Julie Hesmondhalgh was born in Accrington in Lancashire and currently lives within a short drive of Simon Armitage's shed over the hills. She has won many awards for her acting performances and is well-known for having played Hayley Cropper in Coronation Street for years - until something Simon did made her rethink what she was doing and take the b…

Glyn Maxwell grew up in Welwyn Garden City, which is where his conversation with Simon Armitage in the shed begins. His mother was in the original stage production of Under Milk Wood, so the young Maxwell was soon staging his own plays in the garden of his parents' house. Simon attended the first of these. They soon found themselves travelling toge…

Olive Senior gets the prize as the guest who has travelled the furthest to join Simon Armitage in his writing shed in West Yorkshire. Born in rural Jamaica in Cockpit County, Olive currently lives in Toronto, Canada. At 19 she joined the staff of the Jamaican Gleaner, the main newspaper, where she interviewed visiting celebrities such as Elizabeth …

Loyle Carner talks to Simon Armitage in his own creative 'shed' - Hackney Road studios in London where he spend much of lockdown writing and also recorded his latest acclaimed album Hugo. Their conversation ranges from writing lyrics and poetry, to family and fatherhood , cooking and creating genreless music. Chilli Con Carner is a cooking school L…

If the poets of the past sat in their garrets dipping their quills in ink, waiting for inspiration to strike, our current Poet Laureate Simon Armitage has a more mundane and domestic arrangement. From his wooden shed in the garden, surrounded on all sides by the Pennine Hills, he's been working on a new kind of poem he's invented - the Flyku - insp…

If the poets of the past sat in their garrets dipping their quills in ink , waiting for inspiration to strike, our current poet laureate, Simon Armitage, has a more mundane and domestic arrangement. From his wooden shed in the garden, surrounded on all sides by the Pennine Hills, he's been working on a new kind of poem he's invented - the Flyku - i…

If the poets of the past sat in their garrets dipping their quills in ink, waiting for inspiration to strike, our current poet laureate, Simon Armitage, has a more mundane and domestic arrangement. From his wooden shed in the garden, surrounded on all sides by the Pennine Hills, he's been working on a new kind of poem he's invented - the Flyku - in…

If the poets of the past sat in their garrets dipping their quills in ink , waiting for inspiration to strike, our current Poet Laureate Simon Armitage has a more mundane and domestic arrangement. From his wooden shed in the garden, surrounded on all sides by the Pennine Hills, he's been working on a new kind of poem he's invented - the Flyku - ins…

Poet Laureate Simon Armitage talks to guests about life, creativity and music in his shedDoor BBC Radio 4

For a special finale to the current series, Simon Armitage travels to Wales to talk to HRH Prince Charles, The Prince of Wales in his Welsh home, Llwynywermod, in Llandovery. Swapping his shed in the Pennines for a barn beside the Brecon Beacons, Simon weaves the conversation around themes of creativity, inspiration and nature. He speaks to The Pri…

Sabrina Verjee works as a vet in The Lake District., but she is also a champion fell runner. She has recently has broken the Wainwrights record, successfully completing all of Cumbria’s 214 peaks, a 325 mile route in 5 days 23 hours 49 minutes. The feat involves 36,000m of ascent - equivalent to climbing Everest four times and includes includes Sca…

John Tiffany a multi award-winning theatre director is from the same village in West Yorkshire as Simon Armitage. They both grew up watching their parents in amateur dramatic shows in the Marsden Parochial Hall, but it was a chance trip to a professional production years later that turned John's attentions away from medical school and back to the s…

Gillian Burke is best known to us as a presenter of the 'Watch' television series - Springwatch, Autumnwatch and Winterwatch .She talks to Simon Armitage about her childhood in Kenya where she had a hands-on experience of wildlife, running barefoot outside her house searching for insects . Her love of conservation was inspired by her mother who wor…

Jo Whiley tells of her unsure beginnings in the world of broadcasting when she comes to the shed this week. A chance conversation with a lecturer when she was at university led to a job on BBC Radio Sussex' Turn It Up, giving her the chance to attend gigs and interview musicians. Since then she has presented many music shows on national BBC Radio n…

Joanne Rowling, known as JK Rowling, is known globally for writing one of the best selling book series in history. Harry Potter and his classmates now have their firm place in the collective imagination of a generation of readers. She also writes crime fiction under the pen name Robert Galbraith. In the shed, Jo Rowling discusses the joys and the p…

Poet Imtiaz Dharker was born in Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan. Her family moved to Glasgow when she was less than one year old. A fine artist and film maker, she has won the Queen’s Gold Medal for her poetry. Seen as one of Britain's most inspirational poets, she has been heavily involved for many years in Poetry Live, an organisation bringing poetry to…

If the poets of the past sat in their garrets dipping their quills in ink and waiting for inspiration to strike, our current Poet Laureate Simon Armitage has a more mundane and domestic arrangement. From his wooden shed in the garden, surrounded on all sides by the Pennine Hills and the Pennine weather, this summer he's working on a set of haikus i…

If the poets of the past sat in their garrets dipping their quills in ink and waiting for inspiration to strike, our current Poet Laureate Simon Armitage has a more mundane and domestic arrangement. From his wooden shed in the garden, surrounded on all sides by the Pennine Hills and the Pennine weather, this summer he's working on a set of haikus i…

The Poet Laureate Simon Armitage returns for a second series of his podcast. From his wooden shed in the garden, surrounded on all sides by the Pennine Hills and the Pennine weather, this summer he's working on a set of haikus inspired by the landscape around him and the people who drop by. Any distraction is welcome, even encouraged, to talk about…

Today’s poem is an excerpt from Stuart Little by E. B. White one of Maine's preeminent writers who lived in Brooklin, Maine.

