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As a writer, I'm particularly drawn to great endings, and I read the extraordinary closing paragraphs of Lytton Strachey’s biography Queen Victoria. Strachey imagines Victoria's fading mind retracing the vanished visions of her long history—passing back through decades of memories in a poignant, poetic cascade that captures both the end of a life and the end of an era.

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Visit Gretchen's website to learn more about Gretchen's best-selling books, products from The Happiness Project Collection, and the Happier app.

Find the transcript for this episode on the episode details page in the Apple Podcasts app. 

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Ian McMillan's guests include the Poet Laureate Simon Armitage with poetry from his latest collection 'New Cemetery', impressionist and poet Alistair McGowan and Joelle Taylor with her new book 'Maryville'.

Poet Laureate Simon Armitage shares poems from his recent collection 'New Cemetery' - inspired by a cemetery that was being built near his house during lockdown. The poems incorporate a litany of moth species' names, meditations on writing, the dead as an audience for nature - and include responses to the death of Simon's father. Simon also contributes to our 'Neon Line' series - where we ask a poet to celebrate a remarkable line from any poem.

Alistair McGowan is an impressionist, a stand-up comedian, as well as a pianist and a poet. In his poems featured on this week's show we encounter a tussle between a sofa and a cat, a critique of using 'that' instead of 'who' or 'which', and a tender exploration of the names we give siblings. His poetry collection is called 'Not what we were expecting'.

Joelle Taylor brings us brand new poems from 'Maryville' - the story of a mythical bar in a snowglobe, a stage and a space for lesbian lives and relationships that might otherwise be forgotten. It's been described by Bernadine Evaristo as 'a consistently dazzling work of art'. Joelle won the TS Eliot Prize for poetry for 'C+nto & Othered Poems' and has since published her acclaimed novel, 'The Night Alphabet'.

Five decades of rock and roll with none of the names redacted. In the despatches this week …

… Kevin Rowland? Adam Ant? Toyah? Morrissey? Which Smash Hits cover stars are now ‘legends’?

… a classic encounter with Van Morrison down a Bristol alley

… the boy who mailed dead rodents and Boomtown Rats singles to radio stations became Pope Leo XIV!

… 25 recent big-name Hollywood films all flopped. Are robots the new movie stars?

… was Sticky Fingers the last Stones album with songs?

… best nights out for a tenner

… RIP Gilson Lavis and Donna Godchaux

... the daft rituals of the ’70s ‘slow dance’

… when Percy Sledge was a hospital porter

… “Run for your life, it’s Eater!”

… Tom Waits’ on-brand luggage, Boo Hewerdine and birthday guest Mike Sketch on the joy of gigs on your own (and in a scout hut in Staveley).

Help us to keep The Longest Conversation In Rock going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

Help us to keep The Longest Continuous Conversation In Rock'n'Roll going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

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Madhuri Vijay reads her story “Lara’s Theme,” from the November 24, 2025, issue of the magazine. Vijay is the author of the novel “The Far Field,” which won India’s J.C.B. Prize for Literature in 2019. She is at work on her second novel. 

David Hockney is arguably Britain’s most loved living artist. He's known as a colourful character, not only because of his vibrant, colour rich paintings of Californian landscapes, glittering blue pools, and thick Yorkshire woodlands, but also his own carefully curated image from the 1960s- bright blond hair and oversized thick black round glasses.

He delights in using new technology to create; from the polaroid, to the fax machine, and his iPad.

Now, more than 60 years into his career, aged 88, David Hockney is not slowing down.

His image has recently been depicted by drones in a light-show in the skies above Bradford, in a colourful tribute to the city’s most famous son.

Becky Milligan speaks to his muse, the textile designer Celia Birtwell, art historian Marco Livingstone, dancer and contemporary Wayne Sleep and art critic Waldemar Januszczak.

Production

Archive

The story of Guinness is one of great success, yes, but also turbulence. Together with historian Antonia Hart, Ned Guinness has produced a family history that doesn't shy away from the challenges faced, while shining a spotlight on some of the key figures in the ultimate success of the brand. Our story passes through events like 1798 and 1916, but there is also talk of the future.

Please vote for The Dublin Pub: https://www.irishbookawards.ie/

Irish inflation and the 'New' Housing plan

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We’re rediscovering John Updike in the afterlife of a great writer. The Selected Letters of John Updike, just published, come to 800 pages of unguarded messages to his wives and lovers, to his mother and his editors. We’re turning to his kids for a fresh measure of the artist who cracked open the sexual revolution of the 1960s and lived it his own way.

Miranda Updike, Michael Updike, Elizabeth Updike Cobblah, and David Updike. Photograph by Jameson Sempey, Reading Eagle, courtesy of A.A. Knopf.

Couples was his breakthrough novel and bestseller in 1968. His second son, Michael, and his second daughter, Miranda, were adolescent witnesses to the story. We’re gathered in Michael’s house on the North Shore of Boston, the heart of Updike Country, to resurface the glow in John Updike’s prose and the pleasure in his company.

The post John Updike’s Vocation appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

What function do ceremonies like Armistice Day perform? How do we balance desires for reconciliation with feelings about revenge? How we remember wars and what commemoration means is much less settled than we might think. And that throws up questions, in times when conflicts are spreading close to us in western Europe, of how wars end and how we balance our concern for justice and peace with darker impulses?

Joining presenter Anne McElvoy for BBC Radio 4's roundtable discussion about the ideas shaping our world are:

Producer: Ruth Watts

Text of the poem here.

Read the transcript of this episode here!

Topics discussed in this episode include:

-My new website!

-My Substack

-The meaning and history of New Formalism

-“Can Poetry Matter?” by Dana Gioia

-The Big Read and Poetry Out Loud

-“The Catholic Writer Today” by Dana Gioia

-“Poetry as Enchantment” by Dana Gioia

-Boris Dralyuk on Noir Poetry

-The Noir hero

-Christopher Marlowe and Charles Marlow

-The Santa Ana winds

-“Red Wind” by Raymond Chandler

-“The Lady in the Lake” by Raymond Chandler

-A net of coins

-Plato FM Radio 

-Of beauty and youth

-Of coyotes, dogs, and men

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Send me a note at: [email protected]

My favorite poetry podcasts for:
Sharp thoughts and cutting truths (Matthew): Sleerickets
Lovely introspection and sensitive reflection (Alice): Poetry Says
The landscape of Ohioan poetry (Jeremy): Poetry Spotlight

Supported in part by The Ohio Poetry Association
Art by David Anthony Klug

List of the most common metrical feet:
Iamb: weak-STRONG (u /)
Trochee: STRONG-weak (/ u)
Anapest: weak-weak-STRONG (u u /)
Amphibrach: weak-STRONG-weak (u / u)
Dactyl: STRONG-weak-weak (/ u u)
Cretic: STRONG-weak-STRONG (/ u /)
Pyrrhic: weak-weak (u u)
Spondee: STRONG-STRONG (/ /)