Pete Doherty will be on TV this week appearing in a show celebrating National Poetry Day tomorrow. The singer will read a Siegfried Sassoon poem when he takes part in the programme, which is called 'Poetry: From Pete Doherty To Andrew Motion'.
Doherty, who, you'll probably remember, or not, won a British Council poetry competition thingy when he was sixteen, says that the likes of Wilfred Owen and Emily Dickinson have influenced his writing. He added that poetry got him through a recent stint in the klink (don't ask me which stint).
He says: "I had to go into something. I didn't really know who I was and I certainly didn't know what I was doing there. For fuck all, I ended up in Wandsworth and really, really, I was a bit green, y'know what I mean? I've got a shelf full of books with HMP Pentonville, HMP Wandsworth on them, smuggled 'em out, yeah. 'Crime And Punishment' I read! Except my cellmate at the time kept pulling his shorts down and getting his knob out, and going, 'Is this normal, Pete?' And I'm trying to read."
The show is broadcast on Artsworld at 9pm on Thursday.