Hello and welcome to Frank Skinner's poetry podcast. If you notice a slight tremor in my voice,

it's because I'm a little anxious about this week's podcast. I'd like to look at the poetry of

Craig Rain. Now, you may remember I did a podcast about Don Patterson a while back, and I first

discovered Don Patterson by reading his criticism. And it was incredibly impressive and made me feel a bit

intimidated. It's slightly different with Craig Rain. My first contact with him is I read a book called

My Grandmother's Glass Eye, which was published in 2016. And it's him writing about poetry.

And it's a scary book because if he thinks someone has written something which is wrong about a poem,

and as you know on this podcast, we try not to use the W word because we like to think that

every intelligent poetry reader's opinion has some validity as far as interpretation is concerned. I would say that Craig Greene

doesn't really follow that and he's quick to call out people who he thinks are talking

rubbish. So you can imagine talking about his poetry is a little bit hair raising. I should say to be

fair, it's a brilliant book,

incredibly informative and entertaining.

And as fabulous little gems like,

and I quote,

advertising and poetry are exactly the same.

Minimum words,

maximum impact.

Such a good quote because you think advertising a dark and cheap and dirty thing

and poetry, a beautiful, fabulous mind expanding thing are exactly the same.

Are you out of your...

Oh, I see, minimum words, maximum impact.

...