Episodes
Episode | Title | First Broadcast | Repeated | Comments |
---|---|---|---|---|
20070106 | Roger McGough welcomes in the New Year with poems about hope, regret, sunrise and time. | |||
20070113 | Roger McGough presents a poetic cornucopia of love and dreams. | |||
20070120 | Roger McGough introduces poems with a political flavour. | |||
20070211 | 20070217 (R4) | Roger McGough visits the Bodleian Library to look at the works of Percy and Mary Shelley. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20070218 | Marking the centenary of arguably the most important poet of the 20th century in the English language after TS Eliot, Roger McGough introduces requests for works by WH Auden. The reader is Douglas Hodge. Unless otherwise indicated, all poems in this week's edition are by W.H Auden and are taken from The Collected Shorter Poems published by faber. As I Walked Out One Evening From: AS I Walked Out One Evening, publ.faber Funeral Blues 'Stop all the Clocks Stop all the Cars' by Roger McGough From: Collected Poems Publ: Viking Night Mail The Composer September 1, 1939 In Praise of Limestone From: Selected Poems, publ. faber The Unknown Citizen Excerpt from In Memory of W.B Yeats Roger McGough introduces works by WH Auden, read by Douglas Hodge. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |||
20070401 | 20070407 (R4) | Roger McGough introduces a collection of comic poems requested by listeners. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20070408 | Roger McGough celebrates the arrival of spring with poems by Walt Whitman, Charlotte Mew, Thomas Hardy and Ted Hughes. Readers are Adjoa Andoh, Cian Murchu and Trevor Peacock. [Rptd Sat 11.30pm] The Year's Awakening by Thomas Hardy From: The Oxford Authors Publ: Oxford University Press Miracles by Walt Whitman From: The Complete Poems Publ: Penguin The Fight of the Year by Roger McGough From: The Oxford Book of Christmas Poems I So Liked Spring by Charlotte Mew From: Collected Poems and Prose Publ: Carcanet Press All Suddenly the Wind Comes Soft by Rupert Brooke From: The Complete Poems of Rupert Brooke Publ: Sidgwick & Johnson The Trees by Philip Larkin Publ: faber and faber Primavera by Robin Robertson From: Wild Reckoning anthology Publ: Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation The West Wind by John Masefield From: The Collected Poems Publ: Heinemann Home-Thoughts from Abroad by Robert Browning From: Poems selected by WE Williams The Lambs of Grasmere by Christina Rossetti Winter by Brendan Behan, translated by Ullick O'Connor From: Life Styles Publ: The Dolmen Press - Dublin. London - Hamish Hamilton. Easter 1916 by W.B. Yeats From: The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats Publ: palgrave Easter by George Herbert From: The English Poems of George Herbert Publ: Dent April Birthday by Ted Hughes From: Season Songs Roger McGough introduces poems by Walt Whitman, Charlotte Mew, Thomas Hardy and Ted Hughes Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |||
20070415 | Roger McGough introduces poems about writing poetry and being a poet, including works by Emily Bronte, Sophie Hannah and RS Thomas. Readers are Adjoa Andoh, Cian Murchu and Trevor Peacock. [Rptd Sat 11.30pm] The House by David Sutton From: New and Selected Poems 1965-2005 Publ: Peterloo Poets Yours Sincerely by John Lucas From: The Long & The Short of It Publ: Redbeck Press The Cancellation by Sophie Hannah From: Selected Poems Publ: Penguin Books extract from Fresh Air by Kenneth Koch Publ: Carcanet Who Goes There? by Cecil Day Lewis From: The Complete Poems of C. Day Lewis Publ: Sinclair-Stevenson Don't ask Me by RS Thomas From: Residues Publ: Bloodaxe The Thought-Fox by Ted Hughes From: New Selected Poems 1957-1994 Publ: faber and faber Write by Carol Ann Duffy From: Rapture Publ: Picador A Supermarket in California by Allen Ginsberg From: Collected Poems 1947-1980 Memorabilia by Robert Browning From: The Rattle Bag anthology To Imagination by Emily Bront뀀 From: Bront뀀 - Poems Publ: Everyman To Posterity by Louis MacNeice Dis Poetry by Benjamin Zephaniah From: City Psalms Roger McGough introduces poems about writing poetry and being a poet. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |||
20070422 | Roger McGough presents poetry requested by listeners. Brian Pettifer, Richard McCabe and Eleanor Tremain read poems by Edward Thomas, John Clare and Christina Rossetti. Kathleen Jamie reads her own work. [Rptd Sat 11.30pm] Time to Rise by Robert Louis Stevenson From: Classic Poems to Read Aloud, selected by James Berry Publ: Kingfisher From a Railway Carriage by Robert Louis Stevenson From: The Book of a Thousand Poems Publ: CollinsEducational Afternoon on a Hill by Edna St Vincent Millay From: Collected Poems Publ: Harper and Row Piano by DH Lawrence From: The Love Poems of DH Lawrence Publ: Kyle Cathie Limited Gladness of Death by DH Lawrence Remember by Christina Rossetti From: Poems Publ: Everyman Uphill by Christina Rossetti Jocky in the Wilderness by Kathleen Jamie From: Mr and Mrs Scotland are Dead Publ: Bloodaxe Books Sketching a Thatcher by Ted Hughes From: New Selected Poems 1957-1994 Publ: faber and faber The Badger by John Clare From: The Oxford Authors - John Clare Publ: Oxford University Press I am by John Clare If I Should Ever Grow Rich by Edward Thomas From: The Collected Poems and War Diary 1917 The Wild Geese by Violet Jacob From: 100 Favourite Scottish Poems Publ: Luath Press and The Scottish Poetry Library Roger McGough features poetry by Edward Thomas, John Clare and Christina Rossetti. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |||
20070428 | Roger McGough features poetry by Edward Thomas, John Clare and Christina Rossetti. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |||
20070429 | Roger McGough presents an anthology of poems requested by listeners. Brian Pettifer, Richard McCabe and Eleanor Tremain read poems by Edwin Morgan, Philip Larkin and Emily Bronte, while poet Andrew McNeillie reads his own work. [Rptd Sat 11.30pm] Good Night and Good Morning by Richard Monckton Milnes From: The Oxford Book of Children's Verse Publ: Oxford University Press Goodbye by Alun Lewis From: Twentieth Century Anglo-Welsh Poetry Publ: seren Postscript: for Gweno by Alun Lewis From: Selected Poems of Alun Lewis Publ: Unwin Paperbacks For the Union Dead by Robert Lowell From: Robert Lowell's Poems - A Selection Publ: faber and faber Dulyn by Andrew McNeillie From: Now, Then Publ: Carcanet Aphasia by Gwyneth Lewis From: Keeping Mum Publ: Bloodaxe Hope by Czeslaw Milosz From: New and Collected Poems 1930-2001 Publ: Penguin Books Tonight I Write Sadly by Christopher Logue (from original by Pablo Neruda) From: Christopher Logue - Songs Publ: Hutchinson (Recording from LP 'Red Bird' Christopher Logue with the Tony Kinsey Quintet. Parlophone records) The Burial of the Linnet by Juliana Horatio Ewing The Explosion by Philip Larkin From: Collected Poems In the Snack-Bar by Edwin Morgan Roger McGough features poetry by Brian Pettifer, Richard McCabe and Eleanor Tremain. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |||
20070505 | Roger McGough features poetry by Brian Pettifer, Richard McCabe and Eleanor Tremain. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |||
20070506 | Roger McGough introduces Lord Byron's playful satire Beppo. Set in Venice, where Byron was living in 1818, this romp parodies English and Italian attitudes towards marital infidelity. It shows Byron perfecting a new poetic form, juxtaposing the lofty with the absurd and the pretentious with the trivial. The reader is John Telfer. [Rptd Sat 11.30pm] extracts from Beppo by Lord Byron From: The Poetical Works of Lord Byron Publ: Oxford University Press Roger McGough introduces Lord Byron's playful satire Beppo. The reader is John Telfer. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |||
20070512 | Roger McGough introduces Lord Byron's playful satire Beppo. Set in Venice, where Byron was living in 1818, this romp parodies English and Italian attitudes towards marital infidelity. It shows Byron perfecting a new poetic form, juxtaposing the lofty with the absurd and the pretentious with the trivial. The reader is John Telfer. [Rpt of Sun 4.30pm] Followed by News. Roger McGough introduces Lord Byron's playful satire Beppo. The reader is John Telfer. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |||
20070513 | Marking the 40th anniversary of the death of former Poet Laureate John Masefield, Roger McGough introduces requests for works with a nautical tang, including a poem by Andrew Motion about a merman once caught off the Suffolk coast at Orford Ness. Readers are Daniel Hart, Bonnie Hurren and Iain Mitchell. Cargoes by John Masefield From: The Collected Poems Publ: William Heinemann Ltd The Unbeliever by Elizabeth Bishop From: Complete Poems Publ: Chatto & Windus A Grave by Marianne Moore From: The Faber book of Twentieth century Women's Poetry Publ: faber and faber The Chambered Nautilus by Oliver Wendell Holmes From: The Norton Anthology of Poetry (Third Edition) Publ: Norton Sea-Fever by John Masefield Beauty by John Masefield extract from Salt Water by Andrew Motion From: Selected Poems 1976-1997 There's Nobody Here But Us Chickens by Elizabeth Smart From: Collected Poems Publ: Paladin The History of the Flood by John Heath-Stubbs From: The New Oxford Book of Children's Verse Publ: Oxford University Press [Rptd Sat 11.30pm] Followed by News. Roger McGough introduces requests for works with a nautical tang. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |||
20070519 | Marking the 40th anniversary of the death of former Poet Laureate John Masefield, Roger McGough introduces requests for works with a nautical tang, including a poem by Andrew Motion about a merman once caught off the Suffolk coast at Orford Ness. Readers are Daniel Hart, Bonnie Hurren and Iain Mitchell. [Rpt of Sun 4.30pm] Followed by News. Roger McGough introduces requests for works with a nautical tang. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |||
20070520 | Roger McGough introduces requests for poems that mark life's turning points. Featured writers include Thom Gunn, Kahlil Gibran and Helen Dunmore. Readers are Amanda Horlock, Iain Mitchell and Duncan Bonner. [Rptd Sat 11.30pm] Baby Song by Thom Gunn From: Collected Poems Publ: faber and faber Touch by Michael Donaghy From: Shibboleth Publ: Oxford University Press Prayer before Birth by Louis MacNeice Sammy by Willie Russell From: Blood Brothers Publ: Methuen Drama Rites of Passage by Thom Gunn She Pops Home by Cal Clothier Unpublished Homecoming by Simon Armitage From: CloudCuckooLand from The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran Publ: William Heinemann my father moved by ee cummings From: Complete Poem 1904-1962 Publ: Liveright Arthur Makes an Inventory by Laurence Lerner From: The Life and Opinions of a Digital Computer Publ: The Harvester Press I Should Like to be Buried in a Summer Forest by Helen Dunmore From: Out of the Blue - Poems 1975-2001 Publ: Bloodaxe Books Dust by Elizabeth Jennings From: Collected Poems 1953-1985 Publ: Carcanet Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |||
20070526 | Roger McGough introduces requests for poems that mark life's turning points. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |||
20070527 | Roger McGough introduces requests for works with a Welsh connection. Featured poets include Wordsworth, Gillian Clarke, Dylan Thomas and W H Davies. Readers are Richard Mitchley, Noni Lewis and Daniel Hart. [Rptd Sat 11.30pm] Coming Home by Gillian Clarke From: The King of Britain's Daughter Publ: Carcanet [Englyn] A Beauty by Anon From: Welsh Verse, translations by Tony Conran Publ: seren [Englyn] Ivor the Generous by Evan Evans, translation by Richard Mitchley [Englyn] Going Home by Llawdden Crossing a Shore by Gwyn Thomas Fern Hill by Dylan Thomas From: Collected Poems 1934-1952 Publ: J.M.Dent & Sons Ltd [Englyn] Attraction by Anon Extract from The Prelude by William Wordsworth From: Wales In Verse Publ: Secker & Warburg In the Valley of the Elwy by Gerard Manley Hopkins From: Hopkins - Poems and Prose Publ: Everyman [Englyn] Epitaph by Ellis Owen from Thoughts from the Holiday Inn by Tony Curtis From: The Last Candles Pantomime Diseases by Dannie Abse From: White Coat, Purple Coat Publ: Hutchinson Reservoirs by RS Thomas From: Selected Poems Publ: Granada [Englyn] The Rose and the Heather by Pedrog Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |||
20070602 | Roger McGough introduces requests for works with a Welsh connection. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |||
20071118 | Roger McGough celebrates the 250th anniversary of the birth of William Blake with a selection of his most popular verse, read by Samuel West, Janet Suzman and David Collins. All poems featured in today's programme can be found in The Poetical Works of William Blake published by Oxford University Press Prologue: O For a Voice Like Thunder Piping Down the Valleys A Dream London The Tyger The Schoolboy A Poison Tree Preface to Milton 'And did those feet.. from Jerusalem To the Accuser who is the God of this World from Auguries of Innocence from Vala or The Four Zoas The Garden of Love A Little Boy Lost Roger McGough celebrates the 250th anniversary of the birth of William Blake. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |||
20080113 | 20080119 (R4) | The readers are Bonnie Hurren and John Mackay Clock a Clay by John Clare From: The Faber Book of Beasts Publ: Faber Buzzard by Matthew Barton Overall winner of the BBC Wildlife Magazine Poetry Competition The God of Love by George MacBeth From: Selected Poems Publ: Enitharmon Press Bats by Jennifer Heath-Brown Winner of the 12-14 year old category in the BBC Wildlife Magazine Poetry Competition A Narrow Fellow in the Grass by Emily Dickinson From: The Rattle Bag Snake by DH Lawrence From: The Love Poems of DH Lawrence Publ: Kyle Cathie Ltd The Horses of Meaning by Eil退an N퀀 Chuilleanကin From: The Girl Who Married the Reindeer Publ: Gallery Press The Fish by Elizabeth Bishop From: Complete Poems Publ: Chatto & Windus The Starlings in George Square by Edwin Morgan From: Collected Poems Publ: Carcanet Flying Crooked by Robert Graves Publ: Cassell Roger McGough presents wildlife poetry by DH Lawrence, Elizabeth Bishop and others. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20080120 | 20080126 (R4) | The Master Speed by Robert Frost From: The Poetry of Robert Frost Publ: Cape Rising Five by Norman Nicholson From: Selected Poems 1940-1982 Publ: faber and faber Fingers in the Door by David Holbrook From: The New Poetry Publ: Penguin The Dreaming Bean by Katherine Pierpoint From: Truffle Beds Recipe for a Salad by Reverend Sydney Smith. From: The Faber Book of Useful Verse I Remember, I Remember by Thomas Hood From: Everyman's Book of Evergreen Verse Publ: Everyman I See You Dancing, Father by Brendan Kennelly From: Familiar Strangers Publ: Bloodaxe Books His Father, Singing by Leslie Norris From: Collected Poems Publ: seren Poem by Hugh Sykes-Davies From: English and American Surrealist Poetry The Way Through the Woods by Rudyard Kipling From: The Definitive edition of Kipling's Verse Publ: Hodder & Stoughton Getting Older by Elaine Feinstein From: Collected Poems and Translations Publ: Carcanet The Bath by Harry Graham From: A Century of Humorous Verse 1850-1950 Publ: J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd The Confirmation by Edwin Muir So Many Different Lengths of Time by Brian Patten From: armada Publ: Flamingo Roger McGough presents a selection of poetry including pieces by Kipling and Muriel Spark. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20080127 | 20080202 (R4) | Colours by Yevgeny Yevtushenko, translated by Robin Milner Gulland From: Selected Poems Publ: Penguin Cinders by Roger McGough From: Collected Poems Publ: Viking The Midnight Skaters by Edmund Blunden From: Poems of Many Years Publ: Collins The Hornbeams by Felix Dennis From: Lone Wolf Publ: Hutchinson An Irish Airman Foresees His Death by WB Yeats From: The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats Publ: palgrave The Landscape Near an Aerodrome by Stephen Spender From: New Collected Poems Publ: faber Pledge to the Freight Canvasser by Carol Rumens From: Hex Publ: Bloodaxe The Second Coming by W.B. Yeats It Was Long Ago by Eleanor Farjeon From: The Oxford Treasury of Time Poems Kubla Khan by Coleridge. Publ: Everyman A Disused Shed in County Wexford by Derek Mahon Roger McGough with a selection of listeners' favourite poetry, from Yevtushenko to Yeats. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20080203 | 20080209 (R4) | All poems by Robert Browning taken from Browning - The Poems' pub Penguin All Poems by Elizabeth Barrett Browning taken from The works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning' published by The Wordsworth Poetry Library How they Brought the Good news from Ghent to Aix by Robert Browning Sonnet 43 by Elizabeth Barrett Browning The Pied Piper of Hamelin by Robert Browning Sonnet 28 by Elizabeth Barrett Browning My Last Duchess by Robert Browning. The Revenge of My Last Duchess by Roger McGough From: Collected Poems Publ: Viking Sonnet 14 by Elizabeth Barrett Browning Roger McGough presents poetry by Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20080210 | 20080216 (R4) | Not Love, Perhaps by ASJ Tessimond From: Voices in a Giant City Publ: William Heinemann Ltd Advice to a Discarded Lover by Fleur Adcock From: Poems 1960 - 2000 Publ: Bloodaxe Books Never Give all the Heart by W.B. Yeats From: W.B. Yeats - The Major Works Publ: Oxford After An Argument We Didn't Have by Kate Scott From: Stitches Publ: Peterloo Poets Out of the Chaos of My Doubt by Mervyn Peake From: Selected Poems Publ: faber and faber First Love by John Clare From: The New Oxford Book of Victorian Verse I Do Not Love Thee by Lady Caroline Norton. From: The Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1900 Bloody Men by Wendy Cope From: Serious Concerns A Marriage by R.S. Thomas From: Collected Later Poems 1988-2000 somewhere I have never travelled by ee cummings From: Complete Poems - 1904 - 1962 Publ: Liveright The Baite by John Donne Publ: Everyman Man and Wife by Robert Lowell From: Robert Lowell's Poems - A Selection The House is Not the Same Since You Left by Henry Normal From: Nude Modelling for the Afterlife The Priest's Confession by Daniel Huws From: The Quarry Vinegar by Roger McGough From: Collected Poems Publ: Viking No Coward Soul is Mine by Emily Bront뀀 From: Bront뀀 - Poems Roger McGough introduces requests for poems that take a wry look at love and relationships Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20080217 | 20080223 (R4) | In the last of the series we featured poems by writers perhaps better-known as novelists - such as DH Lawrence, Muriel Spark, Robert Graves, and Dermot Bolger. The readers were John Mackay and Bonnie Hurren. Also rare archive of the Welsh poet WH Davies introducing and reading his poem Leisure - with those famous lines: What is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare. Piano by DH Lawrence. From: The Love Poems of D.H. Lawrence Publ: Kyle Cathie Ltd From Leinster Street Ghosts by Dermot Bolger Publ: Raven Arts Press Leisure by W.H. Davies From: The New Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1950 That Lonely Shoe Lying on the Road by Muriel Spark From: All The Poems Publ: Carcanet To Paint a Water Lily by Ted Hughes From: Lupercal Publ: faber and faber The Moth by Walter de la Mare From: The Collected Poems of Walter de la Mare To a Mouse by Robert Burns From: The Poetical Works of Robert Burns Publ: Senate The White Goddess by Robert Graves From: Complete Poems - Volume 2 The Rider at the Gate by John Masefield From: The Collected Poems of John Masefield Publ: William Heinemann Ltd The Mistake by James Fenton From: Out of Danger Publ: Penguin A Woman of a Certain Age by Carol Rumens From: Thinking of Skins Publ: Bloodaxe Books Going, Going by Philip Larkin From: Collected Poems Wolsey's Farewell from Henry the Eighth From: Shakespeare - The Viking Portable Library Roger McGough presents a selection of poems by writers perhaps better known as novelists. