Hello and welcome to series four, yes I know, our Frank Skinner's poetry podcast.

This week I want to read to you from a poetry collection called The Air Year by Caroline

Bird and this is a if you are in poetry circles it's it's quite a hot property The Air Year,

well known and prize winning etc etc and it's a thing of beauty. I'm going to read a poem

called Temporary Vows. Now you may well find yourself in this collection The Air Year. I

think I like to think that in any brilliant poetry collection you always find yourself

wherever you are. There's a lot of stuff about relationships in this and I think for

a great many people relationships is where we find our poetry the way we talk about

the person that we're with or we used to be with the way we argue even as a sort of

poetic form to it and I don't know about you but whenever I've been dumped I go to those

songs about being dumped. Often Rye Orbison is my poet of choice only the lonely I mean

if you just set that for a song title it has rhyme which is what you need when you've

been dumped you need order and rhythm and rhyme and something to look forward to at the

end of a line but also only the lonely gives you that fabulous sense of exclusivity the

idea yes I've been dumped my pain my anguish it gives you the option to wallow in that pain

and I for me that's an important way of getting through it making myself a tragic character

in the movie of my life okay but only when I've been dumped usually I'm the clown okay I'm

going to read you the first bit of temporary vows and like like all brilliant poems really

you think okay it's about relationship I think I know the kind of stuff other you don't

in fact I should warn you that there are images of suicide at the beginning of this poem

not an actual suicide admittedly but still I think a warning at this point is right and proper

okay I hold two fingers to my head trigger my thumb I say pal I slice my throat with a single stroke

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