Press Releases

This spring and summer, the diverse and inspiring world of poetry is celebrated across the BBC with a landmark season on TV, radio and online. BBC Radio 3's exciting line-up as part of the Poetry Season includes:

• Poems For Today – over 40 contemporary poems read by their authors, including recent Poet Laureate Andrew Motion, in Breakfast each morning
• Sonnet Day – a full day celebrating Shakespeare's glorious sonnets read by Sir Ian McKellen
• Regular literature programme The Verb offers writing tips to budding poets in special Poetry Labs hosted by Ian McMillan
• Ruth Padel and others mark the 200th anniversary of Alfred Tennyson's birth

On Wednesday 20 May, Radio 3 marks the 400th anniversary of the publication of Shakespeare's sonnets with 14 sonnets read by top British actor Sir Ian McKellen, as drop-ins through the day.

The following day sees the start of Poems For Today. Breakfast listeners will hear a poem a day broadcast around 8.30am – all written or published within the last 12 months and read by their authors, including former Poet Laureate Andrew Motion, Simon Armitage, Jackie Kay, Clive James, Alice Oswald and Tony Harrison. More than 40 poems will be broadcast between Thursday 21 May and the end of June.

Renowned poet and broadcaster Ian McMillan offers tips on writing poetry to budding laureates as Poetry Lab makes a return to Radio 3's new writing, literature and performance showcase, The Verb (29 May-19 June).

Ian invites some of the nation's hottest poetic talents to lead a series of masterclasses in the finer points of penning poems. There will be advice for the hard of rhyming, succour for the metrically challenged, shining examples to imitate, and shocking crimes against lyricism to avoid.

Poets Kate Clanchy and Paul Farley take a train through "Larkinland" in Sunday Feature: Children Of The Whitsun Weddings (24 May), as they explore their mutual admiration for Philip Larkin's work.

Born within days of each other in 1965, nine months after the publication of Larkin's The Whitsun Weddings, Kate and Paul have very different poetic voices. They travel across Britain retracing some of Larkin's key journeys from Oxford to Hull and Leeds to London, leading the two to a series of lively interchanges on the poet's influence on them and on the passion they share for Larkin's work.

In June, a special Sunday Feature (21 June) looks at poetry and its audience over the years, from the publication of Shakespeare's sonnets and the Elizabethan audience who read them, to the present day scene with poetry slams and performance poetry.

Later in the summer, Radio 3 celebrates the 200th anniversary of Alfred Tennyson's birth with a brand-new adaptation by award-winning poet Michael Symmons Roberts of Tennyson's epic poem on King Arthur in Drama On 3: Idylls Of The King (12 July).

Poet Ruth Padel, herself inspired by Tennyson, seeks out the real Alfred in the Sunday Feature: Searching For Alfred In The Shadow Of Tennyson (2 August) and asks why he has become such a remote figure.

Many of his poems have become figures of speech but, although he has passed into the lexicon, he seems to have passed out of our modern-day understanding. Two centuries after his birth, Ruth investigates Tennyson's legacy in art, film and music and reveals that Tennyson is a poet for our times as much as his own.

Also, marking the anniversary, four contemporary British poets each choose a single poem or extract by Tennyson and give a personal account of why it means so much to them in The Essay: Tennyson 200 (3-6 August).

Notes to Editors

BBC Poetry Season

This May the BBC celebrates the diverse, compelling and inspiring world of poetry with a landmark season of content across television, radio and online.

BBC Two highlights include a one-off special from Griff Rhys Jones on Why Poetry Matters while some of the nation's best loved celebrities explore British poetry from a very personal point of view in Lifelines; and a nationwide poetry recitation competition for primary school children culminates in a grand final compered by Jeremy Paxman in Off By Heart.

On BBC Four Ian Hislop welcomes in the new Poet Laureate, in Ian Hislop's Changing Of The Bard, and Owen Sheers presents A Poet's Guide To Britain exploring six great works of poetry about the British landscape.

CBeebies brings works from well-known contemporary poets vividly to life through animation in Poetry Pie.

BBC Radio 4 is dedicated to broadcasting poetry programmes every week of the year. The channel's highlights for the Poetry Season include an analysis of Rainer Maria Rilke and a new Poetry Slam.

On Radio 3, Poems For Today, a series of more than 40 poems broadcast daily, will celebrate the breadth of contemporary poetry in the UK today.

BBC Online will be a key destination for a wealth of content, from great poets past and present, poems to suit your mood, live spoken word events and a vote for the Nations Favourite Poet (winner announced in October).

TH2