Ashbery’s poem ‘Your name here’ has been pinned up in my office for almost a decade now. Reading it again in light of his passing, I saw another element of the poem I’d never noticed before.

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Can poets learn something from the world of improv? After chatting with Alistair Baldwin I’m more convinced than ever that the best elements of poetry and comedy are basically aligned. This episode is also for you if you’ve ever hit a wall writing that dreaded 100-word bio…

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Feeling a little sketchy, I went back to Joanne Kyger’s On Time, which led me to a poem about why calendars can be so very scary.

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UK-based psychotherapist Steve Wasserman sees poetry as having a kind of medicinal power, especially when memorised. We chat about using memorisation to step outside the churn of the mind, then Steve recites the very tricky Wallace Stevens poem Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour (newly memorised!).

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Would you let a mic into your poetry workshop?

Sydney poets Benjamin Dodds and Mran-Maree Laing were brave enough to let me record while we workshopped three unpublished poems. We wanted to show what the workshop process can be like for those who might feel intimidated by the idea. I think the result is pretty representative of what a top-notch workshop can do for a poem. It was such a pleasure to share work with these two fantastic writers!