Hello and welcome to Frank Skinner's Poetry Podcast.

Today I would like to talk to you essentially about one poem. It's one poem, one book. In a way it's

also 72 short poems, but we won't go into that. I'm speaking of

model city by Donna Stonecifer which was written in 2015 certainly published then.

Now this is like no poetry book I've read before,

as ever with these poems.

I have to be careful of becoming too effusive, but

oh this is it's so special. A friend of mine who is a published poet just got in touch

with me and said I've had to do a review for Donna Stone-Sifers model city

I think you should definitely read it so I did and let me tell you about it it's a square book with a picture of a sort of modernist city one of those sort of

artist impressions that architects do of a very modernist, very ordered

block of apartments.

And when you open this book, one page just says Q and then a colon,

as in question. And when you turn over that page the next page says what

was it like well now as the the book is called model city then you assume it's a question about the Model City.

Someone, Donna Stonecifer or whoever she represents in this book, let's just say the woman

at the center of the book what was it like when she went to this model city tell us about it and then she spends the next 72 pages.

It's one poem to each page, by the way,

telling us what it was like, answering that particular question.

Every page looks exactly the same in its layout.

You get Model City and then the number of that particular poem,

so for example, Model City 8,

...