A new series of Ruth Padel’s Poetry Workshop started on Sunday 4 November, on BBC Radio 4, with the first episode featuring the Dove Cottage Poets of Grasmere. The first series earlier this year included poets in Exeter, Edinburgh, Newcastle, and the Junkbox Poets at the Dylan Thomas Centre in Swansea. Presented by Padel, and run by the BBC Bristol team responsible for Poetry Please, the aim is to “reflect Britain’s vast grassroots poetry activity”, as Padel explains in an article for the Guardian Review. She adds: “Workshops are the core of creative writing courses in unversities, of course, but there are thousands outside academe. Some are based in arts centres, some are Poetry Society Stanzas … and some are simply groups of friends. What they all have in common is people reading poems to each other.” The first episode of the new series is at 4.30pm, and is repeated at 11.30pm on the following Saturday.  Padel is a leading poet and critic whose works include 52 Ways of Looking At A Poem, and The Poem and the Journey: 60 Poems for the Journey of Life.