In the final episode of the series, Michael Symmons Roberts confronts some of the most important metamorphoses that occur to our bodies over the course of our lives, taking Shakespeare’s Seven Ages of Man speech as his starting point.

He asks how poets react to the changes brought about by adolescence, by pregnancy or by serious illness? How much of our spirit and our voice remains constant as our physical being encounters such dramatic transformations? And are the ravages brought about by old age necessarily a thing to fear, or - as Jorie Graham and Michael Longley suggest - an opportunity to find poetic inspiration in the face of the dying of the light?

A TBI Media production for BBC Radio 4 Show less