91Èȱ¬

The festival starts at London’s Southbank Centre this Friday. Men of all ages and from different walks of life will be coming together to discuss what it means to be a man today. It’s the first time the event has been held and the idea has come from the people who organise the women of the world festival and Jude Kelly the Artistic Director of Southbank Centre. So why do men need a special event to discuss masculinity?Ìý

Singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega first came to fame in 1985 with her track Tom’s Diner, and later hits like Luka and Marlene On The Wall. Her neo-folk style and storytelling in her lyrics won her many fans – her first three albums were hugely successful, and Tom’s Diner went on to be used countless times by hip-hop artists. She now has a new studio album, Tales From The Realm Of The Queen Of Pentacles – her eighth, and her first new material in seven years - and is here in the UK to play a string of live dates. She joins Jenni to play Fool’s Complaint from the album, and to talk about her songwriting career, almost 30 years on from that first hit.

Tales from the Realm of the Queen of Pentacles is outÌýnextÌýMonday on Cooking Vinyl, and Suzanne Vega plays a live dates across the UK from tomorrow, including the Radio 2 Folk Awards on 19 February at the Albert Hall in London.

What’s black and white and contains threesomes, elephants, Mick Jagger’s penis and two Daniel Craigs? It’s a new collection of poems, The Poetry of Sex. This is not a book of erotic poems designed to be read aloud to a lover, but by turns an implicit, explicit, nuanced and starkly frank study of the human relationship with sex. The editor Sophie Hannah explains how she made her selection, which ranges from ancient Rome to modern New York, fromÌýgay to straight to otherwise, from desire and hope, through disappointment and confusion, to conclusion and consequence.

The Poetry of Sex is published by Penguin Viking on 30th January 2014.Ìý

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According to the ‘Committee to Protect Journalists,’ last year over 200 journalists were imprisoned and seventy killed – many of them reporting on the war in Syria.Ìý Others are still missing.Ìý Next week, we’ll be broadcasting ‘Anna’s War’ in the Woman’s Hour drama slot. It’s based on the life of , the Russian journalist who was murdered in 2006. The series covers five key events in her life and in particular her work covering the war in Chechyna from 1999 to 2006.ÌýAnd in the new Woman’s Hour Archive Collection you can also hear Jenni’s interview with Anna Politkovskaya from 2004 about her why she continued speak out about President Putin and the situation in Chechnya, despite receiving death threats. ÌýJoining Jenni to discuss reporting in war and conflict zones are Caroline Wyatt, 91Èȱ¬ defence correspondent and Lindsey Hilsum, International Editor for Channel 4 News, author ofÌý ‘Sandstorm; Libya in the Time of Revolution.’