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20080518 | 20080524 (R4) | Sonnet 130 by William Shakespeare From: The Viking Portable Library - Shakespeare Loving Unsuitable People by Gavin Ewart From: Gavin Ewart - Selected Poems 1933-1993 Publ: Hutchinson From: Lyrics from the Chinese translated by Helen Waddell From: Chinese Lyrics Publ: Constable Down by the Salley Gardens by W.B. Yeats From: Yeats, Poems Publ: Everyman In Memory of W.B. Yeats by W.H. Auden From: W.H. Auden - Collected Poems Publ: faber Patterns by Amy Lowell (This poem is only featured in the Saturday night programme) From: The Albatross Book of Living Verse Publ: Houghton Mifflin Co Memorabilia by Robert Browning (This poem is only featured in the Sunday afternoon programme) From: The Poetical Works of Robert Browning Volume 1 Publ: John Murray The Listeners by Walter de la Mare From: The Collected Poems of Walter de la Mare Silver by Walter de la Mare Mus退e des Beaux Arts by W.H. Auden Dirge From Cymbeline by Shakespeare Roger McGough revisits some readings recorded for Poetry Please by the late Paul Scofield. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20080525 | 20080531 (R4) | A wide selection of requests in this week's programme. Starting with good ingredients is always advisable, and so we kick off with Ratatouille' by Douglas Dunn. Food, however, is less important to the main character in Carol Ann Duffy's poem, Elvis's Twin Sister'. Also, listen out for work by the great 16th century poet Pierre de Ronsard, and verse both by, and about Anna Akhmatova Ratatouille by Douglas Dunn From: Being Alive (anthology) Publ: Bloodaxe I'd like to be a Teabag by Peter Dixon From: I'd Like to be a Teabag (anthology) Publ: BBC Books Idleness by Andrew Young From: The Poetical Works of Andrew Young Publ: Secker and Warburg The Paradox of Time by Pierre de Ronsard, translated by Henry Austin Dobson From: The Complete Poetical Works of Austin Dobson Publ: Oxford University Press Elvis's Twin Sister by Carol Ann Duffy From: The World's Wife Publ: Picador An Immorality by Ezra Pound From: The Golden Journey (anthology) Publ: Evans Brothers Ltd The Paper Smokers by Cesare Pavese, translated by Duncan Bush From: The Faber Book of 20th Century Italian Poems Publ: faber Ironing with Sue Lawley by Pauline Prior-Pitt (This poem only features in the Saturday night edition) From: Ironing with Sue Lawley Publ: Spike Press Diary entry by Anna Akhmatova, translated by D.M. Thomas From: You Will Hear Thunder Akhmatova in Leningrad by Carol Rumens From: Carol Rumens 1968-2004 Epilogue by Anna Akhmatova, translated by D.M. Thomas An Exequy by Peter Porter From: Collected Poems - Volume 1 Featured works include Carol Ann Duffy's Elvis's Twin Sister. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20080601 | 20080607 (R4) | We celebrate the arrival of the outdoor season with a programme recorded last week at the 2008 Guardian Hay Festival. The featured poems reflect something of the borders between Wales and England: the English side is represented by Alfred Noyes and the Welsh poetry chosen from listeners' requests includes work by Dannie Abse, Sheenagh Pugh and RS Thomas. Roger was joined on stage by readers Manon Edwards and Richard Mitchley, and by Gwyneth Lewis who reads some of her own poetry and one by her fellow poet, Christopher Meredith, whose work she particularly admires. The Birthright by Eiluned Lewis From: Anglo-Welsh Poetry 1480-1990 Publ: seren The View from the Window RS Thomas From: Selected Poems 1946-1968 Publ: Granada Wizards by Alfred Noyes From: Poetry of the Transition 1850-1914 Publ: Oxford University Press All Day it Has Rained by Alun Lewis From: The Oxford Book of War Poetry Words by Edward Thomas From: The Collected Poems of Edward Thomas How to Knit a Poem by Gwyneth Lewis Not yet published Memorial Sweater by Gwyneth Lewis These two poems only feature in the Saturday night edition Knitting Needles by Roger McGough Nana's Knitting Needles by Roger McGough Mother Tongue by Gwyneth Lewis From: Keeping Mum Publ: Bloodaxe My Father was Distant by Gwyneth Lewis This poem only features in the Saturday night edition. A Past by Gwyneth Lewis What Flight Meant by Christoper Meredith From: The Meaning of Flight Welsh Love Letter by Michael Burn From: Poems as an Accompaniment to a Life Pub: Michael Russell This poem only features in the Saturday night edtion. Preseli Blue by Caroline Gill From: The Lie of the Land Publ: Cinnamon Press Sometimes by Sheenagh Pugh Roger McGough introduces a special edition, recorded at The Hay Festival. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20080608 | 20080614 (R4) | During the 1940s and 1950s, the BBC - possibly quite unwittingly - employed a number of poets. These men, most notably Louis MacNeice, Anthony Thwaite, D.G. Bridson and Terence Tiller, were radio producers. One of the programme engineers who worked with them has written to Poetry Please to ask to hear some of their work, and he shares some of his memories of working with them. Full Moon by Vita Sackville-West From: Collected Poems - Volume 1 Publ: The Hogarth Press Toad by Norman MacCaig From: Selected Poems Publ: Chatto & Windus Stormy Day by W.R. Rodgers From: The Penguin Book of Contemporary Verse For Louis MacNeice by Anthony Thwaite From: Poems 1953-1988 Publ: Hutchinson The National Gallery by Louis MacNeice Publ: faber This poem only features in the Saturday night edition The Heated Minutes by Louis MacNeice The Chilterns by DG Bridson From: The Christmas Child Publ: The Falcon Press Reading a Medal by Terence Tiller From: Palgraves Golden Treasury Demeter by Carol Ann Duffy From: The World's Wife Publ: Picador Now That I Hear Trains by Hugo Williams The Meeting by Katherine Tynan Publ: MacMillan and Co The Mariner's Compass by Simon Armitage I have been greeted by long absent friends by Richard Elwes From: First Poems Publ: Hodder & Stoughton Poetry on parenting and friendship, read by Stephanie Cole, Rebecca Smart and William Hope Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20080615 | 20080621 (R4) | This week's programme includes an intriguing `English ghazal`, - the ghazal being a Middle-Eastern verse form not normally associated with English. Ghazal: The Candles of the Chestnut Trees by Mimi Khalvati From: The Meanest Flower Publ: Carcanet Ghazal: After Hafez by Mimi Khalvati In the Orchard by Muriel Stuart From: The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century Verse Publ: Oxford At Last The Secret is Out by W.H. Auden From: Collected Shorter Poems 1927-1957 Publ: faber Be Frugal by Richard Church From: The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse R.I.P by Alan Garner From: Occasional Poets Publ: Viking If the Past Year Were Offered Me Again by Lady Augusta Gregory From: Irish Poetry - an Interpretive Anthology Publ: New York University Press This poem features only in the Sunday afternoon edition Heraclitus by W.J. Cory From: Everyman's Book of Victorian Verse Dear Bryan Winter by W.S. Graham From: Collected Poems 1942-1977 Far in a western brookland by A.E. Housman From: Poems selected by Alan Hollinghurst Watermelon, the only word I have by Noel Rowe From: The Sydney Society of Literature and Aesthetics Poem for Everyone by John T Wood The Saturday night edition finishes with Carla Bruni's rendition of WH Auden's At Last the Secret is Out, from her album No Promises' Including a short interview with poet Mimi Khalvati. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20080622 | 20080628 (R4) | To the Gentleman in Row E by Virginia Graham From: Consider the Years 1938-1946 Publ: Persephone Books Where the Mind is Without Fear by Rabindranath Tagore From: Collected Poems and Plays Publ: Papermac You Are Old, Father William by Lewis Carroll From: Unauthorized Versions Publ: faber This poem only features in the Sunday afternoon edition An Old Dog Is the Best Dog by Felix Dennis From: A Glass Half Full Publ: Hutchinson In a Library by Edmund Blunden From: Poems of Many Years Publ: Collins The Chiffonier by Fleur Adcock From: The Incident Book Publ: Oxford Future Work by Fleur Adcock From: Poems 1960-2000 Publ: Bloodaxe Engineers' Corner by Wendy Cope From: Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis This poem only features in the Saturday night edition The Workshop by Billy Collins From: Sailing Alone Around the Room Publ: Random House The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes From: Everyman's Book of Evergreen Verse With guest Fleur Adcock. The readers are Rebecca Smart and Mark Meadows. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20080629 | The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe From: Poems and Prose Publ: Everyman This poem features only in the Saturday night edition The Windhover by Gerard Manley Hopkins From: Everyman Book of Evergreen Verse Break, Break, Break by Tennyson From: Selected Poems of Tennyson Publ: MacMillan & Co The Little Dancers by Laurence Binyon From: The Book of a Thousand Poems Publ: Collins Educational Like Dolmens Around My Childhood, the Old People by John Montague From: New Selected Poems Publ: Bloodaxe When You Go by Edwin Morgan From: Collected Poems Publ: Carcanet Conception by Josephine Miles From: The Faber Book of Twentieth Century Women's Poetry To Helen (II) by Edgar Allen Poe Roger McGough introduces requests for poems with a distinctly Gothic and funereal flavour. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |||
20080706 | 20080712 (R4) | Roger McGough introduces requests for the work of Alexander Pope. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20080713 | 20080719 (R4) | The Mouse's Reply to Robert Burns by Frank Richards From: How to be Well-Versed in Poetry Publ: Penguin Sir Patrick Spens by Anon From: The Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1918 Tam Lin by Anon From: The New Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1950 The Ballad of David Peters by Andy Conner From: Red Publ: Dynamic Press This Poem features only in the Saturday night edition Back in the Playground Blues by Adrian Mitchell From: Adrian Mitchell's Greatest Hits Publ: Bloodaxe Lord Ullin's Daughter by Thomas Campbell From: The Oxford Book of Regency Verse 1798-1837 Kidspoem/Bairnsang by Liz Lochhead The Colour of Black & White Publ: Polygon Roger McGough introduces some classic ballads, including the tale of Sir Patrick Spens. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20080720 | 20080726 (R4) | The readers are John Lightbody and Eleanor Tremain Lonely Hearts by Wendy Cope From: Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis Publ: faber I Wanna Be Yours by John Cooper Clarke From: johncooperclarke.com World by Carol Ann Duffy From: Rapture Publ: Picador Latitude and Longitude by Anon Baucis & Philemon by Michael Longley From: The Ghost Orchid Publ: Cape Poetry To Whom It May Concern by Adrian Mitchell From: Adrian Mitchell's Greatest Hits Publ: Bloodaxe Books About The Arguments We Had Last Year by Clare Shaw From: Straight Ahead Stitches by Kate Scott From: Stitches Publ: Peterloo Poets The Waggy Wedding by John Hegley From: Dog Publ: Methuen Manna by James Tate From: Selected Poems Publ: MacMillan Pay-back Time by Roger McGough Publ: Penguin Boy at the Window by Richard Wilbur From: New and Collected Poems Roger McGough presents a special programme, live from the Latitude Festival in Suffolk. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20080914 | 20080920 (R4) | Ballade de la vie joyeuse by Max Beerbohm From: Rhymes and Parodies Puibl: Heinemann i carry your heart by ee cummings From: Complete Poems Publ: Liveright Joys of the World by Christophe Plantin Maude Clare by Christina Rossetti From: Everyman's Book of Victorian Verse Cats are Otherwise by Katherine Pierpoint From: Truffle Beds Publ: faber here's a little mouse by ee cummings A Tragic Tale by William Makepeace Thackeray From: The Home Book of Verse Publ: Holt Ballad of the Army Carts by Tu Fu, translated by David Hawkes From: A Little Primer of Tu Fu Publ: Oxford The Many Faces of Jazz by Billy Collins From: Taking off Emily Dickinson's Clothes Publ: Picador Song by Edwin Muir From: Collected Poems Roger McGough spotlights poetry that spans the ages. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20080921 | 20080927 (R4) | Robert W Service, was by turns a bank clerk and a proto-Beat who commemorated the hardships and drama of the Yukon Gold Rush. Roger marks the fiftieth anniversary of his death, with Jimmy Yuill reading the classics. The Shooting of Dan McGrew The Spell of the Yukon The Quitter Funk The Cremation of Sam McGee All poems in this week's programme are by Robert Service and are taken from The Best of Robert Service' published by A&C Black Roger McGough marks the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Robert W Service. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20080928 | 20081004 (R4) | Roger McGough introduces listeners' requests for the works of Christina Rossetti. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20081005 | 20081011 (R4) | A great mixture of poetry today all read by Richard McCabe, Brigid Zengeni and Jonjo O'Neill The Fable of the Magnet and The Churn by WS Gilbert From: Favourite Poems Old and New Publ: Doubleday The Forge by Seamus Heaney From: Opened Ground Publ: faber Ode - We Are the Music-Makers by Arthur William Edgar O'Shaughnessy From: The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse The Kaleidoscope by Nadine Brummer From: Halfway to Madrid Publ: Shoestring Press The Toys by Coventry Patmore From: Everyman's Book of Victorian Verse Publ: Everyman Dog in the Playground by Allan Ahlberg From: Please Mrs Butler Publ: Puffin Tipperary by Desmond O'Grady From: Tipperary Publ: Salmon Press I Haven't Been Able to Get Anything Done Since I Met You by Debra Bruce From: Pure Daughter Publ: The University of Arkansas Press Memory of My Father by Patrick Kavanagh. From: The Rattle Bag Pub: faber My Mother With One Green Earring by Frances Wilson From: Rearranging the Sky Publ: Rockingham Press Working Late by Louis Simpson. From: The Penguin Book of Caribbean Verse The Reading Lesson by Richard Murphy From: The Penguin Book of Contemporary Irish Poetry You've Ruined My Evening/You've Ruined my Life by Tom Raworth From: Collected Poems Publ: Carcanet When I have fears by Keats From: The Poetical Works of John Keats Publ: Oxford Roger McGough introduces listeners' requests. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20081012 | 20081018 (R4) | October's Party by George Cooper From: The Book of a Thousand Poems Publ: Collins Educational Plums by Gillian Clarke From: Collected Poems Publ: Carcanet This is Just to Say by William Carlos Williams From: The Oxford Book of American Poetry To Don Asterio Alarc n, Clocksmith of Valpara퀀so by Pablo Neruda, translated by Alastair Reid From: Fully Empowered Publ: Condor/Souvenir Press Hermitage by Wislawa Szymborska, translated by Stanislaw Bara?czak and Clare Cavanagh From: Poems, New and Collected 1957-1997 Publ: faber La Poesia/Poetry by Pablo Neruda, translated by Alastair Reid From: Isla Negra The O-Filler by Alastair Reid From: Book of Post War Poetry Publ: Hutchinson Milk for the Cat by Harold Monro Sleeping in the Country by Susan Fromberg Schaeffer From: Granite Lady Publ: Macmillan Not to Sleep by Robert Graves Publ: Cassell Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe From: Poe - Poems and Prose Publ: Everyman Rich by RS Thomas From: Selected Poems 1988-2000 Publ: Bloodaxe Roger McGough introduces listeners' requests. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20081019 | 20081025 (R4) | The Orange by Wendy Cope From: Serious Concerns Publ: faber A Brief Guide to Rhyming - or How Be the Little Busy Doth by Ogden Nash From: You Can't Get There From Here Publ: JM Dent and Sons Yours Sincerely by John Lucas From: The Long and the Short of it Publ: Redbeck Press An Ordinary Poetry Reading by Roger McGough From: Collected Poems Publ: Viking Welcome, Major Poet! by Sean O'Brien From: Cousin Coat Publ: Picador Another Reason Why I Don't Keep a Gun in the House by Billy Collins From: Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes Arithmetic by Carl Sandburg From: Complete Poems Publ: Harcourt Macavity: The Mystery Cat by TS Eliot From: The Rattle Bag The Mafia Cats by Roger McGough From: Bad Bad Cats The Galloping Cat by Stevie Smith From: Bread and Roses: An Anthology of Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Poetry By Women Writers Publ: Virago The Book of My Enemy Has Been Remaindered by Clive James From: Other Passports Publ: Jonathan Cape Domestic Asides - or Truth in Parenthesis by Thomas Hood From: Hood Winked Publ: Chatto and Windus Roger McGough introduces listeners' requests. Recorded at Cheltenham Literature Festival. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20081026 | 20081101 (R4) | Spell of Creation by Kathleen Raine From: Collected Poems Publ: Golgonooza Press The Nuthatch by Bernard O'Donoghue From: The Weakness Publ: Chatto and Windus The Morning After The Clocks Go Back by Chris Kinsey Overall Winner of BBC Wildlife Magazine Poetry Competition The Beautiful Changes by Richard Wilbur From: New and Collected Poems Publ: faber Cock-Crows by Ted Hughes From: Remains of Elmet The Great Outdoors by Sheena Anderson Winner of the 8-11 year old category of BBC Wildlife Magazine Poetry Competition The Lesson of the Moth by Don Marquis From: Archy and Mehitabel Publ: Doubleday Mosquito by DH Lawrence From: The Rattle Bag The Mosquito Knows by DH Lawrence As The Rooks Are by Elizabeth Jennings Publ: Carcanet The Horses by Edwin Muir Weaver Birds by Richard Weaving Winner of the humorous category of BBC Wildlife Magazine Poetry Competition The Thought Fox by Ted Hughes From: the Faber book of Modern Verse Lullaby for Titania by Shakespeare From: The Faber book of beasts Roger McGough introduces listeners' requests. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20090111 | 20090117 (R4) | Roger McGough introduces listeners' requests. Actress Lia Williams reads poems from Emily Dickinson, Emily Bronte, Carol Ann Duffy, Brian Patten, William Blake, Matthew Arnold and Harold Pinter. Plus recordings of Michael Williams reading Cecil Day Lewis's The Album and Felix Dennis reads some of his own atmospheric work. The Ambush by Brian Patten From: Collected Love Poems Publ: Harper Perennial The Effect of Coastal Processes on the Beach at Amroth by Adrian Blamires From: The Effect of Coastal Processes on the Beach at Amroth Publ: Two Rivers Press Verse Found Whilst Reading Between the Lines of a Lonely Hearts Ad by Matt Harvey From: The Hole in the Sum of My Parts Publ: The Poetry Trust Rapunzstiltskin by Liz Lochhead From: Being Alive (Anthology) Publ: Bloodaxe I Cannot Live With You by Emily Dickinson From: The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson Publ: Faber London by ASJ Tessimond From: Voices in a Giant City Publ: William Heinemann The Album by Cecil Day Lewis From: The Complete Poems of C Day-Lewis Publ: Sinclair-Stevenson Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold From: The Oxford Book of English Verse My Three Rivers by Lotte Kramer From: The Phantom Lane Publ: Rockingham Press One Need Not be a Chamber by Emily Dickinson Publ: faber and faber It is Here by Harold Pinter From: Various Voices : Prose, Poetry, Politics I Know the Place by Harold Pinter From: Collected Poems and Prose Publ: Methuen High Waving Heather by Emily Bront뀀 From: Bront뀀 - Poems Publ: Everyman My Literary Career So Far by Adrian Mitchell Unpublished Including poems from Emily Dickinson, Emily Bronte, Carol Ann Duffy and William Blake. