Max Porter

My brother had a load of Tintin.

I was talking to someone about this, whether you're a Tintin or an Aztec person.

And I said, it's interesting, isn't it?

Some people like Tintin.

And she went, yeah, fascists.

condensing of idea and thought and feeling into a perfectly formed collection of words that we we grasp to i i consider it to be our finest selves poetry that the the poetry in in all its forms the achievements of of poetry in in every language and across time i think it's as i think it's as rich as civilization's got um

you know barring the occasional fresco or cathedral i think it's the tip top and i think because of the exactitude and because of the type of person that is drawn to poetic forms and as you say the times in life when we need that exactitude and that control and you know i read like like alexander was saying you know um one is changed by many things environmental and encountered in the world but um

I feel myself utterly altered by some of the poetry I've read in my life.

And that's why I read it very undiscriminatory.

I gorge on it.

I feed myself on it all the time.

And I don't have any professor in my head that says whether it's good or bad or necessary or part of X canon or whatever.

I just fill myself with it because I believe it's very good for me.

I'll take you one more scatological step further, if I may.

It's a habit of mine.

We had poetry in the toilet because my mum felt if you put something out, you should put something good in.

Catherine Rundell told me yesterday that Oscar Wilde had sex with Walt Whitman.

Yeah.

Yes.

No, no, no, I was just thinking of all the... Welcome to Who Had Sex With Who on ABC Radio.