Today’s poem is "Tender Talk" by Leonore Hildebrandt. She is the author of the poetry collections Where You Happen to Be, The Work at Hand, and The Next Unknown. Her poems and translations have appeared in the Cimarron Review, The Fiddlehead, Harpur Palate, Poetry Daily, RHINO, and the Sugar House Review, among other journals. A native of Germany, …

Today’s poem is “Boulder” by Sidney Wade. Her eighth collection of poems, Deep Gossip: New & Selected Poems, was published by Johns Hopkins University Press in 2020. She taught workshops in Poetry and Translation at the University of Florida’s MFA@FLA program for 23 years, and she has served as President of AWP and Secretary/Treasurer of ALTA. Sidn…

Today’s poem is “Glukopikron” by Katherine Hagopian Berry. Her work has appeared in the Café Review, Deep Water, A Dangerous New World: Maine Voices on the Climate Crisis, Balancing Act II: An Anthology of Poetry by Fifty Maine Women, Strange Fire: Jewish Voices on the Pandemic, and Enough! Poems of Resistance and Protest. Her first collection of p…

Today’s poem is "We Are Just Three Mouths," by Julia Bouwsma. Julia lives off-the-grid in the mountains of western Maine, where she is a poet, farmer, editor, and small-town librarian. She is the author of two poetry collections: Midden (Fordham University Press, 2018) and Work by Bloodlight (Cider Press Review, 2017) and received the 2019 and 2018…

Today’s poem is “Go with the Sun” by Jacqueline Moore. She was born in Greenwich Village in 1926 and has lived in London, Warsaw, and Boston, where she studied poetry with Seamus Heaney. She lived for many years off the grid in a cabin in Morrill, Maine. She now lives in Portland. Her most recent collection of poetry is Chasing the Grass (Littoral …

Today’s poem is “Solemnity” by Myronn Hardy. He is the author of, most recently, Radioactive Starlings, published by Princeton University Press (2017). His poems have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the Virginia Quarterly Review, the Baffler, Rhino, and elsewhere. He teaches at Bates College.…

Today’s poem is “Late Tension” by Audrey Bohanan. Her latest book is Any Keep or Contour (2019) and her poems have recently appeared in Birmingham Poetry Review, The Hopkins Review, and Sewanee Theological Review. She lives in South Berwick, Maine.

Today’s poem is “Loon Stabs Eagle through the Heart the Same Week George Floyd is Murdered” by Meghan Sterling. She’s the co-editor of the anthology, A Dangerous New World: Maine Voices on the Climate Crisis, and her work has been published in Rattle, Balancing Act 2, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Literary Mama and Enough! Maine Poet's Protest. Megha…

Today’s poem is “I Wrote This Poem for You” by Reza Jalali. He’s a former refugee from Kurdistan, Iran, writes fiction and poetry. He teaches at the University of Southern Maine.

Today’s poem is “Our home is this country” by Rita Joe, who was a Micmac poet and songwriter. She was born on Cape Breton Island and lived in East Bay, Nova Scotia until her death in 2007. She was the author of Poems of Rita Joe, L’nu and Indians We’re Called, Songs of Eskasoni, and We are the Dreamers Recent and early poems (Breton Books). She was…

Today’s poem is "Dear ghosts, in winter my camp on the hill becomes" by Julia Bouwsma. Julia lives off-the-grid in the mountains of western Maine, where she is a poet, farmer, editor, and small-town librarian. She is the author of two poetry collections: Midden (Fordham University Press, 2018) and Work by Bloodlight (Cider Press Review, 2017) and r…

Today’s poem is “Our Blood Aligns Toward Something” by Colin Cheney. He is the author of Here Be Monsters and co-creator of the podcast, Poet in Bangkok. He teaches at the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies.