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20090118 | 20090124 (R4) | Actress Lindsay Duncan reads Keats's erotic and magical poem The Eve of St Agnes. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20090125 | 20090131 (R4) | Presented by Roger McGough. To celebrate the 250th anniversary of the birth of Robert Burns, John Mackay reads some of his greatest poems, as requested by listeners. Lia Williams reads other listeners' requests, including poems by ASJ Tessimond, Liz Lochhead and Lotte Kramer. Afton Water by Robert Burns From The Poetical Works of Robert Burns Bracken Books / Senate A Red, Red Rose by Robert Burns John Anderson, My Jo by Robert Burns From the CD Eddi Reader Sings the Songs of Robert Burns Rough Trade RTRADECD097 Is there, for Honest Poverty, or A Man's A Man for A' That' by Robert Burns Ae Fond Kiss by Robert Burns Now Westlin Winds by Robert Burns From the CD Handful of Earth by Dick Gaughan Topic TSCD 419 Holy Willie's Prayer by Robert Burns Lassie Lie Near Me by Robert Burns Warming Her Pearls by Carol Ann Duffy From Carol Ann Duffy - Selected Poems Penguin The Sick Rose by William Blake From Songs of Innocence and Experience Oxford University Press To a Haggis by Robert Burns Auld Lang Syne by Robert Burns Performed by the Rowallan Consort John Mackay reads poems by Robert Burns to celebrate the 250th anniversary of his birth. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20090201 | 20090207 (R4) | Sometimes by Sheenagh Pugh From: Sheenagh Pugh - Selected Poems Published by Seren Books Song of the Battery Hen by Edwin Brock Sonny's Lettah by Linton Kwesi Johnson From: Mi Revalueshanary Fren Published by Penguin While Leila Sleeps by Jackie Kay From: Darling - New and Selected Poems Published by Bloodaxe Books In the Waiting Room by Elizabeth Bishop From: Elizabeth Bishop - Complete Poems Published by Chatto & Windus My Party by Kit Wright From: Rabbiting On Loud Without the Wind by Emily Bronte From: Selected Bronte Poems Published by Basil Blackwell Haworth by Carol Ann Duffy From: Rapture Published by Picador Remembrance Extract from The Song of Solomon, Chapter 1 From: The King James Bible Roger McGough introduces listeners' requests. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20090208 | 20090214 (R4) | In the lead up to Valentine's Day, Roger McGough introduces listeners' requests for poems on the subject of love. Burt Caesar, Mark Meadows and Adjoa Andoh read poems by Carol Ann Duffy, Sophie Hannah and WH Auden. Hour by Carol Ann Duffy From: Rapture Published by Picador The Parting by Michael Drayton From: The Oxford Book of English Verse ed. Quiller-Couch Published by Oxford University Press Don't Say I Said by Sophie Hannah From: Pessimism for Beginners Published by Carcanet Tell Me The Truth About Love by WH Auden From: WH Auden, Collected Shorter Poems 1927-1957 Published by Faber & Faber Valentine by John Fuller From: Collected Poems, John Fuller Published by Chatto & Windus For My Lover, Returning to His Wife by Anne Sexton From: The Chatto Book of Love Poetry Love in the Launderette by Roger McGough From: Selected Poems, Roger McGough Published by Penguin For Margot Heinemann by John Cornford From: The Oxford Book of War Poetry And You, Helen by Edward Thomas From: Edward Thomas, Collected Poems How Do I Love Thee? by Elizabeth Barrett Browning From: The New Faber Book of Love Poems First Meeting by ASJ Tessimond From: Morning Meeting Published Autolycus Amo Ergo Sum by Kathleen Raine From: The Collected Poems of Kathleen Raine Published by Golgonooza Press Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20090215 | 20090221 (R4) | Roger McGough introduces a selection of poems by the late Adrian Mitchell, chosen and read by some of his friends and fellow poets. Music : Lover Man performed by Charlie Parker All the poems in this week's programme are by Adrian Mitchell and the books are published by Bloodaxe Back in the Playground Blues From: Blue Coffee To Whom It May Concern From: Tell Me Lies - Poems 2005-2008 A Puppy Called Puberty Ten Ways to Avoid Lending Your Wheelbarrow to Anybody Every Day is Mothering Sunday to Me From: The Shadow Knows The Doorbell Sorry Bout That Disguise William Blake Says Everything That Lives is Holy Death is Smaller Than I Thought From: In Person, 30 Poets A Spell to Make a Bad Hour Pass From: Heart on the Left:- Poems 1953 - 1984 Music: Poetry Glues Your Soul Together Words by Adrian Mitchell Music by Mike Westbrook From `Tyger` by Adrian Mitchell performed at the National Theatre Roger McGough introduces a selection of poems by the late Adrian Mitchell. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20090222 | 20090228 (R4) | Roger McGough introduces listeners' requests for poems by Derek Walcott, Linda Pastan and Russian poets Yevgeny Yevtushenko and Inna Kabysh. The readers are Burt Caesar, Mark Meadows and Nadia Williams. Letter from Brooklyn by Derek Walcott From Derek Walcott - Collected Poems 1948-1984 The Noonday Press People by Yevgeny Yevtushenko, translated by Robin Milner-Gulland Selected Poems - Yevtushenko Penguin The Five Stages of Grief by Linda Pastan From: The Five Stages of Grief Publ: Norton Different Beds by Roger McGough From: Selected Poems Publ: Penguin The Fallow Deer at the Lonely House by Thomas Hardy The Oxford Authors - Thomas Hardy Oxford University Press The Red Wheelbarrow by William Carlos Williams From: The Oxford Book of American Poetry Daffodils by William Wordsworth From: William Wordsworth - The Major Works Publ: Oxford Love Poem by Linda Pastan From: The Norton Introduction to Literature (6th edition) Love III by George Herbert From: The Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1918 To Anthea, Who May Command Him Anything by Robert Herrick From: The Poems of Robert Herrick Sonnet 116 by William Shakespeare The New Faber Book of Love Poems Me Cyaan Believe it by Michael Smith It a Came Creation for Liberation Making Jam in July by Inna Kabysh, trans Fay Marshall Modern Poetry in Translation New Series No.20 - 2002 My Parents Kept Me From Children Who Were Rough by Stephen Spender From: Collected Poems Publ: faber Happiness by Raymond Carver From: All of Us. Collected Poems Publ: Alfred A Knopf Roger McGough introduces listeners' requests. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20090301 | 20090307 (R4) | Patience Strong by UA Fanthorpe From: UA Fanthorpe, Collected Poems 1978-2003 Pub: Peterloo Poets Dear Mr Lee by UA Fanthorpe The Three Winds by Laurie Lee From: Laurie Lee, Selected Poems Pub: Andre Deutsch Giorno dei Morti by DH Lawrence From: DH Lawrence - Complete Poems Pub: Penguin When the Ripe Fruit Falls by DH Lawrence Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonae sub Regno Cynarae by Ernest Dowson From: The Poetical Works of Ernest Dowson Pub: Cassell Vitae Summa Brevis Spem Nos Vetat Incohare Longam by Ernest Dowson Atlas by UA Fanthorpe All I Ask by DH Lawrence Green by DH Lawrence From: The Love Poems of DH Lawrence Pub: Kyle Cathie Bermuda by Billy Collins From: Nine Horses Pub: Picador In Two Minds by Roger McGough From: Roger McGough - Collected Poems Pub: Viking Titania to Bottom by UA Fanthorpe Last Words by Dannie Abse From: Dannie Abse: New and Collected Poems Pub: Hutchinson Roger McGough introduces poems by Ernest Dowson, DH Lawrence, Laurie Lee and UA Fanthorpe. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20090308 | 20090314 (R4) | Roger McGough celebrates the work of Vernon Scannell and Stevie Smith, and looks forward to spring in a selection of listeners' requests including the work of MR Peacocke, a keen observer of the natural world. Usually March by Kevin Nichols Tusking by Mick Imlah From: Birthmarks Published: Chatto & Windus The Jungle Husband by Stevie Smith From: Stevie Smith, Collected Poems Published: Penguin Not Waving but Drowning by Stevie Smith Lie in the Dark and Listen by Noel Coward From: More Poetry Please Published: JM Dent & Sons Ltd I Remember by Stevie Smith The World and Mrs Elphinstone by M.R. Peacocke From: In Praise of Aunts Published: Peterloo Winter Solstice by M.R. Peacocke Naming of Poets by Vernon Scannell From: New & Collected Poems 1950-1980 Published: Robson Books Taken in Adultery by Vernon Scannell Hendon Central by Ruth Fainlight From: Sugar-Paper Blue Published: Bloodaxe Somerset August by Ruth Fainlight Spring in the City by Ruth Fainlight From: Selected Poems Ruth Fainlight Published: Sinclair Stevenson Trees Cannot Name the Seasons by Roger McGough From: Collected Poems Roger McGough Roger McGough introduces listeners' requests and looks forward to spring. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20090517 | 20090523 (R4) | Roger McGough introduces poems by AE Housman and Walt Whitman. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20090524 | 20090530 (R4) | Featuring a reading of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20090531 | 20090606 (R4) | Roger McGough introduces requests for poems by Robert Frost and Edward Thomas. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20090607 | 20090613 (R4) | Roger McGough presents a programme dedicated to the poetry of the Book of Psalms. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20090614 | 20090620 (R4) | Carol Ann Duffy and others pay tribute to the poet UA Fanthorpe, who died recently. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20090621 | 20090627 (R4) | Gabriel Woolf reads Edward Fitzgerald's 1859 poem The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20090712 | 20090718 (R4) | Roger McGough introduces poems including works by Milton, Ben Okri and Mary Oliver. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20090719 | 20090725 (R4) | Roger McGough introduces requests for poems about space. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20090726 | 20090801 (R4) | With readers Renu Brindle, Paul Mundell and Rupert Wickham. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20090809 | 20090815 (R4) | Roger McGough presents a special edition devoted to the poetry of Tennyson, as part of the poet's bicentenary celebrations. Tennyson is one of the most frequently requested 19th-century poets on the programme, and this edition features readings of his works including The Lady of Shallot, The Throstle and Crossing the Bar. Roger McGough presents a special edition devoted to the poetry of Tennyson. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20090913 | 20090919 (R4) | Roger McGough presents poems about the joy of living and the experience of memory loss. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20090920 | 20090926 (R4) | Roger McGough presents listeners' requests for works with an environmental theme. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20090927 | 20091003 (R4) | Roger McGough introduces Lewis Carroll's surreal poem, The Hunting of the Snark. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20091004 | 20091010 (R4) | Roger McGough introduces requests for poems on the theme of heroes and heroines. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20091011 | 20091017 (R4) | Roger McGough celebrates the programme's 30th birthday from the Theatre Royal at Bristol Old Vic, and introduces a selection of the most frequently-requested poems from the past 30 years. The special guest readers, including Stephanie Cole, Helen Baxendale and Patrick Malahide, all have a strong connection with the city. Including poems by Keats, Hardy, Betjeman, Wendy Cope and Carol Ann Duffy. Roger McGough celebrates the programme's 30th birthday from Bristol Old Vic. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20091018 | 20091024 (R4) | A second programme celebrating 30 years of Poetry Please, recorded at Bristol Old Vic. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20091025 | 20091031 (R4) | Roger McGough introduces poems about snow and solitude. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20100131 | 20100206 (R4) | Roger McGough introduces listeners' requests, including Stevie Smith's galloping cat and Les Murray's poem defining the quintessentially Australian quality of 'sprawl'. Plus a whirling drunken evening with Tony Harrison and a recollection of high summer from Sylvia Plath and Robert Graves. With readers Tanya Moodie, John Telfer and David Henry. Including poems by Stevie Smith, Les Murray, Tony Harrison, Sylvia Plath and Robert Graves Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20100207 | 20100213 (R4) | Roger McGough introduces listeners' requests. He guides us through a poetic landscape cast in frost, with requested poems by Ted Hughes, William Morris and Raymond Carver. There's also a tender poem about fatherhood and language from the 2008 Forward Prize-winning poet Mick Imlah. With readers Tanya Moodie, John Telfer and David Henry. Roger McGough guides us through a poetic landscape cast in frost. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20100214 | 20100220 (R4) | Roger McGough introduces a selection of poems for Valentine's Day, with love on the menu but no straightforward hearts and flowers. Including poems on extraordinary manifestations of love by Edson Burton, Anne Sexton and John Updike, and poet Jenny Joseph reads from her new collection, Nothing Like Love. Roger McGough introduces a selection of poems for Valentine's Day. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20100221 | 20100227 (R4) | Roger McGough is joined by poet Tony Harrison for a new reading of Newcastle is Peru. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20100228 | 20100306 (R4) | Roger McGough introduces poems including An Overworked Elocutionist by Carolyn Wells. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20100307 | 20100313 (R4) | Roger McGough introduces listeners' requests. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20100314 | 20100320 (R4) | Roger McGough introduces listeners' requests, read by Henry Goodman and Selina Cadell. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20100321 | 20100327 (R4) | Roger McGough introduces poems from 'across the pond'. There's a bus ride in Nova Scotia and a few trips to the cinema, with works by Elizabeth Bishop, Frank O'Hara and Billy Collins. For good measure, there's also a Swedish poem about growing up and a very English poem with a host of bluebells. The readers are Jennifer Jellicorse and Kerry Shale. Roger McGough introduces a selection of mainly American poetry. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20100516 | 20100522 (R4) | Roger McGough introduces requests for poems learnt by heart while at school. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20100523 | 20100529 (R4) | Roger McGough introduces TS Eliot's Four Quartets. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20100530 | 20100605 (R4) | Roger McGough visits Cambridge University Library to see the wealth of poetry manuscripts held there. The works range from what is arguably one of the earliest poems in English - the Hymn of Caedmon, dating to a codex prepared by Northumbrian monks in the year 737. The programme ranges in time, then, from the Anglo Saxon period to contemporary work by Carol Ann Duffy and Ann Stevenson. Roger is joined by librarian John Wells, and the actors Juliet Stevenson and David Bamber. Producer: Mark Smalley. Roger McGough sees the wealth of poetry manuscripts held by Cambridge University Library. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20100606 | 20100612 (R4) | On Sunday 6th June, Roger McGough presents a special edition of Poetry Please exploring the work of the eminent First World War war poet, Siegfried Sassoon. Recorded on location at Cambridge University Library, Roger meets manuscript librarian John Wells who shows him the highlights of their recently augmented Sassoon collection. The reader is David Bamber. Seven crates of Sassoon's trench notebooks and diaries were bought by the library after a successful fundraising drive - helped by a £550,000 grant from the National Heritage Memorial Fund. We hear a draft of Sassoon's powerful denunciation of the war being read, in which the decorated officer refused to return to duty after being wounded. Written in 1917, read out in the House of Commons, and published in The Times, 'A Soldier's Declaration' prompted a widespread debate. The poet, whose work captured the futility of war, died in 1967. In the programme Roger introduces requests for Sassoon's uncompromising poems such as 'Suicide in the Trenches', 'Glory of Women', and his friend Robert Graves' powerful poem, 'Dead Boche'. Roger McGough explores Siegfried Sassoon's war poems at Cambridge University Library. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20100613 | 20100619 (R4) | In the fifth programme in the current series of Poetry Please, Roger McGough presents a seasonal selection of poetry requests. Today several poems by modern female poets about flowers feature alongside a trio of pastoral poems from Seamus Heaney. A poem for the Solstice by Louis MacNeice gets in just ahead of the season too. Readers: Finbar Lynch and Jasmine Hyde. Producer: Tim Dee. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20100620 | 20100626 (R4) | Roger McGough presents some of the 154 sonnets of Shakespeare, masterpieces all of compressed emotion. And to keep them company a selection from some other Seventeenth Century masters: John Donne, Andrew Marvell and Henry Vaughan. Readers: Jasmine Hyde, Finbar Lynch & Paul Mundell. Producer: Tim Dee. Roger McGough introduces some of Shakespeare's sonnets and some other 17th-century masters Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20100704 | 20100710 (R4) | Roger McGough introduces a broad selection of listeners' poetry requests, including work by Keats, Vernon Scannell and Maura Dooley. There are poems about bravery, wandering women, sleep and rain. The readers are Kenneth Cranham and Jonjo O'Neill. Maura Dooley reads her own poem, re-telling a story from 1833 of the attempts by the women of Mumbles Head to rescue their men from a capsized lifeboat. There's a sonnet by Keats that might strike a chord with anyone who has felt the desperation of sleeplessness. 'Old Meg she was a gypsy' begins another, very different poem by Keats; 'Meg Merrilees.' It is one of those first lines of poetry that seems to have stuck in the minds of many listeners. There's also an archive reading by Henry Sandon of 'Miss Thompson Goes Shopping' by Martin Armstrong. Roger McGough introduces listeners' requests, including work by Keats and Martin Armstrong Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20100711 | 20100717 (R4) | Roger McGough with your requests, including poems by Kipling, Shelley and Yevtushenko. Many of the poems in today's programme are about choices. Some are about moral decisions. For instance, Lorna Goodison reads her poem 'For Rosa Parks', about the black woman who refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white person. There are poems about being coerced - like the child in Kipling's 'A Smuggler's Song'. Derek Mahon's 'A Disused Shed in County Wexford' is about the voiceless; those that aren't even heard, let alone have choices to make. W.H Auden urges us all to 'Leap Before You Look', Shelley rages about the state of England in 1819, and Porphyria's Lover makes a terrible decision in a poem by Browning. The readers are Kenneth Cranham and Jonjo O'Neill. Producer: Sarah Langan. Roger McGough introduces poems by Kipling, Shelley and Yevtushenko. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20100718 | 20100724 (R4) | Roger McGough presents listeners' poetry requests, with work by Michael Longley, Edward Thomas and Lavinia Greenlaw. The readers are Kenneth Cranham, Annette Badland and Jonjo O'Neill. Imtiaz Dharker reads her own poem 'Speech Balloon' about that ubiquitous phrase 'Over the Moon.' There are other space-bound poems, including a moving elegy 'For the First Dog in Space.' Michael Longley introduces his grandson to the natural world in his poem 'The Leveret'. Rites of passage in a young person's life are also marked by Billy Collins' poem 'On Turning Ten', read by nine year old Tyler Johnson, and in Roger's own verse written for his daughter Isobel when she passed her first decade. There's also a lament by Edward Thomas about a soldier caught between enemy lines whose relief at his respite is punctuated by sorrow for his fallen comrades. Producer: Sarah Langan. Roger McGough introduces poems by Michael Longley, Edward Thomas and Lavinia Greenlaw. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20100725 | 20100731 (R4) | Roger McGough presents a mixture of poetry requests, including verse by Simon Armitage, Denise Levertov and John Keats. The readers are Kenneth Cranham, Annette Badland and Jonjo O'Neill. Elegies for lost lovers and dead trees ring out, with a quirky poem by the American Louis Untermeyer 'To a Telegraph Pole' and a poem about Orpheus, whose music made the trees dance. Sue Hubbard reads her poem about his long suffering subterranean wife, Eurydice. The seams of poetry and music are interlaced in Patrick Kavanagh's famous 'On Raglan Road', and we find out what ails the 'knight at arms, alone and palely loitering' in John Keats's 'La Belle Dames Sans Merci.' A half hour bound to hath thee in thrall. Producer: Sarah Langan. Roger McGough introduces poems by Simon Armitage, Denise Levertov and John Keats. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20100912 | 20100918 (R4) | Roger McGough returns with an autumn series of Poetry Please. Today poems by D H Lawrence including his great late masterpieces The Ship of Death and Bavarian Gentians, and a pair of dazzling birds - Hummingbird and Turkey Cock - read by David Bamber. Also two new poems from Midlands veteran poet Roy Fisher. Roger McGough introduces poems including two late masterpieces by DH Lawrence. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20100919 | 20100925 (R4) | Roger McGough presents an autumn edition focussing on Louis MacNeice. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20100926 | 20101002 (R4) | Roger McGough introduces a selection of American poems. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20101003 | 20101009 (R4) | Roger McGough goes through the Poetry Please requests to find poems about the things that make a house a home. Listeners suggest poetry evoking memories of home as a mercurial place of light and shade changing as we grow older. There are poems by AA Milne, UA Fanthorpe, RL Stevenson which together go beyond the mere bricks and mortar into unique places and spaces for childhood and growth, for nourishment, for bereavement and decline. Roger McGough shares poems by TS Eliot, AA Milne and RL Stevenson on the theme of 'home'. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20101010 | 20101016 (R4) | Roger McGough introduces a miscellany of requested poems. Autumn. Rain storms. Migrant birds. Anton Lesser and Eleanor Tremain read. The curious Victorian poet James Henry begins the programme. Elizabeth Jennings and Edwin Muir follow. Peter Reading's radio poem Maritime is at the heart of the edition: blending three stories, the desperate attempts of Odysseus to get home from Troy, a ship wreck in the Atlantic in 1609 and his own birdwatching memories from Hilbre Island. Roger McGough introduces requested poems about autumn, rain storms and migrant birds. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20101017 | 20101023 (R4) | From the cradle to the grave: Roger McGough introduces requests for poems that mark life's major transitions and turning points. There are works that celebrate the arrival of new life, while others mark childhood, adolescence, middle and old age. Tessa Nicholson and Alun Raglan read a rich selection of poems by William Blake, Arthur Rimbaud, Christina Rossetti and others. Producer: Mark Smalley. Roger McGough introduces poems that mark life's transitions, from the cradle to the grave. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20101024 | 20101030 (R4) | Scotland small?' is the title of an indignant poem by Hugh MacDiarmid which sets the tone of this selection of requests for poems about Scotland. Stella Gonet and Jimmy Yuill read a varied selection of works by Scottish poets ancient and modern, from Sir Walter Scott to Liz Lochhead. In this programme Roger McGough also introduces requests for some poems by the internationally acclaimed Scottish poet Edwin Morgan who died aged 90 in August. Producer: Mark Smalley. Roger McGough introduces poems about Scotland to mark the recent death of Edwin Morgan. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20110123 | 20110129 (R4) | Roger McGough returns with a new series of your poetry requests, including work by Bertolt Brecht, Rudyard Kipling and Kate Scott. There's something of a food-related theme to the edition, with William Carlos Williams' evocative poem describing the chilled plums he's raided from the fridge. Kipling's poem 'Arithmetic on the Frontier' weighs a British soldier's life against that of his adversaries, and his own officers. The readers are Jon Strickland and Phyllida Nash. Producer: Mark Smalley. Roger McGough returns with a new series of your poetry requests, including work by Brecht. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20110130 | 20110205 (R4) | Roger McGough introduces requests for TS Eliot's groundbreaking modernist poem The Waste Land. First published in 1922, the programme draws upon existing recordings of the work by Eliot himself and Ted Hughes, with a new recording read by Lia Williams. The effect is to semi-dramatise this extremely influential work which extended the range of the dramatic monologue. Known for its almost deliberate obscurity in places, what the listener hears in this version is instead a clear, intriguing interpretation of the poem, intercutting between the different voices. Producer: Mark Smalley. Roger McGough introduces TS Eliot's groundbreaking modernist poem The Waste Land. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20110206 | 20110212 (R4) | The greatest of all musician-poets was Orpheus, the lyre player and lyricist who charmed even the birds and the beasts, but went to hell and back in pursuit of his enduring love, Eurydice. Of course, he ignored the injunctions against glancing back at her whilst leaving Hades, and lost her for all time. It's a myth that has captured the imagination of poets since time immemorial. In this edition of Poetry Please Roger McGough introduces requests for poems that shed unexpected, many-angled light upon this vital, evergreen tale, with works by , Carol Ann Duffy, CK Williams and others. Roger McGough introduces requests for poems that explore the myth of Orpheus in Hades. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20110213 | 20110219 (R4) | Roger McGough presents a selection of poetry requests to stir the senses; from the contemporary to the canonical, read by John Sessions and Catherine Cusack. With work by Coleridge, Cavafy, Larkin and Plath, as well as less familiar names like the American Chase Twichell seeking solace in the company of trees. There's a mysterious story about an exiled aristocrat by Robert Graves, and a blast of fresh air from Vicki Feaver. There's also an evocative poem by Robert Minhinnick, where the recollection of the feeling of holding a bird in the palm of the hand provokes a powerful question. Producer: Sarah Langan. Roger McGough presents a selection of poetry requests to stir the senses. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20110220 | 20110226 (R4) | Roger McGough with a magical mix of poetry requests, including work by Hilaire Belloc, DH Lawrence and Imtiaz Dharker. The readers are John Sessions and Catherine Cusack. Imtiaz Dharker also joins the programme to read her own poem about the miraculous daily arrival of thousands of tiffin boxes to their correct destinations in the city of Mumbai. There's a mesmerising rendition from 1932 of The Tarantella by Hilaire Belloc (which many will know from its opening refrain of 'Do you remember an inn, Miranda?') Also, Roger reads one of his own most well liked poems 'At Lunchtime', and DH Lawrence considers the more sedentary affairs of tortoises. Producer: Sarah Langan. Roger McGough with a magical mix of your poetry requests. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20110227 | 20110305 (R4) | Roger McGough presents another varied selection of poetry requests, including work by Derek Mahon and Philip Larkin. The readers are John Sessions, Catherine Cusack and Jonjo O'Neill. There are funny poems; one about a dog on the loose, the loss of memory and a particularly surreal one about the fantasies of a fish, as well as consoling poems on ageing, dying and living. With poetry by Leslie Norris, Matthew Sweeney and UA Fanthorpe. Producer: Sarah Langan. Roger McGough with consoling poems, including work by Derek Mahon and Philip Larkin. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20110306 | 20110312 (R4) | Roger McGough introduces requests for inspiring poems, including the result of the Winning Words project. This asked the British public to suggest lines that might encourage athletes taking part in the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, as well as future generations of Londoners. Find out which lines, nominated by the public and selected by a panel which included Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy, will be engraved on the wall in the Athletes' Village in the Olympic Park. The programme includes some of Roger McGough's own poems on a sporting theme, taken from his collection 'Sporting Relations'. Producer: Mark Smalley. Roger McGough introduces requests for poems that could inspire athletes at the Olympics. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20110508 | 20110514 (R4) | Roger McGough returns with half an hour of pure poetry. With poems about teachers, moons, notable pauses, railway trips, and other journeys including poems by Edward Thomas and Carol Ann Duffy. Keen fell walker and poetry fan Stuart Maconie reads Scafell Pike by the Cumbrian poet, Norman Nicholson, and Roger finds out what a discobolus is in a strange, ranting verse by the painter poet Samuel Butler. The readers are Jonjo O'Neill, Alison McKenna and Peter Marinker. Producer: Sarah Langan. Roger McGough presents a weekly selection of favourite poetry requested by listeners. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20110515 | 20110521 (R4) | In a special edition, Roger McGough re-visits extracts from A.E Housman's 'A Shropshire Lad' read by the late Pete Postlethwaite, which were recorded in 1996. There are so many well known lines from A.E. Housman's poetry - 'Into My Heart an Air That Kills, 'When I Was One and Twenty', 'Ale's the Stuff,' to name just a few. All feature in today's programme as Roger re-visits the readings that Pete Postlethwaite recorded of A.E. Housman's 'A Shropshire Lad.' Though neither Pete Postlethwaite nor Housman came from Shropshire, it seems that both fell in love with its Blue Remembered Hills. Producer: Sarah Langan. Roger McGough revisits extracts from A Shropshire Lad read by the late Pete Postlethwaite. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20110522 | 20110528 (R4) | Roger McGough presents a weekly selection of favourite poetry requested by listeners. Today's programme includes a poem about a writing bureau that transmutes into a small forest, another about an imagined set of neighbours, a bitter love poem from the 8th century, and a sinister folkloric tale read by the poet Robin Robertson. Other poets featured include Harold Nemerov, Lawrence Sail and Molly Holden. The readers are Alison McKenna, Peter Marinker and Jonjo O'Neill. Producer: Sarah Langan. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20110529 | 20110604 (R4) | A mixture of poetry requests to take us from dawn to dusk, with work by Norman MacCaig, Stephen Spender and Peter McDonald. There's a languid poem dreamt up by the American James Wright as he lay in a hammock at dusk, one by DH Lawrence longing for the company of his love to watch the sun setting and a 'crop of stars' growing silently, and a wry warning to a deluded Lothario as he takes the night air to try his luck. The readers are Jonjo O'Neill, Peter Marinker and Alison McKenna. Producer: Sarah Langan. Roger McGough presents a weekly selection of favourite poetry requested by listeners. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20110605 | 20110611 (R4) | Roger McGough with a selection of listeners' favourite poems. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20110619 | 20110625 (R4) | Roger McGough with listeners' requested poems about summer. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20110626 | 20110702 (R4) | Roger McGough presents listeners' poetry requests. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20110703 | 20110709 (R4) | Poetry requests from listeners presented by Roger McGough. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20110828 | 20110903 (R4) | Throughout Autumn, Roger will be guiding us through a rich mixture of listeners' requests for poetry both old and new. He will also be featuring poets reading their own work; Michael Longley, Jean Sprackland, Robin Robertson and Clare Pollard. The first programme will include work by Thomas Hardy, Carole Satyamurti and Karl Shapiro. The readers today are Mark Meadows, Jennifer Jellicorse and Catherine Cusack. There are poems about car crashes, the weather, Beethoven's lost love and one about bad behaviour in public libraries. There's escapist verse by WW Gibson and the American Shel Silverstein. There's also a sad poem about a man's fancy handwriting by a poet new to the programme, Marianne Burton. Making her debut appearance is the prize winning poet Jean Sprackland, reading 'Hard Water'. And with readings by Michael Longley too, it makes for a typically rich half an hour of poetry. Producer: Sarah Langan. Roger McGough presents a weekly selection of favourite poetry requested by listeners. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20110904 | 20110910 (R4) | Scary horses, embittered husbands and prayers for birds feature in this edition of your poetry requests, presented by Roger McGough. There's A Display of Mackerel by Mark Doty, admiring the iridescence and selflessness of those 'flashing participants.' Sylvia Plath is mussel hunting, and there's another powerful poem from across the pond; Elizabeth Bishop's 'The Fish'. The abandoned merman calls out longingly for his deserting wife 'Margaret, Margaret', in Matthew Arnold's famous poem, and RS Thomas warns 'You must wear your eyes out' in a meditation on bird watching. Clare Pollard also makes her debut on the programme with a poem inspired by a sinister folkloric tale involving horses, Pollock scales and spuming ale. The other readers are Jennifer Jellicorse, Catherine Cusack and Mark Meadows. Produced by Sarah Langan. Roger McGough presents a weekly selection of favourite poetry requested by listeners. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20110911 | 20110917 (R4) | Roger McGough introduces a wide range of poetry requests, read by Mark Meadows and Catherine Cusack. Michael Longley, Jean Sprackland and Clare Pollard also read their own work. Bicycles, skips, alarm clocks and public statues all feature in poems today. Topics include travel, faith, and political power, with work by Percy Shelley, T.S. Eliot, George Herbert, Jenny Lewis and an archive recording of Michael Donaghy who died in 2004. There are poems by two members of the Rhymers' Club, founded by Yeats in 1890. One is by Ernest Dowson - listen out for a phrase that became a famous film and book title. Robinson Jeffers and James Fenton consider existence with the help of vultures and skips, and there is an elegant story by David Scott of how the Marquis of Ripon rescued an Italian church from the brink of destruction. Producer: Sarah Langan. Roger McGough presents a weekly selection of favourite poetry requested by listeners. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20110918 | 20110924 (R4) | Grumpy poets, redundant hangmen and rats feature in today's richly mixed bag of poetry requests, read by Paul Mundell. Roger McGough also introduces poets reading their own work; there's archive of WH Auden in typically terse mood as he does the rounds of a lecture tour in 'On the Circuit' and Jean Sprackland reads a moving remembrance of her father in her poem 'Dressing Gown'. There are other portraits of family life by the late Ken Smith and the Welsh poet, Tony Curtis. Produced by Sarah Langan. Roger McGough presents a weekly selection of favourite poetry requested by listeners. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20110925 | 20111001 (R4) | Roger McGough presents a selection of favourite poetry requests, read by Paul Mundell and Mark Meadows. Today's programme includes two tense cradle songs by Louis MacNeice, poems about significant pauses by Paul Muldoon and Jean Sprackland, and two wonderful pieces of distinctly Welsh verse. Singer, 6 music presenter, and poetry lover Cerys Matthews reads a poem by the miner turned poet Idris Davies that's a clever take on the Welsh National Anthem. 'Welsh Incident' by Robert Graves captures a fantastically odd conversation, and there are other surreal offerings from Jules Renard and Günter Grass. Producer: Sarah Langan. Roger McGough presents a weekly selection of favourite poetry requested by listeners. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20111002 | 20111008 (R4) | Roger McGough introduces a varied selection of poetry requests read by Paul Mundell and Alison Reid. Michael Longley reads a beautiful poem marking his grandson's first visit to his beloved Carrigskeewaun in County Mayo. Roger considers the pros and cons of having an active social life with help from Philip Larkin, Wendy Cope and Owen Sheers. Clare Pollard also recalls the haze of overindulgence at a thirtieth birthday party. Poems from one end of the cynical spectrum to the other, with work by Gerard Manley Hopkins, and a vitriolic piece by Baudelaire. Producer: Sarah Langan. Roger McGough presents a weekly selection of favourite poetry requested by listeners. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20111009 | 20111015 (R4) | Roger McGough presents a weekly selection of favourite poetry requested by listeners, read by Bill Paterson and Catherine Harvey. The poetry requests this week take us up a mountain at two o'clock in the morning, and strolling back through time down pathways with Edward Thomas and UA Fanthorpe. And Dylan Thomas takes us wandering under the apple boughs at 'Fern Hill.' Roger also introduces requests for the work of Elizabeth Jennings and Anne Ridler, who both died 10 years ago, and he re-visits an archive recording of Sorley MacLean reading his lament 'Hallaig Producer: Sarah Langan. Roger McGough presents a weekly selection of favourite poetry requested by listeners. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20111016 | 20111022 (R4) | Roger McGough presents a selection of favourite poetry requests. The readers are Bill Paterson and Catherine Harvey. Today we go dancing with leaves in the wind, and sailing with Yeats. Roger will be taking us on other metaphorically rich journeys with CP Cavafy, Michael Longley and a poet who is better known as a novelist: Sebastian Barry. There's also a chance to hear Frances Cornford's poem To a Fat Lady, alongside its (arguably as well known) parody by GK Chesterton. Rich autumnal offerings in verse. Producer: Sarah Langan. Roger McGough presents a weekly selection of favourite poetry requested by listeners. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20111023 | 20111029 (R4) | Roger McGough presents a weekly selection of favourite poetry requested by listeners. Roger goes in search of happiness, with the help of Raymond Carver and Charles Bukowski. There are some spooky diversions along the way, with poems by Kipling and John Drinkwater. Robin Robertson also reads his own poem The Wood of Lost Things, and there are some surreal offerings from Galway Kinnell, having breakfast with Keats, and a spot of de-cluttering with the beat poet Gregory Corso. The readers are Garrick Hagon and Bill Paterson Producer: Sarah Langan. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20120115 | 20120121 (R4) | Roger McGough with poetry requests read by Catherine Cusack and Patrick Romer.The stillness of winter is set ablaze with poems by Tomas Transtr怀mer, W.B. Yeats and Moniza Alvi. The hush of winter lingers for miles in Robert Frost's famous poem 'Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening'. Robin Robertson reads his poem about the rumbling power of a frozen lake, and there's another poem about the sounds of weather by Janet Frame. There are also plenty of colourful poetic interventions, with a poem of adolescent love in Gary Soto's 'Oranges', cockerels 'cleaving the darkness' in a poem by Edward Thomas, and a man wearing red shoes like volcanoes dances his way through the weekend. Producer: Sarah Langan. Roger McGough with red-hot poetry read by Catherine Cusack and Patrick Romer. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20120122 | 20120128 (R4) | Roger McGough with poetry requests read by Catherine Cusack and Patrick Romer. Kathryn Simmonds also reads her own work. Conformity and subversion are among the themes that pop up today with Edna St Vincent Millay being merry on a ferry and William Carlos Williams prancing around naked, singing to himself. Eil退an N퀀 Chuilleanကin's poem Fireman's Lift recalls the experience of seeing Coreggio's frescoes in the dome of Parma Cathedral, and the vagabond poet W.H. Davies also makes the case for staring in his famous poem 'Leisure'. Producer: Sarah Langan. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20120205 | 20120211 (R4) | Roger McGough with a rich mixture of poetry requests read by John Sessions and Lisa Kerr. Poems of temptation, and of lost loves and places, featuring a couple of snakes, a rusty fridge and a talking bull walrus. With W.S. Graham's lovely poem of longing for a favourite place from childhood, Loch Thom, and Kathryn Simmonds reads her own poems, including a love poem about a couple united by their dislike of the film The Fifth Element. There's a dash of acidity from Philip Larkin and a healthy dose of danger in a couple of snake poems by Denise Levertov and D.H. Lawrence. There's also a deceptive villanelle by Elizabeth Bishop and an unlikely conversation in a poem by the late Canadian poet Alden Nowlen. Producer: Sarah Langan. Roger McGough with poetry requests read by John Sessions and Lisa Kerr. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20120212 | 20120218 (R4) | To stem the syrupiness of Valentine's day, Roger McGough presents a selection of spine chilling poetry. Jealousy rears its ugly head with dire consequences in two sinister poems by Robert Browning. Roger recalls adolescent days spent in the company of a German girl called Ursula, who would recite poems by Goethe in German. So to indulge him a little, and to enjoy the poem as the poet wrote it, guest Iris Pflueger-Bassett reads Der Erlk怀nig in German. John Sessions and Lisa Kerr read Walter Scott's translation of it, with a little help from a well-known musical setting of the poem by Schubert. The refrain of 'Nevermore' haunts the airwaves in Poe's classic poem The Raven and a little girl goes missing in a snow-storm in a poem by Wordsworth. The other readers are Timothy West, Clive Swift and Catherine Harvey. Producer: Sarah Langan. Roger McGough presents a selection of spine-chilling poetry requested by listeners. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20120219 | 20120225 (R4) | Poetry favourites nominated by listeners and presented by Roger McGough. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20120226 | 20120303 (R4) | Poetry requested by listeners is brought to life by Martin Jarvis and Susan Jameson. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20120318 | 20120324 (R4) | Roger McGough is joined on stage by Harriet Walter, John MacKay, Guy Paul and the poet Paul Henry to read poetry requests on the theme of listening and sounds. Coming live from St George's Hall in Bristol as part of the Radio 4 'More than Words' listening festival. Poetry is meant to be heard, and Roger has been gathering requests for poems that celebrate the wonder of listening. The results may well include favourites like The Listeners by Walter de la Mare, poems about music, birdsong and the weather. But there will be surprises and new discoveries to tantalise or please the ear, and perhaps the heart too. Paul Henry will read his moving poem The Black Guitar and hears his request 'Counting the Beats' by Robert Graves. Producer: Sarah Langan. Roger McGough presents a show from the Radio 4 More than Words listening festival. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20120513 | 20120519 (R4) | First in a new series. Roger McGough is joined by Wendy Cope. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20120520 | 20120526 (R4) | Roger McGough presents a selection of listeners' poetry requests read by Seကn Gleeson, Barbara Barnes and Samuel West. Roger kicks things off with a salute to Edward Lear, marking two hundred years since his birth. The poem is 'How Pleasant to Know Mr. Lear'. It was written by Lear himself and describes the poet's visage as hideous and his body as 'perfectly spherical'. Roger makes a plea for requests for Lear poems for a special bicentennial edition planned for later in the year. The poet Anna Crowe also joins the programme to read her poem 'Punk With Dulcimer' about an unusual encounter with a stranger on a train. A poem by Elizabeth Bishop in honour of her mentor, Marianne Moore, conjures up images of the poet flying over the New York skyline with a 'black capeful of butterfly wings and bon-mots' to offer poetic inspiration to her young prot退g退. There are also some bird poems, with works by Edward Thomas, Philip Larkin and perhaps the most famous poem about a bird ever written; Samuel West reads Ode to a Nightingale by Keats. Producer: Sarah Langan. Roger McGough with poetry requests read by Sean Gleeson, Barbara Barnes and Samuel West. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20120527 | 20120602 (R4) | Roger McGough presents two classic works and readings. First, the opening section of Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas recorded in 1954. It's hard to resist Richard Burton inviting us to hush and 'come closer'. Then, Paul Scofield reads Gerard Manley Hopkins' tormented cry The Wreck of the Deutschland. Composed after the foundering of a German boat in the Thames, it was also Hopkins first poem written since his conversion to Catholicism and becoming a Jesuit priest. As Hopkins said himself, it's a poem to be read by the ears, and there is no finer rendition than this 1975 gem from the archives. Producer: Sarah Langan. Roger McGough presents classic works by Dylan Thomas and Gerard Manley Hopkins. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20120603 | 20120609 (R4) | Roger McGough presents listeners' poetry requests read by Seကn Gleeson and Barbara Barnes. This week's mixture includes an anti-war poem by James Joyce. We also hear the jaunty song recorded in 1902 that inspired Joyce's poem. Its refrain of Mr Dooley-ooley-ooley-ooh is pleasingly difficult to shake. Roger dons a hybrid scouse-west country accent to indulge in a little Smuggling, courtesy of Rudyard Kipling and introduces work by one of his favourite poets, Norman MacCaig. There's a clever and moving 'mirror' poem by Julia Copus, recalling a memory of a father, which is also the subject for a poem by Ken Smith. And Anna Crowe joins the programme to read her poem 'Alice and the Birds. Producer: Sarah Langan. Roger McGough presents listeners' poetry requests read by Sean Gleeson and Barbara Barnes. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20120610 | Roger McGough presents poetry requests ranging from birds to railways via love. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |||
20120617 | 20120623 (R4) | Roger McGough presents listeners' poetry requests, including readings of poems both old and new by the Irish poet Paul Durcan - one of which is in celebration of fathers. Also, Lucy Black reads poems by Charlotte Mew, John Donne, Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath, John Keats, Emily Bronte, George Byron and John Freeman. Producer Beth O'Dea. Roger McGough presents poetry requests, including readings by the Irish poet Paul Durcan. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20120624 | 20120630 (R4) | Roger McGough presents a selection of listeners' poetry requests, including specially recorded readings by the Irish poet Paul Durcan - one of which is his acerbic and amusing commentary on the recession in Ireland. Also, Lucy Black reads poems by William Blake, Milton, John Clare, Christina Rossetti, Shakespeare and Rabindranath Tagore. Producer Beth O'Dea. Roger McGough presents poetry requests, including readings by Irish poet Paul Durcan. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20120701 | 20120707 (R4) | It sounds like Hollywood - the poet who wakes up to learn that his newly published verse has made his name and his fortune. But that's precisely what happened to the young Lord Byron 200 years ago when his epic 'Childe Harold' was published. Roger McGough introduces requests for the poem that features the first 'Byronic hero'. Producer: Mark Smalley. Roger McGough marks the 200th anniversary of the publication of Byron's Childe Harold. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20120708 | 20120714 (R4) | Roger McGough presents poems about machines, cider and the sea by Tolkien and others. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20120826 | 20120901 (R4) | Roger McGough challenges the notion that 'Happiness writes white' as he begins a new series with a cheering selection of poetry. There are poems celebrating a sense of freedom in summertime by Elizabeth Jennings and Robert Frost. There's a delicate poem by Norman MacCaig about the beauty of rain and a selection of poems about weddings including a moving and joyful one that Ted Hughes wrote about the day he married Sylvia Plath. With Plath in her pink woollen knitted dress and Hughes beside her in his thrice dyed corduroy jacket, he talks of being subjected to a strange tense: that of the spellbound future. Even poets not known for their cheeriness, Emily Dickinson and Charles Bukowski have happiness pouring out of them. There are also poems about the joys of gardens by Kipling and the ancient Chinese poet Po Chu-i, and a beautiful Ethiopian tribal love poem. The readers are Pippa Haywood, Patrick Romer and Harry Livingstone. Producer: Sarah Langan. Roger McGough with a brand new series, and a cheery selection of poetry requests. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20120902 | 20120908 (R4) | Roger McGough presents a varied selection of listeners' poetry requests with work by Frost, Yeats and Julia Copus. The readers are Pippa Haywood, Patrick Romer, Harry Livingstone and Philip Franks. Poems that celebrate the miniscule and the massive, and from all sorts of perspectives and dimensions in between, starting with Robert Frost observing a tiny mite scurrying across his book. Moon poems feature too with work by Carol Ann Duffy, Ted Hughes and Yeats's deceptively simple yet beguiling tale of The Cat and The Moon. There's a famous love poem by ee cummings, and a skilful and moving 'mirror' poem by Julia Copus. There are also a handful of poems on the perspectives of war with work by the late Wislawa Szymborksa. And there's a note of warning about the passing of time, by Derek Mahon, in his poem 'Dog Days'. Producer: Sarah Langan. Roger McGough with poetry requests, including work by Frost, Yeats and Julia Copus. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20120909 | 20120915 (R4) | Roger McGough has readings by Welsh poets Gillian Clarke, Paul Henry and Menna Elfyn. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20120916 | 20120922 (R4) | Roger McGough with a selection of poetry requests about secrets, art, nostalgia and libraries. The readers are Pippa Haywood, Patrick Romer and Harry Livingstone. Serendipity guides Roger from poems about babies, Dutch masterpieces and the wonders of libraries. There's a poem by the playwright Bernard Kops about the charms of Whitechapel Library, Aldgate East, which closed a few years ago. There's also a poem by one of the less well celebrated poets of The Dymock group, as Wilfred Gibson recalls a summer evening in the company of those friends. Keats urges us to let our fancy roam, and there's a man who earns his keep by 'hunting for haddocks' eyes/Among the heather bright' and working them 'into waistcoat-buttons/In the silent night' in a parody by Lewis Carroll. Producer: Sarah Langan. Roger McGough presents a selection of poetry about secrets, art, nostalgia and libraries. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20120923 | 20120929 (R4) | Roger McGough, with guest Hugo Williams, presents poems requested by listeners. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20120930 | 20121006 (R4) | Roger McGough with a selection of poems requested by listeners, in performances taken from the BBC archives. These include a stirring version, by Robert Powell, of Lord Macaulay's Horatius at the Bridge, a waspish recitation of a Betjeman poem by Geraldine McEwan, and a moving reading of John Donne by the young Kenneth Branagh. Producer Christine Hall. Roger McGough presents a selection of listeners' poetry requests. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20121209 | 20121215 (R4) | Roger McGough presents some tree poems, old and new, as the country contemplates losing its ashes. Part of a short season of tree programmes on BBC Radio 4. Poets Simon Armitage, Kathleen Jamie, Alice Oswald and Robin Robertson read some of their own poems, including new work, and some much loved and requested favourite tree poems including work by DH Lawrence, Philip Larkin, Thomas Hardy, WB Yeats and Gerard Manley Hopkins. Producer: Tim Dee. Roger McGough presents some tree poems, as the country contemplates losing its ashes. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20121223 | 20121229 (R4) | Roger McGough presents a varied, warm, yet slush-free selection of Christmas poetry requests. A moving poem called The Shepherd by Edward Kaulfuss will strike a chord with anyone who has felt estranged at a Christmas gathering. T.S. Eliot's 'The Journey of The Magi' with its complexities and doubt features alongside other classics like Hardy's ever hopeful poem The Oxen (it wouldn't be Christmas without it, after all) and Laurie Lee's Christmas Landscape. Another thoughtful nativity poem comes from a poet perhaps better known for her caustic wit; Dorothy Parker. There are some nostalgic poems from Ireland, including Patrick Kavanagh's poem 'A Christmas Childhood' where the six year old Kavanagh saw the magic in the mundane (my child poet picked out the letters/On the grey stone/In silver the wonder of a Christmas townland) as his father's melodeon called out to his neighbours. John Montague's poem The Silver Flask marks the brief reunion of a family dispersed from County Tyrone to Brooklyn, where Montague himself was born. Coventry Patmore's poem The Toys might just move the hardest cynic heart to tears, whilst Hugh MacMillan's 'Saturday Afternoon at the Grotto' injects a healthy sense of Glaswegian realism. The readers are John Mackay, Ian McElhinney and Eleanor Tremain. Producer: Sarah Langan. Roger McGough presents a warm but slush-free selection of Christmas poetry requests. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20121230 | 20130105 (R4) | Roger McGough presents a diverse selection of listeners' poetry requests on the theme of time. The readers are Ian McElhinney and John Mackay. Pianos, mountains, train stations and even coffee provide the inspiration for poems on the theme of time. There's a dystopian vision of earth in the future in a poem by Sheenagh Pugh. Thomas Hardy wonders what people may say of him when he's gone in 'Afterwards', whilst Cecil Day Lewis's meditation on New Year's Eve urges us to cherish the 'dying, but never dead' state of now. There's a rarely heard piece of archive of the poet Tony Harrison reading his poem Old Soldiers which was inspired by his childhood memory of a repeating image on a coffee label that seemed to stretch to infinity. Jackie Kay also reads her own work in a moving dialect poem about an old friendship. Other poets reading their own work include two winners of the recent Gardeners' World Magazine's Poetry Competition. There are also a few significant pauses at train stations with poems by John Montague and Tomas Transtr怀mer. John Dryden's speech 'When I Consider Life' is a glorious rant, and Tennyson roars to the world in this poem 'I Stood on a Tower in the Wet. Producer: Sarah Langan. Roger McGough with a selection of poetry on the theme of time. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20130106 | 20130112 (R4) | Roger McGough presents requests for some playful poems on a musical and satirical theme. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20130113 | 20130119 (R4) | Roger McGough presents poems on subjects as varied as water, Tarzan, cats and Sundays. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20130120 | 20130126 (R4) | Barbara Flynn reads a lightly abridged version of the macabre classic by John Keats: 'Isabella, or - the Pot of Basil'. Presented by Roger McGough. Written in 1818, 'Isabella; or the Pot of Basil' is a hauntingly beautiful tale of devotion to a lost love. Fair Isabella falls for a servant, Lorenzo, much to the annoyance of her brothers. They had hoped to marry her off to some Florentine nobleman. So they contrive to murder poor Lorenzo. However, the brothers underestimate the power of the couple's love to endure. Through death, apparitions, exhumations and theft, Isabella's love persists - albeit with a little help from an aged dame and some unconventional gardening techniques. Basil may never taste quite the same again! With its origins in 14th century stories written by Boccaccio, Keats's re-telling inspired the Pre-Raphaelite artists Holman Hunt and Millais to paint two very different visions of Isabella. A chilling tale - perfect for a winter's night - beautifully read by Barbara Flynn. Producer: Sarah Langan. Roger McGough with an abridged version of Isabella, by John Keats, read by Barbara Flynn. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20130127 | 20130202 (R4) | Roger McGough with a selection of listeners' poetry requests. Leontia Flynn reads her own poems. John Mackay and Eleanor Tremain read work by others including Larkin, Milosz and Charles Causley. Inspiration is the theme of two of the poems today in Charles Causley's lovely 'Kelly Wood' , and one by the Estonian, Jaan Kaplinski. There are a couple of love poems - one by RS Thomas and one by Moniza Alvi, tempered by Larkin's typical cynicism in 'Love Songs in Age'. Larkin was the poet who really sparked Leontia Flynn's interest in poetry and she joins the programme to read a poem about comfortably resisting the urge to travel, and to introduce a selection of her work from her highly commended collection 'Profit and Loss'. There's also a poem advocating the joys of metaphor by Mark Doty, a clever and moving one by the late Wislawa Szymoborska called 'Cat in an Empty Apartment', and Hopkin's magical celebration of weeds and wilderness, 'Inversnaid'. Producer: Sarah Langan. Roger McGough presents a selection of listeners' poetry requests. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20130203 | 20130209 (R4) | Roger McGough presents listeners' poetry requests, including by the late Adrian Mitchell. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20130210 | 20130216 (R4) | Poetry marking the winter of 1963, the long season of snow and cold during which the poet Sylvia Plath died. Listeners' requests for her work include Morning Song, Balloons and Wuthering Heights. The readers are Fenella Woolgar and Paul Mundell, with readings of their own work by poets Paul Farley, Eavan Boland, Jacob Polley and MR Peacocke. Producer Christine Hall. Listeners' poetry requests presented by Roger McGough. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20130217 | 20130223 (R4) | Liz Lochhead was appointed as Makar in January 2011, taking on this role of Scotland's national poet. We find out what it means for this established and highly respected poet and playwright. We join Liz Lochhead on her tour of duty as she attends the Robert Burns Museum in Ayrshire with Carol Ann Duffy, visits schools across Scotland and speaks out at the Poetry Library in Edinburgh. This is a personal observation on her life and work in Scotland, and Liz takes us to visit her favourite corner of the country on the wild and unspoilt west coast near Skye. She reflects on the importance of the job for her, which she accepted as she says, 'in grateful recognition of the truth that poetry - the reading of it, the writing of it, the saying it out loud, the learning of it off by heart - all of this matters deeply to ordinary Scottish people everywhere. With readings of Liz Lochhead's poems and contributions from leading writers and critics across Scotland and beyond. A year in the life of Liz Lochhead, Scotland's Makar or poet laureate. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20130428 | 20130504 (R4) | Roger McGough presents the first in a new series of poems requested by listeners, with an edition that dares to walk on the wilder side, focusing on feelings other than those that relate to love. If the emotions felt in a single day were mapped across a life, what would be encountered? We hear poems that touch upon darker feelings, such as hatred, shame and remembrance. Joined by the actors Patrick Romer, Kate Littlewood and Alun Raglan, Roger introduces poems by the likes of the footloose Verlaine, some sharply observed gems by Emily Dickinson, a dark poem about shame by the American poet Richard Wilbur, and a lament that conjures up powerful suburban frustrations, written by the Bristol-based poet and novelist, Helen Dunmore. Producer: Mark Smalley. Roger McGough dares to walk on the wilder side, focusing on feelings other than love. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20130505 | 20130511 (R4) | Roger McGough with a varied selection of poetry requests. Poems of praise to the lowly and the heavenly, including work by George Barker and RS Thomas who were both born one hundred years ago this year. RS Thomas's 'A Marriage' is tender and moving; 'We met under a shower of bird notes', and he analyses the powerful stillness of the atmosphere 'In Church.' Poems by another priest poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins also feature, with his sonnet to Felix Randall, which he wrote after the death of a parishioner of his while he was a priest in Liverpool, as well as 'God's Grandeur'. There will be many secular exultations too though, with Les Murray paying homage to the bed, Emily Dickinson to the sea and a paean to the music of Bach by the Swedish poet Lars Gustafsson. With readings by John Mackay and guest poets Leontia Flynn and Paula Meehan. Producer: Sarah Langan. Roger McGough with poems praising the heavenly and the everyday. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20130512 | 20130518 (R4) | Roger McGough presents a wide selection of poetry requests. This week - fresh renditions of classic as well as contemporary poems, as some of the choices will be recited by teenagers taking part in the national Poetry by Heart competition finals. A Poetry Archive initiative, Andrew Motion has described the competition as 'A way for 14- to 18-year olds to have serious fun while they extend their reading, deepen their powers of appreciation, and memorise beautiful and intriguing poems which will enrich their lives for ever. Poems include Love From a Foreign City by Lavinia Greenlaw, a fantastic rendition of Welsh Incident by Robert Graves and a not to be missed recitation in Middle English from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Producer: Sarah Langan. Roger McGough with poetry read by teenage competitors from the Poetry by Heart finals. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20130519 | 20130525 (R4) | A typically untypical range of poems, read by Kerry Elkins and John Mackay. Sublime and surreal poems nestle comfortably alongside heartfelt tales of loss and longing. Poems include Stevie Smith's macabre work The River God and a more benign reflection on nature from the great pre-Raphaelite Dante Gabriel Rossetti in his poem 'Silent Noon'. Alastair Reid's work makes regular appearances on the programme but it's usually in the form of his translations of Pablo Neruda's work, so Roger takes the chance to introduce some of his own poetry; the beguiling 'What's What' and a simply beautiful one called 'Oddments, Inklings, Omens, Movements. Producer: Sarah Langan. Roger McGough with a diverse range of poetry read by Kerry Elkins and John Mackay. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20130609 | 20130615 (R4) | Roger McGough encounters a mango for the first time, meets the Queen of Sheba and hears how spoken word artist Steven Duncan is inspired by his grandma's wise words. Listeners have requested a poem from his play 'The Mother' that got Bertolt Brecht into hot water with the House Committee on Un-American Activities, and another by the champion of Jamaican patois, Louise Bennett-Coverley 'Colonization in Reverse'. With readers Alex Lanipekun, Hannah Wood and Nadia Williams. Producer...Mary Ward-Lowery. Roger McGough with requests for poetry by John Agard, Louise Bennett and Kathleen Jamie. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20130616 | 20130622 (R4) | Roger McGough presents poems to make you glad to be awake, alive and not in prison. Listeners requests include the moving and uplifting poem 'Things I didn't know i Loved' by Nazim Hikmet; 'The Land of Mists' by the South Korean poet Kim Kwang-kyu; and an extraordinary poem contemplating the kind of miracle Polish poet Piotr Kniecicki would wish for if he could: 'Not Quite Convinced. There are also two poems by A E Housman and Slam Poetry champion Hollie McNish performs 'British National Breakfast'. Roger is joined by readers Alex Lanipekun and Mark Meadows. Producer...Mary Ward-Lowery. Roger McGough presents poems by Hollie McNish, Piotr Kniecicki and Nazim Hikmet. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20140216 | 20140222 (R4) | Roger McGough introduces poems requested by listeners. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20140907 | 20140913 (R4) | Roger McGough presents a mixed bag as requested by listeners, including poems by Allan Ahlberg and DH Lawrence for teachers returning to work, Keats' classic Autumnal ode, and watery poetry by Thomas Hardy and Charles Tomlinson. There's also James Joyce and Thom Gunn, and Sean Street reading his paean to a jazz great, 'Hearing Buddy Bolden'. Roger McGough presents a mixed bag as requested by listeners. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20140921 | 20140927 (R4) | Roger McGough presents a mixed bag of listeners poetry requests, from Emily Bronte to Philip Larkin. Topics covered include religion, a trip to the seaside and a really embarrassing dinner party. Women poets writing in the 19th and 20th centuries are highlighted, with work by Christina Rossetti, Mary Webb, Ella Wheeler Wilcox and Emily Dickinson. Roger McGough presents a mixed bag of listeners' poetry requests, from Bronte to Larkin. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
20160508 | 20160514 (R4) | Roger McGough introduces poems requested by listeners. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
08-04-2007 | 20070414 | Roger McGough celebrates the arrival of spring with poems by Walt Whitman, Charlotte Mew, Thomas Hardy and Ted Hughes. Readers are Adjoa Andoh, Cian Murchu and Trevor Peacock. [Rptd Sat 11.30pm] The Year's Awakening by Thomas Hardy From: The Oxford Authors Publ: Oxford University Press Miracles by Walt Whitman From: The Complete Poems Publ: Penguin The Fight of the Year by Roger McGough From: The Oxford Book of Christmas Poems I So Liked Spring by Charlotte Mew From: Collected Poems and Prose Publ: Carcanet Press All Suddenly the Wind Comes Soft by Rupert Brooke From: The Complete Poems of Rupert Brooke Publ: Sidgwick & Johnson The Trees by Philip Larkin Publ: faber and faber Primavera by Robin Robertson From: Wild Reckoning anthology Publ: Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation The West Wind by John Masefield From: The Collected Poems Publ: Heinemann Home-Thoughts from Abroad by Robert Browning From: Poems selected by WE Williams The Lambs of Grasmere by Christina Rossetti Winter by Brendan Behan, translated by Ullick O'Connor From: Life Styles Publ: The Dolmen Press - Dublin. London - Hamish Hamilton. Easter 1916 by W.B. Yeats From: The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats Publ: palgrave Easter by George Herbert From: The English Poems of George Herbert Publ: Dent April Birthday by Ted Hughes From: Season Songs Roger McGough introduces poems by Walt Whitman, Charlotte Mew, Thomas Hardy and Ted Hughes Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
15-04-2007 | 20070421 | Roger McGough introduces poems about writing poetry and being a poet, including works by Emily Bronte, Sophie Hannah and RS Thomas. Readers are Adjoa Andoh, Cian Murchu and Trevor Peacock. [Rptd Sat 11.30pm] The House by David Sutton From: New and Selected Poems 1965-2005 Publ: Peterloo Poets Yours Sincerely by John Lucas From: The Long & The Short of It Publ: Redbeck Press The Cancellation by Sophie Hannah From: Selected Poems Publ: Penguin Books extract from Fresh Air by Kenneth Koch Publ: Carcanet Who Goes There? by Cecil Day Lewis From: The Complete Poems of C. Day Lewis Publ: Sinclair-Stevenson Don't ask Me by RS Thomas From: Residues Publ: Bloodaxe The Thought-Fox by Ted Hughes From: New Selected Poems 1957-1994 Publ: faber and faber Write by Carol Ann Duffy From: Rapture Publ: Picador A Supermarket in California by Allen Ginsberg From: Collected Poems 1947-1980 Memorabilia by Robert Browning From: The Rattle Bag anthology To Imagination by Emily Bront뀀 From: Bront뀀 - Poems Publ: Everyman To Posterity by Louis MacNeice Dis Poetry by Benjamin Zephaniah From: City Psalms Roger McGough introduces poems about writing poetry and being a poet. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
18-02-2007 | 20070224 | Marking the centenary of arguably the most important poet of the 20th century in the English language after TS Eliot, Roger McGough introduces requests for works by WH Auden. The reader is Douglas Hodge. Unless otherwise indicated, all poems in this week's edition are by W.H Auden and are taken from The Collected Shorter Poems published by faber. As I Walked Out One Evening From: AS I Walked Out One Evening, publ.faber Funeral Blues 'Stop all the Clocks Stop all the Cars' by Roger McGough From: Collected Poems Publ: Viking Night Mail The Composer September 1, 1939 In Praise of Limestone From: Selected Poems, publ. faber The Unknown Citizen Excerpt from In Memory of W.B Yeats Roger McGough introduces works by WH Auden, read by Douglas Hodge. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
18-11-2007 | 20071124 | Roger McGough celebrates the 250th anniversary of the birth of William Blake with a selection of his most popular verse, read by Samuel West, Janet Suzman and David Collins. All poems featured in today's programme can be found in The Poetical Works of William Blake published by Oxford University Press Prologue: O For a Voice Like Thunder Piping Down the Valleys A Dream London The Tyger The Schoolboy A Poison Tree Preface to Milton 'And did those feet.. from Jerusalem To the Accuser who is the God of this World from Auguries of Innocence from Vala or The Four Zoas The Garden of Love A Little Boy Lost Roger McGough celebrates the 250th anniversary of the birth of William Blake. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
28-01-2007 | 20070203 | What the Heart is Like by Miroslav Holub, translated by Ewald Osers From: Miroslav Holub, Poems Before & After Publ: Bloodaxe Courtyards in Delft by Derek Mahon From: Selected Poems Publ: Penguin Epilogue by Robert Lowell From: Day by Day Publ: faber Vincent Writes to Theo from the North by Jo Haslam From: The Sign for Water Publ: Smith/Doorstep Books Portrait of Dr. Gachet by R.S.Thomas From: Between Here and Now by R.S. Thomas Publ: MacMillan Rembrandt's Late Self-Portraits by Elizabeth Jennings From: Collected Poems Publ: Carcanet You say their Pictures...from On Art and Artists by William Blake From: The Poetical Works of William Blake Publ: Oxford Family Portrait translated by Elizabeth Bishop, from the original by Carlos Drummond de Andrade From: The Complete Poems of Elizabeth Bishop Publ: Chatto & Windus Art above Nature: to Julia by Robert Herrick From: The New Oxford Book of Seventeenth Century Verse Not my Best Side by U.A. Fanthorpe The Thermal Stair by W.S. Graham From: Collected Poems 1942-1977 Publ: Faber and faber Colours by Yevgeny Yevtushenko translated by Robin Milner-Gulland Roger McGough presents a selection of poems. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
40th Anniversary Special With Cerys Matthews | 20191110 | 20191116 (R4) | To celebrate the programme's 40th birthday, Cerys Matthews interviews Roger McGough. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
A Bouquet Of Flowers | 20130526 | 20130601 (R4) | Roger McGough celebrates the centenary of the Chelsea Flower Show with a bouquet of poems about flowers. Daisies from Emily Dickinson and Jon Silkin, roses by Blake and Burns and the wonderfully moving account of his son's birth 'The Almond Tree' by Jon Stallworthy. With readers Juliet Aubrey, Mark Meadows and Harry Livingstone. Producer...Mary Ward-Lowery. A bouquet of poems about flowers, presented by Roger McGough. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
A Burns Supper | 20150125 | 20150131 (R4) | Roger McGough hosts the Poetry Please Burns supper, with reader John MacKay. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
A Dollop Of Nonsense And A Hint Of Spring | 20140223 | 20140301 (R4) | Roger McGough presents poems that include a dollop of nonsense and a hint of spring. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Alice Oswald | 20180121 | 20180127 (R4) | Roger McGough is joined by Alice Oswald, who picks her favourite poems for the programme. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Altered States | 20150913 | 20150919 (R4) | Roger McGough introduces poetry to take listeners into altered states and waking dreams. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Amina Atiq | 20220508 | 20220514 (R4) | Roger talks to the Yemeni born poet Amina Atiq. Growing up in Liverpool she often found it hard to be accepted and a feeling of not belonging is central to her poetry. Amina chooses favourite poems selected from the requests sent in by listeners to include work by DH Lawrence, Danez Smith, Zaffar Kunial and Anne Stevenson. Producer: Maggie Ayre Poems chosen by Liverpool-Yemeni poet Amina Atiq. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
