Poet Leonie Charlton on wildfires

An edition of In The Studio on the subject that became the dominant story across the world in the summer of 2026.

In December 2024, the Scottish poet Leonie Charlton’s house burned to the ground. From that moment, Leonie was obsessed with fire. She saw it everywhere, writing about and mulling over the acute experience of watching everything she and her family had ever owned go up in flames. In early summer this year, Leonie set off through the ruggedly wild and beautiful landscape of the West Coast of Scotland to write a new poem about fire for her forthcoming collection Deerlands. But, within days, the thousands of wildfires across the world began to take hold, reaching into Scotland too.
This is a programme about a poet responding to a personal calamity just at the moment it becomes a global calamity.

Presented by Antonia Quirke.