Today’s poem is “Breathing in the Rain” by Amira Al Sammrai. She wrote it at The Telling Room in Portland, as a member of the Young Writers & Leaders program, which brings together teens from many countries, including her native Iraq. Amira is the mother of two young children and currently lives with her family in Las Vegas, Nevada. Her poem is fea…

Today’s poem is “Winter Friends” by Robert P. Tristram Coffin, who was born in 1892 and spent his early childhood on a saltwater farm on Great Island in Harpswell. He graduated from Bowdoin, where he later taught for many years. He published forty books in his lifetime and received the Pulitzer Prize.…

Today’s poem is “Winter Haiku” by Kristen Lindquist. Kristen lives in her hometown of Camden. She received her MFA from the University of Oregon. She's the author of three collections of poetry, including the chapbook INVOCATION TO THE BIRDS, TRANSPORTATION, and TOURISTS IN THE KNOWN WORLD: NEW & SELECTED POEMS.…

Today’s poem is “The Avon Woods” by Anna Wrobel, who lived in Maine’s western mountains and now lives in Westbrook. She was raised in the Bronx by two WWII refugees, one a resistance leader, one a Soviet soldier, both from a town in central Poland. She’s the author of three books of poems, most recently The Arrangement of Things (Moonpie Press 2018…

Today’s poem is “Signage” by Gretchen Berg. Gretchen is a performance artist/educator and writer. She is the lead teaching artist for Portland’s Side X Side, works in rural Maine schools through the Local Stories Project, and teaches performance courses at Bates College.She writes, “I collect fortunes and I love driving around, especially around Wa…

Today’s poem is “Heavy Traffic” by Richard D’Abate, who grew up in New York City and moved to Maine in 1971. He lives in Wells and was the director of the Maine Historical Society. Richard is the author of a book of poems To Keep the House from Falling In (Ithaca House Press) and his poems recently appeared in Agni Magazine.…

Today’s poem is “The Last Shave” by Laura Bonazzoli. She is a freelance editor and writer living in Rockport, Maine. Her poetry has appeared in The Aurorean, Connecticut River Review, Frost Meadow Review, Reed Magazine, Steam Ticket, and many other journals, and in Balancing Act 2: An Anthology of Poetry by Fifty Maine Women from Littoral Books. Sh…

The Poet Laureate has gone to his shed on his own this week. Simon Armitage can't ask any guests to join him in his writing shed in West Yorkshire due to the Coronavirus. So he sits in the moonlight hoping to catch an owl in the garden to inspire his writing, and to think about the world beyond as he approaches the end of his translation of the med…

If the poets of the past sat in their garrets dipping their quills in ink and waiting for inspiration to strike, our current Poet Laureate Simon Armitage has a more mundane and domestic arrangement, scratching away at a poem in the shed. As he works on The Owl and the Nightingale, any distraction is welcome, even encouraged, to talk about poetry, m…

Professor Laura Ashe is a historian of English medieval literature, history and culture . She lectures in English at Oxford University. At this point in his translation of the poem The Owl and the Nightingale, Simon Armitage invites Laura to help him with some of the final details . From the toilet habits of the nightingale to the Game of Thrones a…

If the poets of the past sat in their garrets dipping their quills in ink and waiting for inspiration to strike, our current Poet Laureate Simon Armitage has a more mundane and domestic arrangement. From his wooden shed in the garden, surrounded on all sides by the Pennine Hills and the Pennine weather, he scratches away at his reworking of the com…

If the poets of the past sat in their garrets dipping their quills in ink and waiting for inspiration to strike, our current Poet Laureate Simon Armitage has a more mundane and domestic arrangement. From his wooden shed in the garden, surrounded on all sides by the Pennine Hills and the Pennine weather, he scratches away at his reworking of the com…

If the poets of the past sat in their garrets dipping their quills in ink and waiting for inspiration to strike, our current Poet Laureate Simon Armitage has a more mundane and domestic arrangement. From his wooden shed in the garden, surrounded on all sides by the Pennine Hills and the Pennine weather, he scratches away at his reworking of the com…

If the poets of the past sat in their garrets dipping their quills in ink and waiting for inspiration to strike, our current Poet Laureate Simon Armitage has a more mundane and domestic arrangement. From his wooden shed in the garden, surrounded on all sides by the Pennine Hills and the Pennine weather, he scratches away at his reworking of the com…

If the poets of the past sat in their garrets dipping their quills in ink and waiting for inspiration to strike, our current Poet Laureate Simon Armitage has a more mundane and domestic arrangement. From his wooden shed in the garden, surrounded on all sides by the Pennine Hills and the Pennine weather, he scratches away at his reworking of the com…

If the poets of the past sat in their garrets dipping their quills in ink and waiting for inspiration to strike, our current Poet Laureate Simon Armitage has a more mundane and domestic arrangement. From his wooden shed in the garden, surrounded on all sides by the Pennine Hills and the Pennine weather, he scratches away at his reworking of the com…

If the poets of the past sat in their garrets dipping their quills in ink, waiting for inspiration to strike, our current Poet Laureate Simon Armitage has a more mundane and domestic arrangement. From his wooden shed in the garden, surrounded on all sides by the Pennine Hills and the Pennine weather, he scratches away at his reworking of the comic …

As someone who has been successful in many different genres, when Kate Tempest has an idea, how does she decide what it will be? In Simon Armitage's wooden writing shed in the garden, surrounded on all sides by the Pennine Hills and the Pennine weather, their conversation ranges from moving to rural France after growing up in south London, her time…