Hello and welcome to a brand new series of Frank Skinner's poetry podcast.

Let me let you into a technique of mine. Whenever I get a collection of poems by a single

poet who I don't know, I will read through it, scribbling stuff on the poems, but I will

go back to the title page and I write sort of my general thoughts, my big sweeping ideas

about this poet. I'm making them sound grand, but they're not things I normally share

verbatim, although they might get sort of mingled into these podcasts a bit. However,

today I thought I'd just read what I've written just straight from the page, just this

little bit at the front of a book I was given called Shine Darling by a poet called

Ella Freer, so I was unfamiliar with and this is what I wrote as far as my general notes

is concerned on the front page of the book.

Spikey Swery Funny Tragic on Settling and yet Joy inducing was the first thing I wrote

and then she has an extra mile sensibility, rushing past the obviously poetic and looking

on the higher shelves. Really, I mean, I don't know if I'm not a phrase I had on that day.

Not afraid to celebrate art, but does it in a rug pulling away? There are some poems

about fine art and stuff in the collection. Now, here's a question. Can prose be poetry?

Question mark. Yes, is my conclusion. And finally, the book is not just gathered

separate. It has a distinctive and compelling voice. It's clever, kind and detached.

Now if I was writing this for publication, I don't think I'd end clever, kind and

detached. It makes it sound like a failing, detached element. I don't think it is at all.

I was sort of blown away by it's shine darling by Ella Freer's, so I thought I'd share

a couple of the poems with you. I've only just discovered this poem and this book myself

and so it's still fresh paint as far as I'm concerned. But let's just go for it. I want

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