Show: 17.09.08 With David Francis and John Guy

Here's another show from the archive featuring a terrific Cambridge poet, John Guy, and a poet and musician from further afield. David Francis from New York dropped in during a UK tour to chat and play a few tunes.

The Beastie Boys - Sabotage

Melt-Banana - Cat Brain Land

Gorillaz - Fire Coming Out Of The Monkey's Head

The Psychotic Reaction - Hand-Me-Downs (made me the man I am)
Moth Conspiracy - Turbo Funk
Alex Brooke - Prapatang Grooves
Dan Deacon - Piggled
David Francis - The Penultimate Actual
Keith Dersley - Pulp
Tom Adams and Dan Jeffries - Iceland
Justin Grounds - Bird Wings
Hamell on Trial - John Lennon
Deerhoof - Green Cosmos
22-Pistepirkko - Don’t Play Cello
Alice Wroe - Sunny Inside
Lydia Mendoza - Palida Luna
Ivor Cutler - One at a Time
Dog Latin - The Way to The Way Back Home
Melted Rubber Humans - Coming Down to Ground

Podcast: Clive Oseman on performing poetry

Clive Oseman tells us how he went from writing haiku to performing poems that cover a full array of styles and emotions. He shares his work and challenges listeners to write a family poem. There are also poems on fear, as set by Renn Hubbuck-Melly on the last edition.

Poem: NUMBERS by Clive Oseman

New podcast coming up featuring well-travelled Swindon-based poet Clive Oseman. Here's one of his poems as a taster.

NUMBERS

As the numbers get bigger
barriers grow higher.
Some are real, ultimately insurmountable
others, illusions amounting to prison walls
confining you to your own time zone,
your mind trapped in better times
when you felt part of it all, finger on the pulse
and all before you.

It's a fallacy of course.
The tracks of memory are long,
will stretch to anywhere life takes you.
The scenery will change,
let it challenge your senses anew.
Visions of the past are mere images
which never return and are rarely true-
yearning for them wastes your later years. 

It's easier for me.
The darkness i have come from holds no sway,
just spurs me to disown the scars and travel far.
My barriers block my past,
the present and future are my manor.
You, you're in reverse,
can't move on from light that burns only in your head,
will never illuminate where you are.

Let go, look around, listen.
Young and fresh does not equate to hopeless mess.
This day is just as sharp, just as bright
as any you have known.
Immerse yourself, be bold,
don't let numbers lock your doors
with impenetrable codes,
because if you do you've not grown up.
you've just grown old.