The Poet's Voice

The Australian actor Jessica De Gouw is The Poets Voice this week, delighting and surprising in equal measure with her own readings of Elizabeth Hewer, Mary Oliver, Maggie Smith and Audre Lorde and talking about everything from buying one-way tickets to London in her youth to start her rocketing career, her Australian roots, her love for England and on to her two new shows 'The Secrets She Keeps' and 'Operation Buffalo'. An education to say the very least.

The Actor Hugh Bonneville is the Poet's Voice this week - chewing the cud about everything from The National Theatre to Notting Hill, his upcoming films about Roald Dahl & the SOE, Poems by Rupert Brooke, Philip Larkin & Shakespeare, some twinkly stories about Dame Judi Dench, Ralph Fiennes, a fantastical dinner party... his chickens....oh just listen to it!

The Poets Voice this week is William Wordsworth's direct descendant - here to talk about the 250th celebration of his ancestors birth this year, Christopher Andrew tells us of his favorite poems a look inside the families vault and shares some of the families secrets of the man who began the Romantic movement in English poetry.

There isnt a thank you big enough for our health care workers but this is for you - this is also a small writing class for those sequestered at home - or at the very least how I go about writing poems with 4 of my own along with the how's and what's and whys. I hope you enjoy!

Poems to brighten up your isolation blues - some silly but astute, passionate but empowering, sumptuous and cathartic, Roald Dahl, Maya Angelou and Wordsworth entertain!

Avoiding the guns, the guns, the gins - Ive selected some poems which err on the sensitive natures of the men and the inner sentiments softly spoken. a good and dusty selection I hope will be new to your ear!

Death comes to poetry as it comes to us all, sometimes tragic sometimes repenting, sometimes brief and sometimes never ending - i have tried as ever to give a varied selection. An introduction to the deeply morbid and relentlessly poetic Sylvia Plath with 'Lady Lazarus' and another bulls eye by W.H. Auden with 'Stop all the Clocks'. finished at the last by a poem on the topic by myself entitled 'Something to do with Ernest'.

The eternal topic! - Finally I tackle the elusive giant Philip Larkin and his simple, erudite and wry work dashed with the strawberry coloured lens of the past that James Whitcomb Riley gives to his work and finished of with a shot of my own work. All poems about the days gone by!

Poems all about merry old England - have tried to put together some that will be new for you!

My favourite poems about the sea - perfect for a walk on the shore staring over the rolling blue, or for anyone who loves and longs for the waters tossed.