Press Packs

BBC Two

Why Poetry Matters, 20 May at 9.00pm (1x60)

Griff Rhys Jones launches the BBC's Poetry Season with a passionate and personal plea about why poetry matters – how verse has the power to move, and why everybody needs it. Within this witty, stylish, high-impact hour, Griff makes the case that poetry is accessible, enjoyable and downright compelling.

Simon Schama's John Donne (1x60)

Simon Schama celebrates the life and work of Britain's greatest love poet, John Donne. For Schama, Donne is the poet who transformed English poetry through his use of language and emotional honesty. With the help of academic John Carey and actor Fiona Shaw, he undertakes a passionate appraisal and forensic examination of Donne's work.

My Life In Verse With... (4x60)

From Burns to Milligan, Shakespeare to John Cooper-Clarke, many people, without even realising, have fragments of poetry lodged in their brains. Some of the nation's best-loved celebrities, including Malorie Blackman, Sheila Hancock, Cerys Matthews and Robert Webb, take a journey of discovery into the poems that inspired them.

Off By Heart, 22 May 9.00pm (1x90)

Learning by heart is one of the best ways to experience a poem, but the method has fallen from favour as part of the educational system. To encourage primary school children to engage with poetry, BBC Learning has launched a new campaign, Off By Heart. Central to the BBC's Poetry Season, this national recitation competition which launched on National Poetry Day in October 2008 continues in 2009 with BBC Two following children across the UK as they progress from regional heats to the grand final in Oxford, compered by Jeremy Paxman.

Armando Iannucci In Milton's Heaven And Hell (1x60)

Milton is often considered too difficult, obscure or miserable for today's reader, but to Iannucci, Paradise Lost is a thrilling work of creative genius that we ignore at our peril. Milton tackles everything from good and evil to human freedom and the existence of God, in language unparalled in scope and variety. In the film, Iannucci explores Paradise Lost in detail and looks at the way Milton's extraordinary life, encompassing work as 'spin doctor' to Oliver Cromwell, being imprisoned in the Tower of London and losing his sight, all fed into his masterpiece.

Arena – T.S Eliot (1x60)

Arena contributes to BBC Two's Poetry Season with a profile of T.S. Eliot which, with unprecedented co-operation from the Eliot Estate, tells the story of one of the 20th century's most celebrated and elusive writers.

BBC Four

A Poet's Guide To Britain, starts 4 May 8.30pm (6x30)

Poet and author Owen Sheers presents this series, in which he explores six great works of poetry about the British landscape. The poems by William Wordsworth, Matthew Arnold, Lynette Roberts, Sylvia Plath, Louis MacNeice and George Mackay Brown explore a sense of place and identity across Britain while also opening doors to stories about the lives of the poets themselves.

Ian Hislop's Changing Of The Bard, 16 May 10.00pm (1x60)

One of the most unusual offices in the British establishment, the role of the Poet Laureate, has no official job description and a small salary which is traditionally supplemented by 650 bottles of the finest sherry. As Carol Ann Duffy, the newly appointed Laureate, settles into the job, Ian Hislop presents an informed and entertaining history of the post.

Sir Gawain And The Green Knight (1x60)

Poet Simon Armitage goes in search of one of the jewels in the crown of British poetry, Sir Gawain And The Green Knight. Following in the footsteps of the poem's hero, Gawain, through some of Britain's most beautiful and mystical landscapes, Simon discovers more about the poet, his world and the stories that inspired the poem.

Michael Wood On Beowulf (1x60)

Historian Michael Wood returns to his first great love – the Anglo Saxon world – to reveal the origins of our literary heritage. Focusing on Beowulf and drawing on other Anglo Saxon classics he traces the birth of English Poetry back to the Dark Ages. Travelling across the British Isles from East Anglia to Scotland and with the help of Nobel prize winning poet, Seamus Heaney, actor Julian Glover, local historians and enthusiasts he brings the story and language of this iconic poem to life.

The People's Poetry – 30 years Of Poetry Please (1x30), 17 May at 9.30pm

Regularly attracting 1million listeners, the world's longest-running poetry programme, Radio 4's Poetry Please, reaches its 30th anniversary. BBC Four pays tribute to the programme in a half-hour film.

CBeebies

Poetry Pie starts 18 May on BBC Two

Straight from the oven, CBeebies cooks up a fresh, daily serving of scrummy poetry pie in a specially created new series for three to six year olds. Poets from Brian Patten, Roger McGough and Children's Laureate Michael Rosen to primary school pupils from across the UK contribute to a mix of funny and original rhythms and rhymes. Each episode is a unique recipe for poetic fun with every poem animated and brought vividly to life by one of five characters who act, dance and sing the words to the poems.