Audiography
2024 - BBC Radio 4 - 'My Poetry and other Animals'
The Poet Laureate looks into a tiger’s eyes, holds a giant African land snail in the palm of his hand, and stands in the middle of a room full of spiders as he drafts a brand new animal poem across this series. Across different creaturely encounters, meetings
with poets, and with some of the most vivid poems about animals ever written, Simon Armitage asks whether a poem can bring
an animal closer to us, and if poetry can help us grasp what other animals really mean to our species.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00268jl/episodes/player
2024 - BBC Radio 3 - Between the Ears - 'A Young Girl's Guide to Horror'
Award-winning poet Joelle Taylor returns to the cinema in Rawtenstall where she grew up, and to the horror films
that turned her into a writer.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002452l
2023 - BBC Radio 4 - 'Hotel Room Art'
The inside story of art in hotel rooms - and why hoteliers think it's so important to get it right. Ian McMillan has always been fascinated by the artworks he finds on his travels. Here he encounters mass produced flowers, abstract excitement
and ancient artefacts. In three very different hotel bedrooms he meets curators, designers and artists -
but most importantly he meets the art, and asks why we have ‘art’ hotels .
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001tqbs
2022 - BBC Radio 4 - Archive on 4 - 'T'was the Night Before Christmas'
Poet Luke Wright celebrates the iconic poem that begins with this line 'Twas the night before Christmas...'
and asks if we need a new version. Luke turns the 1823 poem inside out to try to understand why it has reigned supreme for so long (launching countless festive songs about reindeer and Santa costumes) but he also wants the new poem to speak to our moment.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001ghny
2022 - BBC Radio 4 - 'Letters to a Young Woman Poet'
Ask yourself, in the still of your night, must I write?'
In ‘Letters to a Young Woman Poet’ - three of our most celebrated poets: Gillian Clarke,
Penelope Shuttle and Grace Nichols, explore the deep pleasure of writing, and offer advice to younger writers -
in a programme which includes the creative insights of the Bohemian poet Rainer Maria Rilke.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001cwtg
2022 - BBC Radio 4 'Larkin Revisited'
Across ten programmes and ten iconic Phillip Larkin poems, Simon Armitage, poet laureate,
finds out what happens when he unpicks Larkin's poems in his centenary year, and lets the language that entered the culture resonate as he goes about his own life as a poet.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0019yy2
2021 - BBC Radio 3 - Between the Ears - 'Sound in the Blood'
Nature beatboxer Jason Singh explores the origin and meaning of his art, in a journey rich in binaural soundscapes -
full of sea, wind and birds, all created using his voice.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0013hx1
2020 - BBC Radio 4 'Butch'
Being 'butch' has always meant being invisible, for good or ill. Poet and theatre maker Joelle Taylor
celebrates ‘being butch’ in an age of increasingly complex gender identities.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000j8qr
2019 - BBC Radio 4 'The Art of Intimacy'
Our age is confused about sexual consent; what should it look, sound and feel like?
Presented by novelist and winner of The Women's Prize for Fiction, Eimear McBride,
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m00027xt
2018 - BBC Radio 4 'The Poetry of Instagram' - the world-wide appeal of Rupi Kaur, presented by Faith Lawrence
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09tcb4w
2017 - BBC Radio 4 'The Stately Pleasuredome' - a love letter to Manchester's green-domed kitsch cathedral of shopping,
from the poet Michael Symmons Roberts.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08jclmf
2016 - 'The Matter of the North' - BBC Radio 4 - landmark ten part series presented by Melvyn Bragg, tracing the history of the North of England across 1700 years.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07tczl3
2015 - 'Necessary to my Happiness' - Poet Michael Symmons Roberts and I track down the convent where Byron's spirited five year daughter Allegra died - to find out why she died, and how it affected Byron's work.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b064ygl5
2014 - 'Haunted Apparatus' - Archive on 4, BBC Radio 4. Ian McMillan explores our experience of the disembodied voice down the phone-line.