Listen:
Availability:
Sorry, this programme is not available to listen again. (why?)
Last broadcast on Fri, 5 Dec 2008, 21:15 on BBC Radio 3.
Synopsis
Ian McMillan's guests include George Szirtes, who talks about his latest collection of poems, which bring together work old and new. Born in Hungary, Szirtes came to Britain in 1956 and works as a poet, translator, writer and librettist, and he won the TS Eliot Prize for his collection of poems Reel in 2005.
Plus a new commission, written especially for the programme by author Steven Hall, whose science fiction thriller debut The Raw Shark Texts imagines a man on the run from a conceptual shark that wants to eat his personality.
THE NOUN
Ian McMillan discovers a parallel universe and a strange new show: The Verb’s mysterious twin, The Noun, specially created in a lab by novelist Steven Hall, author of the Raw Shark Texts.
The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall is published by Canongate Books.
POETRY FROM GEORGE SZIRTES
The TS Eliot Prize winning poet George Szirtes reflects on forty years of writing and reads poems old and new.
New and Collected Poems by George Szirtes is published by Bloodaxe Books Ltd.
HOT PUPPIES
The band Hot Puppies provide the music, taking you on a trip to Hollywood Babylon, with a little detour via Aberystwyth.
Hot Puppies’ latest album Blue Hands is out now on the Thp label.
DOCTORS WHO WRITE
As the Wellcome Trust creates a new prize for medical writing, writing medics Druin Burch and Ben Goldacre discuss whether it really is possible to divide your time between doctoring and literature – or whether, as in the case of Arthur Conan Doyle, John Keats and Conan Doyle, writing always wins out in the end.
Digging Up the Dead: Uncovering the Life and Times of an Extraordinary Surgeon by Druin Burch is published by Chatto & Windus.
Ben Goldacre is the author of the Bad Science column in Saturday's Guardian and of the Bad Science website.
www.badscience.net
For more information about the writing award go to the Wellcome Trust’s website.
Broadcast
-
Fri 5 Dec 200821:15
