Poetry please

anyone listen to this?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/arts/poetryplease.shtml

Yes, I just discovered bbc radio 4 Poetry Please. Fabulous. I heard Phillip Larkins's "The Trees" read for the first time. I replay the 1/2 hour program over and over again to hear it better each time.

Next week, poetry on poetry!

Good to see you away from the Radio 3 list Belleyang. We might publicise the poetry offerings on Radio 3 here and vice versa.

If the British people did not produce such gorgeous poetry, your isles wouldn't have an immigration problem ;-) People say I live in one of the most beautiful places on the coast of California, but on hearing English poetry, my heart yearns for Northumberland, lambs at Grasmere, for fields of daffodils, and thrushes song in spring. If Shakespeare did not write Gaunt's words of praise for the 'sceptered isle' in Richard II. Act II Scene one, if you did away with the whole of English poetry, no one would be clamoring to settle on your shores.

You are right Belleyang, not to mention, as well, the music of Elgar, Vaughan Williams, Finzi, etc. But I fear that English culture is more appreciated outside of our shores and the English people themselves are increasingly cut off from the richness of their culture and instead submersed in a deluge of American pop culture.

It is a real shame.

Yes the nglish have a great tradition of celebrating the spirit of place in poetry. Who cannot hear Adlestrop without yearning for birdsong?

Sunday 24th May 2009 (starting this afternoon)
Time: 16:30 to 17:00 (30 minutes long)

Roger McGough introduces a reading of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's classic poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, read by Finbar Lynch.