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It's a tag team episode! With Robin and Peter meeting poet Charles G Lauder, Jr and publisher poet Jo Colley of Blueprint Poetry Press - who have published his 2025 pamphlet Year of the Rat, a profound collection informed by long engagement with Daoism. Also we speak to Jo Colley, who with Julie Hogg, runs Blueprint Poetry Press. Jo tells us what moved her about Charles's work, and shares insights into the selection and editing process and the sheer pleasure that publishing fine poets brings - as well as the balance between her own poetry practice and publishing.

Robin discovers spare and lovely work by Ritchie McCaffery, whose pamphlet Skail just published by New Walk Editions. And Peter is shocked to find himself enjoying Frank O'Hara's poem Why I Am Not a Painter.

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What was that? A bat or swallow? Something flitted past, but we can't agree on what we've just seen ... Erica McAlpine reads from Small Pointed Things (just published by Carcanet) that makes that uncertain territory her own, with meticulously crafted poems that harbour hard questions.

And talking of things that flit past your window, Peter gets an early look at White Teeth, Red Blood, selected Vampire Verses published shortly by Pushkin Press. We'll listen to John Keats's 'La Belle Dame Sans Merci', and hear why the knight is alone and palely loitering... Meanwhile Robin discovers Hope Mirrlees, and a long Modernist poem 'Paris' - which predated Old Possum's 'The Waste Land' by two years. Plus we read an affectionate poem by Tim Relf, for Father's Day.

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Still life? Not as we know it. Trembling with tension and beauty, and roses that cup darkness and secret trauma... Hear Richard Scott share from his extraordinary new collection That Broke into Shining Crystals, just published by Faber. This is brave and shining poetry, timeless and utterly contemporary.

Plus Robin and Peter dip into a verdant world, read the Imagist poem, Green, by D.H. Lawrence and, via Chroma by Derek Jarman, find ourselves on the shingle at Dungess by the nuclear power station. Robin talks breezily about Vanitas, the fleeting nature of life, and how she arranged the still life on the cover of her new book, The Mayday Diaries, skull and all...

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Planet Poetry is a labour of love!
If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support and Buy us a Coffee!