The late John Berryman described A.E. Housman as ‘a detestable and miserable man. Arrogant, unspeakably lonely, cruel, and so on, but an absolutely marvellous minor poet… and a great scholar’. The Times obituarist went further, declaring Housman to have been, on occasion, ‘so unapproachable as to diffuse a frost’. That such a man could be so moved by a cherry tree in spring and by the dales of Shropshire in autumn says something about the separability of art and life.

The greatest contradiction for Frank Skinner, whose poetry podcast has returned for a ninth series, lies between Housman’s work as a Cambridge classicist and his verse. As Skinner observes, there are relatively few classical allusions in A Shropshire Lad, one of the most accessible collections of the late 19th century. The poet’s metrical phrasings are far removed from the cadences of classical scholarship.

A fragment of Sappho was found in the wrapping of a mummified crocodile

The topography of some of the poems is also, it has to be said, scandalously inaccurate, as any pilgrim can tell you. As Skinner nicely puts it, Housman’s Shropshire is that of a Worcestershire man gazing across the border ‘after a lunchtime pint’, rather than that of a Shropshire man familiar with its ‘mechanical nuts and bolts’. Which is to say, you shouldn’t expect to identify every dale and spire from his descriptions.

Listening to Skinner talk about poetry is a bit like sitting next to a philosopher while he talks to himself in a mirror. He ambles, he pauses, he races forth in childish enthusiasm, he hesitates, he corrects himself, he stops. It is difficult to tell whether his ‘I’m not really qualified to talk about this’ approach is wholly genuine or all front (I suspect it may be more the former) but it is endearing. There’s no doubting the depth of his genuine excitement as he reveals that a fragment of Sappho was found in the wrapping of a mummified crocodile.

That Skinner’s is the best podcast on poetry around is, frankly, a crime. I say this with some despair over the lack of active poetry podcasts available. Where are the led-by-the-hand commentaries? I want to be walked through a poem, made to appreciate it in a new way.

The American poetry podcasts I’ve heard are either too earnest and tendentious, or too fey. I like Skinner’s because it is reactive and seems truly felt. Even the idlest musings – ‘Prufrock doesn’t sound like the kind of man who should have a love song’ – hit home. If you had heard anyone else making comparisons between Housman and Claude Monet, or Sappho and George Formby, you would be flinching at the sheer pretension of it. Not with Skinner.

The discursiveness of the Sappho episode as Skinner skips from one fragment to another is great fun. Epithets that many of us would pass over – ‘god-crafted lyre’, for instance – fascinate him. As Skinner explains, lyres in the 7th century BC were commonly made from tortoise shells, so perhaps this lyre is ‘god-crafted’ because the gods made the tortoise. Skinner’s Catholicism stands him in good stead here. His supposition that his listener wants ‘more Sappho, and less me’ should be salutary for all podcasters.

Sappho was also the subject of a brilliant new drama by playwright Hattie Naylor on Radio 4 last week. The opening track, taken from Sheffield cellist Liz Hanks’s album Land, had something of the tortoise lyre about it, and transported me to the ancient Greek island of Lesbos. Here, Sappho had just finished performing to a huge auditorium of fans – ‘I just want to hold her hand!’– and was returning home to confront a brewing family crisis.

Sappho in Fragments was a deft and beautifully written play which showed just what you can do when source material is wanting. It tackled particularly well the very modern problem of how to live in the public eye without losing all sense of privacy. For Sappho, this meant weighing up the appeal of venting her frustration at her brother’s behaviour in her poetry – everything is copy – against the anxieties and shame this might inflict upon her family.

British-Brazilian actress Thalissa Teixeira was perfectly cast in the title role. Outspoken, jealous, frustrated, yearning, she had all the intelligence her brothers lacked. You could sense her rolling her eyes as the young men ran around her doing eagle impressions, Larichus (Oliver Hembrough) with his drink problem and Charaxus (Joseph Tweedale) the fool in love.

Hapless Charaxus was, nonetheless, always the apple of their mother’s eye. ‘Such a wonderful boy. Do you remember when he was little? That soft hair. What a dear boy he was, and so kind to animals’ is just the sort of thing mothers of grown sons say.

Sappho’s incredulous response to the relevance of all her adorations was perfectly timed: ‘Mother, he’s risking everything to buy a prostitute.’