The Poet Laureate Has Gone to His Shed

The Poet Laureate Has Gone to His Shed is a British podcast and BBC Radio 4 programme in which the Poet Laureate Simon Armitage speaks to an invited guest, usually in his writing-shed of his Yorkshire home. The first series of twelve hour-long broadcasts began in March 2020, just before the COVID-19 pandemic, the second series of nine began in July 2021,^{[1][2][3][4][5]} and the third series began in February 2023.^[6] The programme broadcast on 27 May 2020 was recorded while Armitage was self-isolating during the COVID-19 pandemic, and was the last of the first series.^[7]

The broadcasts were recorded in Armitage's writing shed in the garden of his home in West Yorkshire. The contents of the shed include "a harmonium, a pizza oven, a daybed, books on birdspotting, a decent spread of music cassettes, and an impressive collection of sherry",^[8] and he has described it as "close to nature without camping on the lawn, it's half inside and half outside".^[9] Armitage and his guest have a wide-ranging conversation, often touching on his ongoing translation of the medieval poem The Owl and the Nightingale, and the guest answers a series of quick-fire questions such as "night or day, north or south, Woman's Hour or In Our Time?" before being offered a glass of sherry.^[10][11]

In series 3, broadcast in 2023, the podcast available on BBC Sounds was up to 60 mins long but only a shortened version of 30 mins was broadcast on Radio 4.