Poet Helen Mort continues her journey exploring the complexities and subtexts of apology, drawing on both her own lifelong tendency to say sorry for almost anything and on remarkable poetic apologies including Ralph Waldo Emerson's The Apology.

She reflects on how we often use apology to justify or explain our behaviour rather than express contrition and examines the motives of those posting under the hashtag #sorrynotsorry.

Do we sometimes say sorry as a pre-emptive defence against criticism, she asks? And is this a modern phenomenon or a return to apology's roots as a rhetorical or argumentative device?

Producer Zita Adamson
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