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Holly Pester is a sound poet who experiments with the sound and shape of speech. Her recent work includes ‘Sooth the Saying of Sooth’ a looping sound poem about prophesying voices and public speech, exhibited at the Arnofini in Bristol. Holly performs a poem inspired by her love of Buddy Holly’s Peggy Sue, in which she messes with the vowels, scrambling the song so it becomes a strangely broken record.

Don Paterson is a poet, teacher, poetry editor and musician. His poetry has won many awards including the TS Eliot Prize, the Forward Prize and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Award. He’s here to launch the proms poetry competition, which he will be judging this year alongside Ian McMillan. Don tells us about his love of music, and how it informs his poetry. He reads from his collection ‘Rain’, published by Faber

The Proms Poetry Competition

Melvin Burgess writes books for young people on a wide variety of topics. His books ask difficult questions, and never talk down to his readers. His novel dealing with teenage heroin addicts, Junk, won the Carnegie Medal in 1997. He returns to the theme of drugs with his latest book, The Hit (Chicken House). Melvin also reads for us a mid-life twitter tale about a vanished wife.

The poet Joel Stickley is a member of Aisle 16, and the author of ‘Who Writes This Crap’ (Hamish Hamilton) with fellow member Luke Wright. He is also the author of ‘How to Write Badly Well’ (Nasty Little Press), which recently tickled our Verb listeners so much we’ve invited him back to take a pop at poetry collection titles through the ages. He’s here with the obituary of Kevin Southwell, author of such collections as "Ring The Bells Of Europe, Ding Dong Ding Dong Ding Dong, And Herald The New Era Of Prosperity And Peace."