunch Poems’ by Frank O'Hara. The poems referenced are ‘Personal Poem’ and ‘The Day Lady Died’ by Frank O’Hara. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Frank gets very excited about the Rebecca Hawkes collection, ‘Meat Lovers’. The poems referenced are ‘After The Blizzard I Followed My Mother’ and ‘Pony Club Summer Camp’ by Rebecca Hawkes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Frank spends the night in Dylan Thomas' bedroom. The poems referenced are ‘And Death Shall Have No Dominion’, ‘Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night’ and ‘A Refusal To Morn The Death, By Fire, Of A Child In London’ by Dylan Thomas. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Frank loves a hard-drinking, hard-smoking Polytechnic lecturer like Martin Bell, especially when he is offering poetic praise to Groucho Marx. The poems referenced are ‘Ode to Groucho’ by Martin Bell and ‘The Second Coming’ by W.B. Yeats. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Jo Shapcott sends Frank, an enthusiastic tree-hugger, into a sap-soaked frenzy. The collection referenced is ‘Of Mutability’. The poems referenced are ‘I Go Inside The Tree’, ‘My Oak’ and ‘Cypress’. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Frank stands in awe as Sasha Dugdale sends a frighteningly honest Valentine’s message. The collection referenced is ‘Joy’ by Sasha Dugdale. The poems referenced are ‘Joy’ and ‘Valentine’s’. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Frank is alarmed by AE Housman’s A Shropshire Lad. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Irish poet, Jessica Traynor, explores one of Frank’s favourite subjects – ageing performers who don’t know when to quit. The collection referenced is ‘Pit Lullabies’ by Jessica Traynor. The cycle of poems referenced is ‘An Island Sings’. The poems referenced are ‘The Parent’s Song’, ‘Song of the Insomniac’ and ‘Nureyev in Dublin’. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

American poet, Billy Collins, makes Frank question the whole Poetry Podcast experience. The poems referenced are ‘Introduction to Poetry’ and ‘American Sonnet’ by Billy Collins. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Frank trembles at the fragmented beauty of Sappho, the superstar poet of Ancient Greece. The fragment translations are by Aaron Poochigian. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Frank explores The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot. Nuff said. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Series 9 of Frank Skinner's Poetry Podcast begins on 10th January. See you there! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Is it a man? Is it a moth? Frank has a strange night out with Elizabeth Bishop. The poem referenced is 'The Man-Moth'. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Frank indulges his obsession with the Anglo Saxons as he reads Geoffrey Hill's Mercian Hymns. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Did he or didn't he? Frank investigates Robert Browning's 'My Last Duchess'. The other poem referenced is 'The Pied Piper of Hamelin' by Robert Browning. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Nature gets horny and reflective. Frank is excited about the poetry of Jean Sprackland. The collection referenced is 'Green Noise'. The poem referenced is 'April' and the sequence referenced is 'The Lost Villages'. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Frank examines statues and statutes with Percy Bysshe Shelley. The poems referenced are 'England in 1918' and 'Ozymandias'. The essay referenced is 'A Defense of Poetry'. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Frank howls at the moon with Sylvia Plath. The poems referenced are 'The Moon and the Yew Tree' and 'Ariel. TW: mentions of suicide. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Frank celebrates the razor-sharp poetic mind of Don Paterson. The poem referenced is 'Rain'. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Elizabeth Barrett Browning shows Frank that it's hard to be a mother and a poet and a revolutionary. The poem referenced is 'Mother and Poet'. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Series 8 of Frank Skinner's Poetry Podcast coming very soon... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week, Frank discovers two very different war poets, Alan Ross and Alan Seeger. The poems referenced are ‘Mess Deck’ by Alan Ross and ‘I Have a Rendezvous with Death’ by Alan Seeger. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week, Frank explains why the poet, Charlotte Mew, should, in his opinion, be a household name. The poems referenced are ‘The Farmer’s Bride’ and ‘Sea Love’. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week, Frank screams the praises of Sinéad Morrissey’s Beatlemania poems. The book referenced is ‘On Balance’. The poems referenced are ‘The Millihelen’ and ‘Perfume’. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week: Thomas Hardy’s poetry, featuring love, death and men that look like holly bushes. The poems referenced are ‘Exeunt Omnes’, ‘A Light Snow-Fall After Frost’ and ‘A Countenance’. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week, Frank enters the funny but unsettling world of Selima Hill. The collection referenced is ‘Men Who Feed Pigeons’. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week, John Keats talks to pottery. The poem referenced is ‘Ode on A Grecian Urn’. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week, we look at a John Masefield poem from 1911, in which a naked drunk runs through a town at midnight, threatening firefighters with their own hose-nozzles. The poems referenced are ‘Sea-Fever’, ‘The Everlasting Mercy’, ‘Dauber’ and ‘Partridges’. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week: why do so many of us stagger through life leaving a trail of chaos and confusion? American poet, Kay Ryan, reveals it’s because we are carrying an invisible ladder. The poems referenced are ‘We’re Building the Ship As We Sail It’, ‘Carrying A Ladder’ and ‘Blandeur’. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week, American poet, Richard Wilbur, explains why stones aren’t very ambitious. The poems referenced are ‘A Dubious Night’ and ‘Two Voices in A Meadow’. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week, American Poet Laureate, Ada Limón heads for the safe haven of the parental raincoat. The poems referenced are ‘The Contract Says: We’d Like the Conversation to be Bilingual’, ‘The Raincoat’ and ‘Before’. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week, Ted Hughes shows us that writing a poem is like a stinking fox walking across a snow-covered field. The poem referenced are ‘The Thought Fox’ and ‘The Jaguar’. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week, our Poet Laureate, Simon Armitage, writes a brilliant poem about what some might think is an unlikely subject. The poem referenced is ‘The Patriarchs – An Elegy’. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week, Carol Ann Duffy considers the profound, prayer-like quality of the Shipping Forecast. The poems referenced are ‘Death of a Teacher’ and ‘Prayer’. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week, John Betjeman gets a tennis-based humiliation from the girl of his dreams. The poem referenced is ‘A Subaltern’s Love Song’. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices