The Essay

  • The "See Also" list includes the series broadcast in this programme - any that appear on this page are due to me not renaming them..
  • The programme started with four episodes, running Monday to Thursday, but sometimes it's only three episodes and drops one of the days to fit the needs of the schedule.
 
 
SeriesFirst
Broadcast
Description
ESSAY20080902FIRSTUnder the Influence
Contemporary poets talk about writers whose work has influenced them.
1/2. Anne Stevenson is now in her 70s and for all her writing life, TS Eliot has been a constant presence. It is not his religious thinking, nor his striking imagery that influenced her, but rather the rhythms of Eliot's verse.
ESSAY20080903 Under the Influence
Contemporary writers talk about poets whose work has influenced their own.
2/2. Anne-Marie Fyfe grew up in the 1960s in a small coastal town in North Antrim and writes poems about this lifestyle as well as the cosmopolitan life of London. However, the writer who has influenced her most is Emily Dickinson.
Fyfe explores what draws her to the poet who spent her reclusive life in Amherst, Massachusetts, in the mid 19th century writing nearly 1800 poems distinguished by strange sparky imagery and fractured punctuation.