The language of poetry and love… NOT

Ivan is gutted when he finds out that one of the greatest ever Latino poets Jorge Luis Borges preferred English to Spanish, their shared mother tongue. Award-winning Afro-Brazilian Latinx writer and poet Guido Melo weighs in, trash-talking the English obsession with rhyme in poetry. In-house ESOL teacher Ai-Lin puts our sanity to the test by running through the crazy number of words that sound the same and are spelled the same but have different meanings. Hate, not love, is in the air.

Multilingual author and poet Guido Melo has lived in Naarm, Melbourne for twenty years. He made himself learn to love AFL.

One of the things I personally hate about English poetry is the rhyming... I think it's infantilised poetry. The room, the doom... I dont even know how to do it.

Guido Melo

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The language of poetry and love… NOT

SBS Audio

17/10/202333:31

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Bad English is a comedy podcast from SBS Audio about the lows of learning the world's most widely spoken and studied language. Host Ivan Aristeguieta, English expert Ai-Lin Bhugun and special guests share their learning journeys, and hit back at the illogical rules and infuriating exceptions that govern the language. If you've ever wanted to vent your frustrations with learning English, this is the podcast for you.

Follow Bad English in the SBS Audio app, or wherever you get your podcasts, to catch all seven episodes in the series.

Host: Ivan Aristeguieta

Executive Producer: Ian Walker

Producers: Beź Zewdie

Sound design and edit: Tiffany Dimmack