Is there anywhere where we can access the full list of podcasts? I was hoping the website refresh would do ths for us but it still seems very difficult to access the different podcasts straight away once you get to the line break page. I can’t even find them now…please help! We love them in our poetry group : )

Is there joy in sorrow? Can tragedy ever be funny? This month, our guest is Caroline Bird, a poet who delights in troubling sensibilities and leading her audience down the garden path before swiftly turning the hose on them. Where other poets might tell it like it is, Ryan and Caroline explore how the most meaningful poems can often be found at the far corners of things, and how poetry finds truth in a world of ‘no facts’ and ‘not saying’. Plus, more poetry sparks from Ryan! So lean in, listener, but be careful – there’s a fist aimed at your heart.

The power of poetry comes partly from its ability to explode a language when it no longer feels adequate enough to explain the extraordinary times we live in. This month on The Line Break, Ryan talks to the Singapore-born poet, editor and translator – Alvin Pang – about multiculturalism and poetry as a force of resistance: against public expectations, political oppression and cultural efficiencies, as well as our own longings, ambivalences, lost hopes, fears and anxieties. Alvin recites a few of his extraordinary poems, and Ryan sets two more poetry sparks for you all to try out: writing family, and lashing out against bullies, bosses, and dictators.

This month’s guest is Hilary Menos, farmer, poet and winner of the Forward Prize for Best First Collection 2010 for ‘Berg’. Her most recent collection is ‘Red Devon’, which draws from her experience living in the Devonshire Domesday Manor which is now her home. In this interview, Hilary shares some of the crowdpleasing ‘bankers’ from her poetry set, writing poems in a slaughterhouse, and Ryan grills Hilary on her Superman knowledge. Plus – more sparks from Ryan. Produced by Culture Laser productions @culturelaser.

Lloyd Wright Up The Cut

Frank came to tea on Friday, said
he’d had enough of feardycats
and philistines, fake Georgian plastic
windows and half-timbered sheds.
He’d met a shepherd in the Navi,
a navvy in the Shepherds Arms,
a volunteer committee in the Cock
and Bull and none of them could see.

Look, he said (taking his half
an avocado and a slice of Emmental,
linking the two with rye bread and an arc
of water melon). It’s simple. A bridge
between two waters. Forest edge,
canal and river and a span of curving air.
But all the planners say is “Where
do all the tourists park their cars?”

For our third episode, Ryan talks to the American poet Mary Ruefle about finding the joy in the solitary act of writing poetry, the need to talk to yourself, and we hear Mary read from a selection of her incredibly distinctive work. And there’s more poetry sparks for you to try out, re-working found text with Tippex, and getting lost in language.

LIVE HOPE LOVE

A Poem for my Brother

I know where to find you,
long legged on the sofa
smothered in feline warmth.
I know your silence through the grunts,
the stillness of your habit. Windless.
You are what’s left to me now,
my Thames jetty where I know I can
tie myself to the anchor
of your love, compass pocketed.
We remember she’s gone
into blue heaven. You steer us
through reeds into velvet cushions.

Far beyond the spike trees
the ground lost all darkness.
“If your hands leave enough blood
on the arm of the plough, every step
will be filled with yellow-white flowers.”
Once as the noise in my ears rushed in time
to the beat of the sun that scorched out
across the plain, I felt the wood dampen,
heard the hiss of cell walls break out
in the furrows. “The land behind you…
Yes, it will.” I shifted my tongue
to bring moisture to earth, but my mouth
was hard like this parch of land.
I reached it where the shifting felt steady.
“Then the bringer of flowers will fall
on his knees, pack the dried mud
in his mouth, his saliva will wet it,
the desert will bloom.”

The Train

rattles across the lines,
urgent surge, packed with words,
orchestras of sound and rhyme,
slants and squints at life on earth,
inside diaries. Stacked boxes,
recorded packages, luggage racks
piled high with stanzas,
bags wobble under the weight of syllables,
carriages thick with children’s voices,
local dialects, European accents, heady music,
words unwind down the aisles,
pain stammers, loss declaims
sonnets and voltas in perfect golden squares,
celebrations in free verse, gobbets for gravestones,
vows at the altar, eulogies for the beloved gone,
dedications to be read on beaches
and in rose gardens, villanelles rolling their obsessions,
sweet talk in waltz form, bitter tango staccato,
lullabies on the night train of midnight vowels.

loved the first edition – listened to it several times and a wonderful bed time relaxant. Philip\’s voice is so smooth.