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Vanessa Kisuule searches for poems that offer insight into the issues we're all wrestling with. This week it's Doomscrolling. Can poetry help?

Vanessa Kisuule searches for poems that offer insight into the issues we're all wrestling with.

This week it's Doomscrolling - the obsessive habit of endlessly scrolling through content on our phones. We all lament it, yet very few of us can pull ourselves away. So, the question is not if it鈥檚 bad for us (we know it is), but what are we searching for on these ceaseless quests? What is happening to us while we scroll? And how might poetry offer not just a potential antidote, but a whole new language to help us get beyond simply chastising ourselves?

Can poetry make us sharper, wiser, and better equipped to change the status quo? Can it help us not just feel better, but do better?

With poetry from Vincent Toro, Franny Choi, Arji Manuelpillai, Caroline Bird and Christina Hutchins.

With help from head librarian and poet Chris McCabe, recorded at the Southbank Centre's National Poetry Library.

Produced by Ellie Richold in Bristol.

Available now

29 minutes

Poems in this Episode

MicroGodSchismSong

by Vincet Toro

from Hivestruck (Penguin Random House)

Algorithmiac

by Vincet Toro

from Hivestruck (Penguin Random House)

The World Keeps Ending and the World Goes on

by Franny Choi

from The World Keeps Ending and the World Goes on (Harper Collins)

I Was Just Live-Fed Two Men Knife-Fighting in Greenwich

by Arji Manuelpillai

from Improvised Explosive Device (Penned in the Margins)

75 Steps to Achieving Willpower

by Caroline Bird

from Ambush at Still Lake (Carcanet Press)

Practicing The Saving

by Christina Hutchins

from The Southern Review (Louisiana State University Press)

Broadcasts

  • Tue 9 Dec 2025 16:00
  • Saturday 21:30