Radio poems

Chard, curly kale, sunflowers, a foxglove,
perpetual spinach and so on

When I'm not at the allotment planting, preparing for planting, potting on and watering, or working through the chapters of On Poetry, I've been recording poems by writers from in and around Brighton.

I was asked to do an interview for Radio Reverb by Anna Burtt who writes and presents the Brighton Book Club podcast and because of lockdown had to record my contribution at home.

Anna then asked if I'd do some poems for the Literature Hour on Wednesday mornings. I dug out the old Zoom H1 recorder I bought a couple of years ago and started to experiment, first recording on the allotment and then in the back garden.

My first recordings were very dodgy but I'm getting the hang of MP3 quality, input levels and how to prevent the wind from mucking it all up with a sock over the mikes.

And I enjoy the weekly routine of reading through poems, deciding on a theme, writing up my short script to introduce two poems and talk about them after I've read them. My slot comes after a short story and some ambient sounds that fit in with the theme which the Literature Hour presenter, Ben Noble, finds.  Last week the sounds were waves and then torrential rain.

I've read poems so far by Janet Sutherland, Helen Oswald, David Swann, Sasha Dugdale Robert Hamberger and Maria Jastrzebska.