A personal journey around the landscapes of British poetry
Programme Details
Sunday 20 February 4.30-5.00pm
Programme 1: Borders
About the programme
The edges of things - arbitrary lines drawn on a map; the borders between people; between species; between mental states. Thinking about the placers where one thing ends and become something else - a language, a people...or the gulf between life and death. We resent borders but we rely on them too. They keep things in, as well as keeping things out and over the centuries, poets have been magnetised by them. Poetry is after all, a journey from one state to another. Listen to a short extract of the music for this programme, composed by Malcolm Lindsay. www.malcolmlindsay.com
Contributors: Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, Declan McGonagle
Readers: Diana Bishop, Kenneth Cranham, Tom Courtenay and Simon Russell Beale
Poems
'In My Country' - Jackie Kay Read by Jackie Kay (archive)
Taken from 'Other Lovers - Poems by Jackie Kay' published by Bloodaxe
'Lament of the Frontier Guard' - Ezra Pound Read by Kenneth Cranham
Taken from 'Ezra Pound. Selected Poems 1908 - 1959' pub by faber and faber
'The Other Side' - Seamus Heaney Read by Seamus Heaney (archive)
Taken from 'Wintering Out' published by faber and faber
'Lights Out' - Edward Thomas Read by Simon Russell Beale
Taken from The Collected Poems of Edward Thomas
'They Are All Gone Into the World of Light' - Henry Vaughan. Read by Kenneth Cranham
Taken from 'Poems of Henry Vaughan Silurist. Volume 1' published by George Routledge & Sons.
'Nothing is Lost' - Anne Ridler. Read by Diana Bishop
Take from 'Collected Poems' published by Carcanet
'Do Not Go Gentle' - Dylan Thomas. Read by Dylan Thomas (archive)
Taken from 'Collected Poems 1934 - 1953' published by Everyman
'Cymbeline' - Shakespeare. Read by Tom Courtenay
Taken from 'William Shakespeare - Poetry Selected by Ted Hughes' published by faber and faber
Your comments
Here are some of the poems which listeners felt evoked borders for them.
Michael Jones, Darmstadt, Germany For me, the poems of the Great War present vivid images of borders, between day and night (dawn), between front lines (No Man's land), with both of these as metaphors for the border between life and death. Both metaphors occur in Isaac Rosenberg's great poem "Break of Day in the Trenches", with those evocative opening lines "The darkness crumbles away - it is the same old druid Time as ever" and the ironic metaphor (in English pastoral terms) of No Man's land as " the sleeping green between". Although not a Great War poem, Edmund Blunden's poem "The Midnight Skaters” uses the Great War imagery of the ice as a trench: "the crystal parapet" to depict the ice as a border between life and death.
Flynn - Fermanagh 'Strawberry Fields Forever' by John Lennon, a song that travels the uncertain borders between childhood and adulthood, the real and the imagined.
Ankie Mulder. The Netherlands My suggestion is for "Binsey Poplars" by G.M.Hopkins, which is a sort of border between a beautiful landscape and one that is ruined by Man.
John at Lancaster 'The Lovesong of J Alfred Prufrock' - perfectly encapsulates the borders between man and the city. Also Yeats' 'Sailing to Byzantium', evokes the desire to transcend one's restrictive physical borders. Finally, Shakespeare, the greatest poet, for me answers what its like to venture outside one's borders in both 'Henry V', and 'As you Like it'; each with very different consequences.
Michael Pennant Jones - Belgium Auden's poem about the soldier on Adrians Wall would have been appropriate. I look forward to hearing what R S Thomas poetry will be selected - a poet whose whole catalogue dealt with the conflict of physical and spiritual borders.
Amanda Gardner, Las Vegas Nikki Giovani's "Ego Tripping" evokes an idealized concept of borders; Ruth Forman's "Stoplight Politics" exudes a gritty, grim border reality.
I look forward to the rest of the series. My thanks.
Charlemont from Orpington The poem that marks a border for me is one I learned when I changed schools at 11. On my first day the teacher wrote this poem on the blackboard, and I think the title was 'A Piper' [by Seamus O'Sullivan']. She then read it. Coming from a working class area of Belfast I had never heard anyone read a poem with such verve, excitement, pleasure, feeling, delight. I was transported and at that moment I crossed the 'border' between being bored and apathetic about poetry to a life long enchantment. I first heard it in 1942. Thank you Miss Johnson for that experience which opened my eyes to a lifetime of pleasure.
Michael Jones, Darmstadt, Germany
For me, the poems of the Great War present vivid images of borders, between day and night (dawn), between front lines (No Man's land), with both of these as metaphors for the border between life and death. Both metaphors occur in Isaac Rosenberg's great poem "Break of Day in the Trenches", with those evocative opening lines "The darkness crumbles away - it is the same old druid Time as ever" and the ironic metaphor (in English pastoral terms) of No Man's land as " the sleeping green between". Although not a Great War poem, Edmund Blunden's poem "The Midnight Skaters” uses the Great War imagery of the ice as a trench: "the crystal parapet" to depict the ice as a border between life and death.
Flynn - Fermanagh
'Strawberry Fields Forever' by John Lennon, a song that travels the uncertain borders between childhood and adulthood, the real and the imagined.
Ankie Mulder. The Netherlands
My suggestion is for "Binsey Poplars" by G.M.Hopkins, which is a sort of border between a beautiful landscape and one that is ruined by Man.
John at Lancaster
'The Lovesong of J Alfred Prufrock' - perfectly encapsulates the borders between man and the city. Also Yeats' 'Sailing to Byzantium', evokes the desire to transcend one's restrictive physical borders. Finally, Shakespeare, the greatest poet, for me answers what its like to venture outside one's borders in both 'Henry V', and 'As you Like it'; each with very different consequences.
Michael Pennant Jones - Belgium
Auden's poem about the soldier on Adrians Wall would have been appropriate. I look forward to hearing what R S Thomas poetry will be selected - a poet whose whole catalogue dealt with the conflict of physical and spiritual borders.
Amanda Gardner, Las Vegas
Nikki Giovani's "Ego Tripping" evokes an idealized concept of borders; Ruth Forman's "Stoplight Politics" exudes a gritty, grim border reality. I look forward to the rest of the series. My thanks.
Charlemont from Orpington
The poem that marks a border for me is one I learned when I changed schools at 11. On my first day the teacher wrote this poem on the blackboard, and I think the title was 'A Piper' [by Seamus O'Sullivan']. She then read it. Coming from a working class area of Belfast I had never heard anyone read a poem with such verve, excitement, pleasure, feeling, delight. I was transported and at that moment I crossed the 'border' between being bored and apathetic about poetry to a life long enchantment. I first heard it in 1942. Thank you Miss Johnson for that experience which opened my eyes to a lifetime of pleasure.