Hello and welcome to a brand new series of Frank Skinner's Poetry Podcast. Now listen,

I don't want to sound bitter, but I was contacted by someone who was making a program for BBC

Radio 4 about all the poet laureates who had been in office during the reign of Queen

Elizabeth II and they asked me if I would present it and I was very pleased to do that. So I

didn't really thought about the whole poet laureate thing properly, so I read around it, thought

about it, wrote some stuff about it, read a lot of the poetry of the people involved and actually

got pretty interested in it. But then I thought times getting on, it's odd they haven't got

in touch with me again and then the program was broadcast with someone else presenting it

and no explanation, no sorry, not even a no thanks. But as I say, if I really wanted to be bitter,

I would point out the fact that I got an Oxbridge man to do it who sounded obviously a lot more

radio for than I do. If I wanted to be more reasonable, the person I do want to be, I'd say quite

honestly that he did a very, very good job and through the seething I actually enjoyed it. However,

it has left me this experience, yes, with some emotional wounds, but also with general interest

and I would say a fond of knowledge about the UK poet laureates and then also the USA poet laureates

because I started getting interested in them as well. So I thought I'd do a whole series of

Frankskin's poetry podcasting which every poet was a poet laureate from one of the two countries. I mean,

it's important to include the US because you get a bit more diversity amongst the poet laureates

than you do without us, got to be honest and so that's what I'm going to do. Now, as soon as I

decided that this series was going to be about poet laureates of the United Kingdom and the United

States, one name immediately sprung to my mind and I thought, what do I do about this? I was

experiencing a mixture of excitement and terror and the name is not the name of a poet. The name is

Miss Jay Hunter Don. Now, to some of you, that will instantly conjure up John

...