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A Map of British Poetry
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A Map of British Poetry
Sundays 16:30-17:00
A personal journey around the landscapes of British poetry
Exile/Rootlessness
Sunday 24 April 4.30-5.00pm
Andrew Motion
Programme10: 
Exile/Rootlessness
About the programme
A clearer sense of here by going there? Home thoughts from abroad. The warm south; a refuge for free thinking, free living, free love? Poets as people who don't want to belong to any club. The grand tour. Britain as a home for the exiled of other cultures.
Contributors: Tom Phillips, Abdulrazak Gurnah

Reader: Tom Courtenay, Kenneth Cranham, Iain Glen, Jamie Glover, Simon Russell Beale
Poems

'Home Thoughts from Abroad' by Browning. Read by Simon Russell Beale. Taken from 'Browning - Poems selected by W.E. Williams', published by Penguin.

Extract from 'Amours de Voyage' by Arthur Hugh Clough. Read by Iain Glen. Taken from 'The New Oxford Book of Victorian Verse' - Oxford University Press.

'Why Brownlee left' by Paul Muldoon. Archive recording of Paul Muldoon reading. Taken from 'New Selected Poems 1968-1994' published by faber and faber.

'The Owl and the Pussycat' by Edward Lear. Read by Kenneth Cranham. Taken from 'The New Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1950' - Oxford University Press.

'A Nocturnall Upon St Lucies Day' by John Donne. Read by Tom Courtenay. Taken from 'Donne: Poems and Prose' published by Everyman.

'Arrival 1946' by Moniza Alvi. Recording of Moniza Alvi reading. Taken from 'Poems on the Underground- Fifth edition' published by Cassell.

'Snake' by D.H. Lawrence. Read by Jamie Glover. Taken from 'The Love Poems of D.H. Lawrence', published by Kyle Cathie Limited.

'As You Came from the Holy Land' by Sir Walter Raleigh. Read by Simon Russell Beale. Taken from 'The Rattle Bag' anthology, published by faber and faber.
Your comments
Here are some of the poems that evoked exile/rootlessness for our listeners

Kay, Birmingham
There must be a reason why you didn't choose 'The Wanderer' - Perhaps it's too obvious. It would have made a satisfying bookend to 'The Seafarer' from Programme 6 though. For a depiction of psychological exile, I would choose John Clare's 'I Am'.

Karen Newby, Paris
The poem that reminds me always of my own exile, and my ever present desire to be somewhere else is Robert Frost's "The Road not taken". I never regret the road I haven't taken because I'm always conscious that the road I have taken could have been the one I hadn't taken. This reminds me that it is my responsibility to make that road the right road. But it doesn't stop me from wondering what was down that other road and that it will always be there for me to come back to later. It also reminds me of how one day I took the "road less travelled by" and ended up, miles from anywhere, with my tyres bogged down in the bottom of a field!!!!And that reminds me that travelling requires an immense sense of humour!!

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