Ange Hardy, Isy Suttie, Lisa Brown, The Poetry Exchange

The folk singer Ange Hardy came late to poetry, but threw herself in the deep end writing an album of songs inspired by Coleridge. The result is ‘Esteesee’, which she toured along the Coleridge Way in Somerset, the path based on walks taken by Coleridge. Ange explains how she found his images and stories so powerful that she couldn’t help but be inspired to write songs, and how her song writing approach has changed since discovering Coleridge, who has opened her up to new language. Esteesee is out now from Story Records.

Ange Hardy

The comedian Isy Suttie has written a memoir ‘The Actual One’ (Weidenfeld & Nicholson) focusing on her unsettled late twenties, attending hipster parties in East London while the rest of her friends were settling down. Isy tells Ian she had to find a new way to write a book rather than a stand-up show, and how important Pac-Man became to her writing…

Isy Suttie

Lisa Brown presents the final play in our series of short dramas on the theme of Revolution. Lisa wanted to look at what happens to those living day in day out in conflict zones. Her play, ‘Did To Me’, asks what impact one single moment can have on the rest of your life. Lisa Brown is one of the BBC Writersroom 10, as well as an actress and a singer in the band 9Bach.

9 Bach

Fiona Lesley Bennett has set up The Poetry Exchange, a project that asks us to look at poems in a new way and to see them as friends. People are invited to tell the story of their relationship to a poem, and in exchange they are given a recording of that poem. We hear an extract from one such exchange, featuring Miroslav Holub’s ‘The Moth’, as well as a poem Fiona has written inspired by the story, ‘Adaptation’. The stories are available as podcasts from The Poetry Exchange website.

The Poetry Exchange