A personal journey around the landscapes of British poetry
Crowds
Sunday 17 April 4.30-5.00pm
Programme9:
Crowds
About the programme Modernity defined. Crush and anonymity. Energy and speed. Dreary oppression and uniformity - the crowded city has been evoked as all these by poets.
Contributors: Steve Pile, Elizabeth Wilson
Reader: Tom Courtenay, Jamie Glover, Juliet Stevenson
Poems
'In a London Drawing Room' - George Eliot.
Taken from: The New Penguin Book of English Verse
Publisher: Penguin
Reader: Juliet Stevenson
'The Waste Land' ( 2 extracts) - T.S. Eliot
Taken From: The Waste Land and Other Poems
Publisher: faber and faber
Recording of T.S. Eliot reading
'Trivia' (Extract) - John Gay
Reader: Tom Courtenay
'City' - Roy Fisher
Taken From: Poems 1955-1987
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Reader: Roy Fisher - archive
'Symphony in Yellow' - Oscar Wilde
Taken From: Oscar Wilde - Selected Poems
Publisher: Fyfield Books
Reader: Jamie Glover
'Bedouin of the London Evening' - Rosemary Tonks
Taken From: Notes on Cafes and Bedrooms
Publisher: Putnam
Reader: Juliet Stevenson
'Devonshire Street' - John Betjeman
Taken From: Collected Poems
Publisher: John Murray
Recording of John Betjeman reading
'Mind the Gap' - Maura Dooley
Taken From: Being Alive
Publisher: Bloodaxe
Reader: Maura Dooley
'Composed Upon Westminster Bridge' - William Wordsworth
Taken From: William Wordsworth - The Major Works
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Reader: Kenneth Cranham
Your comments
Here are some of the poems which evoked 'crowds' for our listeners
Kay, Birmingham Sylvia Plath’s ‘The Arrival of the Bee Box’ seems to me to be partly about the "Roman mob" "angrily clambering" in one’s head and the problem of what to do with it.
Ben Parker For sheer economy of language, nothing surpasses Ezra Pound’s ‘In a Station of the Metro’.
Kay, Birmingham
Sylvia Plath’s ‘The Arrival of the Bee Box’ seems to me to be partly about the "Roman mob" "angrily clambering" in one’s head and the problem of what to do with it.
Ben Parker
For sheer economy of language, nothing surpasses Ezra Pound’s ‘In a Station of the Metro’.