An Ark Of Animal Poems | 20130714 | 20130720 (R4) | Roger McGough takes a new job as Noah at the helm of an ark of animal poems. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Anthony Joseph | 20230115 | 20230121 (R4) | Roger McGough is joined by the writer and musician Anthony Joseph, who makes a selection from listeners' poem requests and recommendations and shares some of his own work. They talk about whether writing or music came first for Anthony and about the riches of Caribbean poetry. Anthony's choices include poems by James Berry, Claude McKay, Derek Walcott, Charles Causley, Audre Lorde, Edward Kamau Brathwaite and Helen Dunmore. Anthony Joseph is an award winning Trinidad-born poet, novelist, academic and musician. He is the author of four poetry collections and three novels. His 2018 novel Kitch: A Fictional Biography of a Calypso Icon was shortlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize, the Royal Society of Literature's Encore Award, and long listed for the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. His most recent publication is the experimental novel The Frequency of Magic. As a musician, he has released eight critically acclaimed albums, and in 2020 received a Paul Hamlyn Foundation Composers Award. He holds a PhD in Creative Writing from Goldsmiths University and is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at Kings College, London. His new collection Sonnets for Albert was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection and the T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry. ?Produced in Bristol by Mair Bosworth for BBC Audio Writer and musician Anthony Joseph joins Roger McGough to choose some favourite poems. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Arlo Parks | 20210718 | 20210724 (R4) | The award-winning singer and poet Arlo Parks shares a selection of her favourite poems from Poetry Please's listener requests, including Leonard Cohen, Sylvia Plath and Hieu Minh Nguyen. Arlo reads one of her own poems and explains why she's determined to share how powerful poetry can be. Producer: Caitlin Hobbs for BBC Audio in Bristol Mirror by Sylvia Plath From Sylvia Plath Collected Poems Published by Faber and Faber The Tyger by William Blake From The New Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1950 Published by Oxford Dimensions of Love by Leonard Cohen From The Flame: Leonard Cohen Published by Canongate Books; Main edition Staying Quiet by Hieu Minh Nguyen From Poetry Magazine Published by Coffee House Press Stem of Wallflower / Hair of Doormat by Amy Key From Isn't Forever Published by Bloodaxe Books I Wanna Be Yours by John Cooper Clarke From: johncooperclarke.com Two Travelling Together by Hiromi Ito From Killing Kanoko / Wild Grass On The Riverbank Published by Tilted Axis Press In Memory of Mr B by Anna Akhmatova From Poems of Akhmatova Published by Little, Brown & Co. Granted by permission of Darhansoff & Verrill Literary Agency Collapsed in Sunbeams by Arlo Parks From her album Collapsed in Sunbeams Produced by Transgressive Records The Great Advantage Of Being Alive by EE Cummings From E. E. Cummings: Complete Poems, 1904-1962 Published by Liveright The award-winning singer selects poems requested by listeners. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Attila The Stockbroker's Mum | 20160605 | 20160611 (R4) | Roger McGough with listeners' requests, including a moving poem by Attila the Stockbroker reflecting on his mother's rich life before Alzheimer's gradually robbed her of her memory. The readers this week are Simon Armstrong, Rosie Cavaliero, Attila the Stockbroker and Radio 4 announcer and poetry lover, Zeb Soanes. Producer Christine Hall. Roger McGough presents a selection of listeners' poetry requests. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Autumn | 20160918 | 20160924 (R4) | Roger McGough celebrates the autumn equinox. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Bees | 20150906 | 20150912 (R4) | Roger McGough is back with a Poetry Please celebrating the humble bee. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Being Lost | 20170521 | 20170527 (R4) | Roger McGough presents a selection of requests for poems about being lost. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Ben Okri | 20190421 | 20190427 (R4) | Poet and Booker prize winner Ben Okri joins Roger McGough to talk about his chosen poems. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Benjamin Zephaniah | 20231126 | 20231203 (R4) | Roger McGough is joined in the studio by Benjamin Zephaniah, who shares a selection of favourite poems from listener requests. These include classics by John Clare, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Spike Milligan; as well as a poem new to Roger, by the Chinese scholar Zhimo Xu written about Cambridge, newer works by Mary Jean Chan and Joelle Taylor, and one of Benjamin's own about his love of hedgehogs. Benjamin Zephaniah is a dub poet and author who's written for children, teenagers and adults. His first poetry collection, Pen Rhythm, was published in 1980. Recent books include two volumes autobiography, Benjamin Zephaniah: My Story and The Life and Rhymes of Benjamin Zephaniah. Produced by Eliza Lomas for BBC Audio. Roger McGough is joined by Benjamin Zephaniah, who shares poems from listener requests. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. Benjamin Zephaniah joins Roger McGough, sharing a selection of poems from listener requests, including favourites by John Clare, Mary Jean Chan and Percy Bysshe Shelley. | |
Bernard O'donoghue, Helen Mort And Paul Farley Reading Their Own Work | 20140126 | 20140201 (R4) | Roger McGough presents listeners' poetry requests. With Bernard O'Donoghue, Helen Mort and Paul Farley reading their own work. Bernard O'Donoghue's poems include his translation of some of Piers Plowman as well as moving and beautifully observed poems about personal relationships. There's the pain of missed opportunity in poems like Ter Conatus, about a brother and sister who have lived together all their lives. Bernard also has a poem that was written in dedication to a Poetry Please listener, Morag Morris. Rising poetry star Helen Mort makes her debut with a lovely poem in honour of a music hall comic from Sheffield called Stainless Stephen, and she reads others from her collection Division Street. Paul Farley also reads his work, including an atmospheric poem about listening in the dark. Producer: Sarah Langan. Roger McGough presents listeners' requests with poets reading their own work. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Bhanu Kapil | 20230129 | 20230204 (R4) | The TS Eliot prize-winning poet makes her selection of listeners' favourite poems. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Billy Letford | 20180715 | 20180721 (R4) | Roger McGough is joined by Billy Letford, who shares a selection of his favourite poems from the Poetry Please archive of listeners' requests. His choices include Robert Louis Stevenson, Jen Hadfield, Emily Dickinson and Tom Leonard. Billy Letford comes from Stirlingshire and worked in various jobs including his family's roofing business in his twenties. His debut collection Bevel was published in 2012, and his second, Dirt, was published in 2016, both by Carcanet Press. Producer: Eliza Lomas. Roger McGough and Billy Letford present a selection of listeners' requests. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Birmingham Literature Festival | 20141019 | 20141025 (R4) | Roger McGough presents an as-it-happens request edition on stage at the Birmingham Literature Festival as audience members pick their favourite poems. Will it be Not Waving but Drowning or The Way through the Woods, The Listeners or Timothy Winters, The Sunne Rising or Snake? The readers are Eleanor Tremain and Peter Marinker. Producer: Tim Dee. Roger McGough presents a request edition on stage at the Birmingham Literature Festival. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Bloomsday | 20150614 | 20150620 (R4) | Roger McGough celebrates Bloomsday with poetry by James Joyce, Paul Durcan and others. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Bodleian Library | 20070204 | 20070210 (R4) | Roger McGough looks at the rich poetry collection held by the Bodleian Library in Oxford. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Brian Bilston | 20210711 | 20210717 (R4) | Poet Laureate of Twitter' Brian Bilston chooses his favourites from among the listener requests, including UA Fanthorpe, Henry Reed, Philip Larkin and more. Produced by Sally Heaven for BBC Audio in Bristol. Frank O'Hara - Having a Coke with You Taken from `Selected Poems` Published by Carcanet Henry Reed - Naming of Parts Taken from `Collected Poems` Billy Collins - The Lanyard Taken from `The Trouble with Poetry and Other Poems` Published by Picador Thomas Hardy - Ah, Are you Digging On My Grave? Taken from `The Collected Poems of Thomas Hardy` Published by Wordsworth Editions W.H Auden - Musee des Beaux Arts Published by Faber Mandy Coe - Let's Celebrate Taken from `Clay` Published by Shoestring Press Rosemary Tonks - Dressing-Gown Olympian Taken from `Bedouin of the London Evening` Published by Bloodaxe Philip Larkin - An Arundel Tomb Luke Kennard - The Murderer Taken from `The Harbour Beyond the Movie` Published by Salt Publishing The 'Poet Laureate of Twitter' joins Roger McGough. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Brian Patten | 20210725 | 20210731 (R4) | Roger McGough talks poetry with his fellow Mersey poet Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Bubble And Squeak | 20150215 | 20150221 (R4) | Roger McGough with a bubble and squeak of listeners' poetry requests. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Bubble And Squeak | 20160221 | 20160227 (R4) | Roger McGough presents poetry old and new, happy and sad, and everything in between. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Caleb Parkin | 20220605 | 20220611 (R4) | Caleb Parkin selects some favourite poems from amongst our listeners' requests and recommendations. His picks include poems by William Carlos Williams, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Kei Miller, Gail McConnell, Billy Collins, and more... Caleb Parkin is the current Bristol City Poet, where his poem commissions react to local politics, work with migrant communities in the city, and more recently have responded to Pride and the Platinum Jubilee. His debut poetry collection, This Fruiting Body, is a playful invitation to a queer eco-poetics, which plunges us into octopus raves and beyond... With special thanks to all the poets who recorded their poems for us, and to The Poetry Archive for their permission to use their recording of 'Earth Cries' by Jean Binta Breeze. Photo credit: Paul Samuel White Produced by Becky Ripley Caleb Parkin joins Roger McGough to share some favourite poems. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Canals, Rivers, Boats And Lakes | 20131013 | 20131019 (R4) | This year National Poetry Day has taken the theme of water and Poetry Please has thrown off its clothes and jumped in with a selection of poems about lakes, rivers, boats and canals. All recorded live at the Birmingham literature festival in the new Library of Birmingham, amidst the many waterways of the venice of the Midlands. Roger McGough presents a selection of poems on a watery theme. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Caroline Bird | 20190303 | 20190309 (R4) | Roger McGough is joined by the poet Caroline Bird, who shares a selection of her favourite poems from the Poetry Please archive of listener requests. Her choices include poems by Selima Hill, Ada Limon, Tomas Transtromer, Luke Kennard, Carolyn Forche and Terrance Hayes. Caroline Bird is a poet and playwright. She has five collections of poetry published by Carcanet. Her most recent collection, In These Days of Prohibition, was shortlisted for the 2017 TS Eliot Prize and The Ted Hughes Award. A two time winner of the Foyles Young Poets Award, her first collection Looking Through Letterboxes was published in 2002 when she was 15. She won a major Eric Gregory Award in 2002 and was shortlisted for the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize in 2001 and the Dylan Thomas Prize in 2008 and 2010. She was one of the five official poets at the 2012 London Olympics. She is currently working on her sixth poetry collection. Producer: Mair Bosworth. Roger McGough hears a selection of Caroline Bird's favourite poems. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Cecilia Knapp | 20210627 | 20210703 (R4) | The Young People's Laureate for London Cecilia Knapp delves into Poetry Please's listener requests and shares a selection of her favourite poems, including Danez Smith, Rachel Long and Frank O'Hara. And we'll hear Cecilia read one of her own poems. Producer: Caitlin Hobbs for BBC Audio in Bristol Everything is going to be alright by Derek Mahon From Derek Mahon - Selected Poems Published by Penguin For Grace, after a party by Frank O' Hara From The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara Published by California University Press Names by Romalyn Ante From Antiemetic for Homesickness Published by Chatto & Windus Checkout by Caroline Bird From The Air Year Published by Carcanet Press Ltd Hotel Art, Barcelona by Rachel Long From My Darling From The Lions Published by Picador; Main Market edition My Mother Quit Bread by Cecilia Knapp From her upcoming anthology published by Trapeze Hope is the thing with feathers by Emily Dickinson From The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson Published by Faber Crossing The Bar by Alfred Tennyson From Selected Poems: Tennyson Published by Penguin Classics The Young People's Laureate for London picks out poems from listeners' requests. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Celebrating The Bicentenary Of Edward Lear's Birth | 20121014 | 20121020 (R4) | Roger McGough celebrates the bicentenary of Edward Lear's birth. Shirley Henderson and Andrew Sachs read a selection of his nonsense poems as requested by listeners, including The Jumblies and The Quangle Wangle's Hat. Adding to the mix are some old favourites like Elton Hayes singing The Owl and the Pussycat to a small guitar and Kenneth Williams' unique interpretation of The Dong with the Luminous Nose. Produced by Beatrice Fenton. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Charles Causley Anniversary | 20130929 | 20131005 (R4) | Roger McGough presents a selection of listeners' requests for poems by Charles Causley. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Charles Causley Part 2 | 20131006 | 20131012 (R4) | Roger McGough presents a second selection of requests for Charles Causley's poems. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Children In Need: Omnibus | 20171119 | Radio 4 celebrated Children in Need this week with poems on the theme of childhood read by some of our best known poets and actors. With poems from Sylvia Plath, Charles Causley, Edward Lear, William Wordsworth, Adrian Mitchell and Seamus Heaney, we explore this precious time in all our lives. Plus readings from Sir Derek Jacobi, Lesley Manville and Maxine Peake and poets Hollie McNish, Paula Meehan, Mona Arshi, Jacob Polley and Kayo Chingonyi reading their work. Joining them are children from creative writing projects funded by Children In Need; First Story and Caban Sgriblio. Producer: Sarah Addezio. Radio 4 celebrates Children in Need with poems on the theme of childhood. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
Children's Poetry And Miscellany | 20150524 | 20150530 (R4) | Roger McGough presents poetry for children and adults alike. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Christmas With Roger Robinson And Liz Lochhead | 20221225 | 20221231 (R4) | Roger Robinson and Liz Lochhead join Roger to share favourite seasonal poems Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Cities | 20170205 | 20170211 (R4) | Roger McGough takes a poetic stroll through the streets of the city. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Claudine Toutoungi | 20220130 | 20220205 (R4) | Poet and playwright Claudine Toutoungi makes her selection for the programme. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Colm T\u00f3ib\u00edn | 20220522 | 20220528 (R4) | The writer Colm T ib퀀n selects some favourite poems from amongst our listeners' requests and recommendations. His picks include poems by Elizabeth Bishop, Thom Gunn, Maura Dooley, Victoria Kennefick and Anthony Cronin. Colm T ib퀀n is the author of ten novels - including Brooklyn, The Magician and The Master. He published his first poetry collection, Vinegar Hill, in spring 2022. With special thanks to RTɀ Archives for their recording of Seကn Mac R退amoinn's reading of The Two Travellers by CJ Boland, and to the Irish Poetry Reading Archive in UCD Library for their kind permission to use their recording of Anthony Cronin reading his poem 'For a Father'. Produced by Mair Bosworth for BBC Audio The writer Colm T\u00f3ib\u00edn joins Roger McGough to share some favourite poems. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Colours | 20150927 | 20151003 (R4) | Roger McGough brings poetry of love and of colours - blue, green, crimson, silver, gold... Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Contemporary Irish Poets | 20150531 | 20150606 (R4) | Roger McGough celebrates contemporary Irish poetry. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Dana Gioia | 20220123 | The former poet laureate of California talks about his life in poetry. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
Don Paterson | 20190224 | 20190302 (R4) | Roger McGough talks to poet Don Paterson as he chooses poetry requested by listeners. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Dreams And Sleep | 20140202 | 20140208 (R4) | Dreams and sleep people the poems that Roger McGough introduces this week, with works by DH Lawrence, Rose Macaulay, Norman MacCaig and others. Poets from across the centuries nudge up against each other, as they engage in a dialogue around the ways in which day dreams and deep sleep can stoke the imagination. The readers are Adjoa Andoh and Patrick Romer. Producer: Mark Smalley. Roger McGough introduces poems about dreams and sleep. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Dusk 'til Dawn | 20170305 | 20170311 (R4) | Roger McGough presents a selection of listeners' requests for poems to take us through the night, from dusk 'til dawn. Poems of sun rise and sunset; of twilight and the dawn's early light. Of 3am worries and deep, deep sleep. We watch the sun go down over the sea with Norman Nicholson and Siegfried Sassoon's lulls us to sleep. We lie awake fretting with Fleur Adcock and wake on a cold narrowboat with Jo Bell. John Donne helps us convince our other half to call in sick to work and come back to bed, and find that Robert Burns is not a morning person. Readers: John Mackay, Siobhan Redmond and Barbara Flynn Producer: Mair Bosworth. Roger McGough presents listeners' requests for poems to take us through the night. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Earth And Air | 20140608 | 20140614 (R4) | Roger McGough is in his element, introducing requests for poems about earth and air. Works by Auden, Yeats and Mary Oliver will be read by Alun Raglan, Jenny Coverack and others. This edition is a companion piece to last week's show, with poems that evoked the elements of fire and water. Producer: Mark Smalley. Roger McGough returns to his element, with requests for poems about earth and air. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Edward Thomas, Charlotte Mew, Walter De La Mare | 20140316 | 20140322 (R4) | Roger McGough introduces a selection of requested poetry from three poets who were active one hundred years ago: Edward Thomas, Charlotte Mew and Walter de la Mare. In 1914, Charlotte Mew, who had one of the saddest lives in all poetry, was cautiously assembling poems for her first collection, The Farmer's Bride. Walter de la Mare had just published Peacock Pie, a book of his children's poems, which has remained immensely popular, with many reprints ever since. And the brief poetic career of Edward Thomas was just getting underway after he met the American poet Robert Frost and began turning his prose writing into poems. The readers are Eleanor Tremain, Peter Marinker and Anton Lesser. Producer: Tim Dee. Roger McGough presents a selection of poems written one hundred years ago. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Elizabeth Bishop And Jorge Luis Borges | 20160821 | 20160827 (R4) | Roger McGough presents a selection of poems from Mexico, Brazil and Argentina. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Eve L. Ewing | 20210117 | 20210123 (R4) | Chicago poet, sociologist and comic writer Eve L. Ewing chooses from the listener requests Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Families | 20150920 | 20150926 (R4) | Roger McGough with a selection of listeners' requests with a family theme. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Fiona Benson | 20220529 | 20220604 (R4) | Fiona Benson joins Roger McGough to make her selection from listeners' requests. She chooses poems by Lucille Clifton, Sophie Herxheimer, Robin Robertson, Liz Berry, Walt Whitman, Sharon Olds, Hannah Hodgson and Gerard Manley Hopkins. Fiona has published three collections of poetry: Bright Travellers, which was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize and won the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry's Prize for First Full Collection; Vertigo & Ghost, which won the Roehampton Poetry Prize and the Forward Prize for Best Collection; and a new collection, Ephemeron. The extract from Walt Whitman's Song of Myself is taken from a Drama on 3 production for BBC Radio 3, broadcast in 2021. The reader was Eleanor Bron and the Producer was Emma Harding. Produced by Mair Bosworth for BBC Audio Fiona Benson joins Roger McGough to make her selection from listeners' poetry requests. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Fire And Water | 20140601 | 20140607 (R4) | Roger McGough is in his element, presenting poems on the theme of fire and water. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Fleur Adcock | 20190519 | 20190525 (R4) | Roger McGough's guest curator is Fleur Adcock. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Food Glorious Food | 20140511 | 20140517 (R4) | Roger McGough introduces delicious poems to make your mouth water from the Bristol Food Connections Festival, with readers John Telfer, Katy Sobey and James Fleet. There's fruit: Wild Strawberries by Robert Graves and Blackberry Picking by Seamus Heaney; something substantial to get your teeth into: Bread by Brendan Kennelly, A Jar of Honey by Jacob Polley, and a sweet treat: Chocs by Carol Ann Duffy. Perfectly balanced and nutritious: join the audience at Bristol's Food Connections Festival for this delightful feast of poetic treats. Presenter...Roger McGough Readers...John Telfer, Katy Sobey and James Fleet Producer...Mary Ward-Lowery. Delicious poems introduced by Roger McGough from Bristol Food Connections Festival. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Four Midlands Poets | 20141012 | 20141018 (R4) | Roger McGough and four Midlands poets are on stage at the Birmingham Literature Festival to read their favourite poems of the region along with new ones of their own. The poets are Bohdan Piasecki, Stephen Morrison-Burke, Jacqui Rowe and Liz Berry. Birmingham will rarely have sounded brighter. Producer: Tim Dee. Roger McGough and four Midlands poets on stage at the Birmingham Literature Festival. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Fox Running | 20160228 | 20160305 (R4) | Roger McGough presents the late Ken Smith's reading of his long poem, Fox Running. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
