You're about to listen to a BBC podcast, but this is about something else you might enjoy.

My name's Katie Lecky and I'm an assistant commissioner for on demand music on BBC Sounds.

The BBC has an incredible musical heritage and culture and as a music lover, I love being part of that.

With music on sounds, we offer collections and mixes for everything, from workouts

to helping you nod off, boogie in your kitchen, or even just a moment of calm. And they're

all put together by people who know their stuff. So if you want some expertly curated music

in your life, check out BBC Sounds. Hello, I'm Krista Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Discs from BBC Radio 4.

For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.

For more information about the program, please visit BBC.co.uk slash Radio 4. My castaway this week is the stand-up poet Ian McMillan.

Thirty years ago, he was working in a factory,

gluing together tennis ball halves.

Then he got a grant, chucked in his job,

and devoted himself to poetry and performance.

It's a matter of personal pride that he's not had a proper job since. These days,

he's known as the Bard of Barnsley, and his appeal stretches from the terraces of his local

football club to the balcony of the London Coliseum. He's a poet in residence at both Barnsley

FC and the English National Opera. He still lives in Darfield, the village outside Barnsley,

where he was born, and he considers and analyses British culture from this very particular

vantage point in South Yorkshire. I was born into a place that seemed settled, he says,

but it's changed now. The pits have all gone. The old certainties have become uncertain.

The landscape has become greened over.

Although I still walk down to the same paper shop for my paper.

...