Hello and welcome to series 4, yes I know, our Frank Skinner's poetry podcast. This week

I want to read to you from a poetry collection called The Air Year by Caroline Bird and this

is a if you're in poetry circles it's it's quite a hot property the air year well known and prize

winning etc etc and it's a thing of beauty I'm going to read a poem called temporary vows now you

may well find yourself in this collection the air year I think I like to think that in any brilliant

poetry collection you always find yourself however you are there's a lot of stuff about relationships

in this and I think for a great many people relationships is where we find our poetry the way we talk

about the person that we're with or we used to be with the way we argue even as a sort of poetic

form to it and I don't know about you but whenever I've been dumped I go to those songs about being dumped

often Rai Orbison is my poet of choice only the lonely I mean if you just set that for a song title

it has rhyme which is what you need when you've been dumped you need order and rhythm and rhyme and

something to look forward to at the end of a line but also only the lonely gives you that fabulous

sense of exclusivity the idea yes yes I've been dumped my pain my anguish it gives you the option

to wallow in that pain and I for me that's an important way of getting through it making myself a

tragic character in the movie of my life okay but only when I've been dumped usually I'm the clown

okay I'm going to read you the first bit of temporary vows and like like all brilliant poems

really you think okay it's about relationship I think I know the kind of stuff I'll bet you don't

end in fact I should warn you that there are images of suicide at the beginning of this poem

not an actual suicide admittedly but still I think a warning at this point is right and proper

okay I hold two fingers to my head trigger my thumb I say pal I slice my throat with a single stroke

pull an invisible blade vertically along my vein remember the deaths we did together twiddling

other knobs in the air then thrusting our chins to inhale I loved you so much during that

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