Writer Vanessa Kisuule returns with a new series of The Poetry Detective, a radio show about how poetry sits in people's everyday lives. Each week, Vanessa speaks to people about a poem that is deeply meaningful to them. She finds out why the poem matters, and then unfolds the backstory of the poem itself - who wrote it, what was the context it came out of and how does it work on us?

In the first episode of the new series we talk to people who carry poems with them in physical form. Including Karen Walker, who wears a ring inscribed with a line of poetry that came into her life exactly when she needed it most - "three days after she died, Diane di Prima saved my life". And Kevin Koontz, who tells us about the faded newspaper clipping of a poem that his adoptive mother carried in her wallet for 50 years. Can our Poetry Detective find out anything about the author?

Produced in Bristol by Mair Bosworth & Alice McKee for BBC Audio Show less