Hello, welcome to the podcast of Shortcuts.

I hope you're enjoying the series so far.

Today's program is called Incantations, and it's about spells and conjuring art into life,

and it also has quite a lot about poetry, which I'm very pleased about because my degree was in literature,

and finally, I feel like I'm professionally using it in a helpful way.

This is Shortcuts.

Brief encounters, true stories, radio adventures and found sound.

Today.

Incantations.

When I was a teenager, I wrote poetry.

I wrote it to try and get people I fancied to fall in love with me.

I felt like somehow there was at the very least persuasion

and at the very most magic in it.

This is not to disrespect my teenage poetic career.

I won a number of cups and certificates at the Beckenham Festival

and I have nothing to prove.

I wrote one poem that won a prize at my school,

which was basically just a rip-off of natural-born killets,

but luckily none of the teachers had seen the film.

So, in retrospect, I'm very ashamed of the plagiarism.

But even bad poetry can be powerful.

So recently, I've become obsessed with poetry scenes in big Hollywood films.

...