From The Birmingham Literature Festival | 20131020 | 20131026 (R4) | Roger McGough presents a selection of poetry requests from an audience at the Birmingham Literature Festival. the selection is drawn from the top ten most requested poems in the history of the show and includes Adelstrop by Edward Thomas, How Do I Love Thee by Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Not Waving but Drowning by Stevie Smith. The audience also tell Roger about what the requested poems mean to them. Roger McGough presents a selection of poetry requests made by a live audience. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
George Mackay Brown | 20160313 | 20160319 (R4) | Roger McGough with a programme dedicated to the Orkney poet George Mackay Brown. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Gillian Clarke | 20190217 | 20190223 (R4) | Poet Gillian Clarke chooses from the Poetry Please database of listeners' requests. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Goblin Market, By Christina Rossetti | 20140119 | 20140125 (R4) | Roger McGough begins a new series with requests for poems by Christina Rossetti. Shirley Henderson gives a beguiling rendition of what is arguably Rossetti's most famous poem 'Goblin Market', published in 1862. It is a heady fairy tale about temptation involving two sisters, Laura and Lizzie. The poem has a sexual undertone and a menacing quality that lurks among the persistent pleas of the fruit selling Goblin men to 'come buy, come buy.' Visits to your greengrocer may never be the same again. There is also a reading of another of Rossetti's much requested and moving poems 'Remember,' as well as a lesser known poem of pilgrimage, 'Up-hill'. Producer: Sarah Langan. Roger McGough presents Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti, read by Shirley Henderson. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Gothic Poetry | 20160131 | 20160206 (R4) | Roger McGough presents a selection of gothic poetry. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Groups Of Poets | 20160515 | 20160521 (R4) | Roger McGough looks at the poetry produced by groups of friends throughout history. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Hannah Hodgson | 20220515 | 20220521 (R4) | Hannah Hodgson has a life limiting illness and writes remarkable poetry about her experience. She has selected a range of poems that sing, including those reflecting on disability and by disabled poets. We hear from Raymond Antrobus, Amy Acre, Andrew McMillan and Dorothy Wordsworth as well as a little known poem by WB Yeats. Producer Sally Heaven Hannah Hodgson selects poems that sing, including work reflecting on disability. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Helen Mort | 20200705 | 20200711 (R4) | We join Helen Mort in Sheffield as she chooses her favourite poems. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Henry Normal | 20180701 | 20180707 (R4) | Roger McGough is joined by writer, poet and BAFTA winning TV and film producer, Henry Normal, who shares a selection of his favourite poems from the archive of listeners' requests. Henry talks about the moment he began writing poetry as a young man after seeing an inspiring performance by an emerging young poet named, Roger McGough. Reunited here they share their love of poetry. Henry's choices include Adrain Henri, Jackie Kay, Carol Ann Duffy and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Producer: Sarah Addezio. Roger McGough is joined by writer, poet and Bafta-winning producer Henry Normal. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Hollie Mcnish | 20180128 | 20180203 (R4) | Roger McGough is joined by Hollie McNish, who picks her favourite poems for the programme. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Home | 20160117 | 20160123 (R4) | Roger McGough presents a selection of listeners' poetry on the subject of home. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Homer Made Anew | 20130630 | 20130706 (R4) | Roger McGough introduces poems after Homer by Alice Oswald and Michael Longley. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Ian Mcmillan | 20201227 | 20210102 (R4) | The poet, playwright, and broadcaster talks Roger McGough through his top poetry choices. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Imtiaz Dharker | 20180722 | 20180728 (R4) | Roger McGough is joined by Imtiaz Dharker, with a selection of her favourite poems from the Poetry Please archive of listeners' requests. This week her choices include requests from some special listeners with whom she was on tour recently, Carol Ann Duffy and Jackie Kay as well as poems from Helen Mort, Liz Berry and Clare Shaw. Imtiaz Dharker is a poet, artist and documentary film-maker. Awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 2014, recipient of the Cholmondley Award and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Her most recent collection is Luck is the Hook (Bloodaxe Books UK). Her poems are on the British GCSE and A Level English syllabus. She has been Poet in Residence at Cambridge University Library, for Thresholds, and has recently completed a series of poems based on the Archives of St Paul's Cathedral. She has had ten solo exhibitions of drawings in India, London, New York and Hong Kong. If there were to be a World Laureate, then for me the role could only be filled by Imtiaz Dharker.' Carol Ann Duffy Producer: Sarah Addezio. Roger McGough and Imtiaz Dharker present a selection of listeners' requests. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
In-between Days | 20170312 | 20170318 (R4) | Winter is over but Spring has not quite sprung. Roger McGough presents a selection of poetry requests for an in-between time of year which looks both forward and back. The programme's full of memories and desires, some regrets; but poems of hope and expectation too. Expect stars, trees, childhood escapades, journeys taken (and not taken); things viewed across distances of time and space. Producer James Cook. Roger McGough presents a selection of poetry requests for an in-between time of year. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Islands | 20151004 | 20151010 (R4) | Roger McGough presents a programme in celebration of the islands around the UK. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Islands And High Seas | 20140209 | 20140215 (R4) | Poems on islands and high seas sail through this show, with Roger McGough at the helm. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Jack Clemo At 100 | 20160828 | 20160903 (R4) | Roger McGough listens to a series of poems by the remarkable Cornish poet Jack Clemo who was born 100 years ago. A devout and singular poet, Clemo grew up in the raw and brutal landscape of the china-clay pits of Cornwall. He was deeply affected by where he was from. Deaf from an early age, and later blind as well, he wrote an extraordinary physical yet religious verse that is like nothing and no one else. The former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, and Clemo's biographer, Luke Thompson, pick and read their favourite poems and Jim Causley sings some. Producer: Tim Dee. Roger McGough presents a selection of poems by Jack Clemo (1916-1994). Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Jackie Kay | 20231203 | 20231210 (R4) | Roger McGough is joined in the studio by Jackie Kay, who rifles through listener requests to pick out some of her favourite poems.
They include well-loved classics, such as The Lake Isle of Innisfree by W. B. Yeats, alongside oft-requested poems by Roger Robinson and Norman MacCaig and poets new to Roger, such as Ntozake Shange.
Jackie Kay is the former Scottish Makar, and as well as being a poet is also a novelist, playwright and librettist. Her collections include Bantam, Adoption Papers, Trumpet, Other Lovers and her recent memoir, Red Dust Road.
Produced by Eliza Lomas for BBC Audio
Jackie Kay joins Roger McGough to pick favourite poems from listener requests. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. Jackie Kay joins Roger McGough to rifle through our listener requests for poems, picking favourites including W. B. Yeats, Roger Robinson and Ntozake Shange.
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Jackie Kay | 20231203 | 20231210 (R4) | Roger McGough is joined in the studio by Jackie Kay, who rifles through listener requests to pick out some of her favourite poems. They include well-loved classics, such as The Lake Isle of Innisfree by W. B. Yeats, alongside oft-requested poems by Roger Robinson and Norman MacCaig and poets new to Roger, such as Ntozake Shange. Jackie Kay is the former Scottish Makar, and as well as being a poet is also a novelist, playwright and librettist. Her collections include Bantam, Adoption Papers, Trumpet, Other Lovers and her recent memoir, Red Dust Road. Produced by Eliza Lomas for BBC Audio Jackie Kay joins Roger McGough to pick favourite poems from listener requests. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. Jackie Kay joins Roger McGough to rifle through our listener requests for poems, picking favourites including W. B. Yeats, Roger Robinson and Ntozake Shange. | |
Jacob Sam-la Rose | 20180211 | 20180217 (R4) | Jacob Sam-La Rose shares his favourite poems from listeners' requests. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Jason Allen-Paisant | 20231210 | 20231217 (R4) | Jason Allen-Paisant joins Roger McGough, sharing a selection of listener requested poems.
They’ll discuss classics by Ted Hughes and William Wordsworth, alongside new classics by Caleb Femi and Kei Miller. Jason also shares a poem from his award-winning second collection.
Jason Allen-Paisant is a Jamaican poet and scholar. His collection ‘Self-Portrait as Othello’ won the 2023 Forward Prize for Best Collection and is currently shortlisted for the 2023 T. S. Eliot Prize.
Produced by Alice McKee for BBC Audio
Roger McGough is joined by Jason Allen-Paisant, who shares poems from listener requests. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. Jason Allen-Paisant joins Roger McGough, sharing a selection of listener requested poems, including the words of Caleb Femi, Ted Hughes and Elizabeth Bishop.
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Jason Allen-Paisant | 20231210 | Jason Allen-Paisant joins Roger McGough, sharing a selection of listener requested poems.
They’ll discuss classics by Ted Hughes and William Wordsworth, alongside new classics by Caleb Femi and Kei Miller. Jason also shares a poem from his award-winning second collection.
Jason Allen-Paisant is a Jamaican poet and scholar. His collection ‘Self-Portrait as Othello’ won the 2023 Forward Prize for Best Collection and is currently shortlisted for the 2023 T. S. Eliot Prize.
Produced by Alice McKee for BBC Audio
Roger McGough is joined by Jason Allen-Paisant, who shares poems from listener requests. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. Jason Allen-Paisant joins Roger McGough, sharing a selection of listener requested poems, including the words of Caleb Femi, Ted Hughes and Elizabeth Bishop.
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Jason Allen-paisant | 20231210 | 20231217 (R4) | Jason Allen-Paisant joins Roger McGough, sharing a selection of listener requested poems. They'll discuss classics by Ted Hughes and William Wordsworth, alongside new classics by Caleb Femi and Kei Miller. Jason also shares a poem from his award-winning second collection. Jason Allen-Paisant is a Jamaican poet and scholar. His collection ‘Self-Portrait as Othello' won the 2023 Forward Prize for Best Collection and is currently shortlisted for the 2023 T. S. Eliot Prize. Produced by Alice McKee for BBC Audio Roger McGough is joined by Jason Allen-Paisant, who shares poems from listener requests. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. Jason Allen-Paisant joins Roger McGough, sharing a selection of listener requested poems, including the words of Caleb Femi, Ted Hughes and Elizabeth Bishop. | |
Jean Sprackland | 20190505 | 20190511 (R4) | Jean Sprackland joins Roger in the studio. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Jeanette Winterson | 20231217 | 20231224 (R4) | Jeanette Winterson joins Roger McGough, sharing a seasonal selection of listener requested poems. Together they explore light, love and religion, through the words of Carol Ann Duffy, Stevie Smith, Anne Sexton and many more.
Jeanette Winterson is an award-winning novelist, essayist and memoirist. She is best known for her semi-autobiographical novel 'Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit', which she wrote at the age of 23, inspired by her strict Pentecostal Evangelist upbringing in Accrington, Lancashire.
Produced by Alice McKee for BBC Audio
Roger McGough is joined by Jeanette Winterson with a seasonal selection of poems. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. Jeanette Winterson joins Roger McGough, sharing a seasonal selection of listener requested poems, including the words of Carol Ann Duffy, Stevie Smith and Anne Sexton.
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Jeanette Winterson | 20231217 | Jeanette Winterson joins Roger McGough, sharing a seasonal selection of listener requested poems. Together they explore light, love and religion, through the words of Carol Ann Duffy, Stevie Smith, Anne Sexton and many more.
Jeanette Winterson is an award-winning novelist, essayist and memoirist. She is best known for her semi-autobiographical novel 'Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit', which she wrote at the age of 23, inspired by her strict Pentecostal Evangelist upbringing in Accrington, Lancashire.
Produced by Alice McKee for BBC Audio
Roger McGough is joined by Jeanette Winterson with a seasonal selection of poems. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. Jeanette Winterson joins Roger McGough, sharing a seasonal selection of listener requested poems, including the words of Carol Ann Duffy, Stevie Smith and Anne Sexton.
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Jeanette Winterson | 20231217 | 20231224 (R4) | Jeanette Winterson joins Roger McGough, sharing a seasonal selection of listener requested poems. Together they explore light, love and religion, through the words of Carol Ann Duffy, Stevie Smith, Anne Sexton and many more. Jeanette Winterson is an award-winning novelist, essayist and memoirist. She is best known for her semi-autobiographical novel 'Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit', which she wrote at the age of 23, inspired by her strict Pentecostal Evangelist upbringing in Accrington, Lancashire. Produced by Alice McKee for BBC Audio Roger McGough is joined by Jeanette Winterson with a seasonal selection of poems. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. Jeanette Winterson joins Roger McGough, sharing a seasonal selection of listener requested poems, including the words of Carol Ann Duffy, Stevie Smith and Anne Sexton. | |
Jo Clement | 20220210 | 20220212 (R4) | Growing up with a grandfather who wore gold sovereign rings and took her to the Appleby Horse Fair Jo Clement absorbed the Romany traditions he showed her. Her poetry addresses life for a marginalised people from the Traveller girls used for a fashion shoot to the gatherings and customs of Gypsy people. Jo is Editor of Butcher's Dog Poetry Magazine and her first collection of poems Outlandish is published this year by Bloodaxe. Among her choices of poetry requests are John Clare's To The Snipe, Preface from Swims by Elizabeth Jane Burnett and Nightingales by fellow Romany poet David Morley. Producer: Maggie Ayre Roger McGough's guest is Jo Clement, a Northumbrian poet of Romany heritage. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Joelle Taylor | 20220612 | 20220618 (R4) | Poetry from Walt Whitman, TS Eliot, Caroline Bird and Kayo Chingonyi feature in poet Joelle Taylor's selection of listener requests. Joelle was awarded the TS Eliot Prize for Poetry in 2021. She is the founder of Slambassadors and is the author of C+nto & Othered Poems. Among her choices are an extract from Ilya Kaminsky's Deaf Republic read by Garth Greenwell and Noma Dumezweni and an extract of Walt Whitman's Song of Myself read by Orson Welles. Producer: Maggie Ayre Joelle Taylor guests Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
John Cooper Clarke | 20180729 | 20180804 (R4) | Roger McGough is joined by John Cooper Clarke, with a selection of his favourite poems from the Poetry Please archive of listeners' requests. His choices include requests for poems by Sir Henry Newbolt, Rudyard Kipling, Sylvia Plath, and Pam Ayres. Occasionally described as the Poet Laureate of Punk, John Cooper Clarke has performed in many guises; rock star, fashion icon, TV and radio presenter, social and cultural commentator and reluctant national treasure. Ahead of the release of a new poetry collection, 'The Luckiest Guy Alive', his first in 37 years, he shares his love of classic verse, some newly-penned poems and his hilarious musings on life. Producers: Elliott Prince and Sarah Addezio. Roger McGough and John Cooper Clarke present a selection of listeners' requests. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
John Donne | 20150628 | 20150704 (R4) | Roger McGough on the poetry of John Donne. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
John Hegley | 20190428 | 20190504 (R4) | John Hegley joins Roger McGough with his selection of poems from his own and others' work. They're joined by writer and comedian Arthur Smith to help them read a compilation of favourite poems chosen by listeners and by John himself to reflect his love of words and rhythm. The programme contains very strong language Producer: Maggie Ayre John Hegley joins Roger McGough to choose his favourite poems. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
John Masefield And The Sea | 20170513 | 20171125 (R4) | Roger McGough marks 50 years since the death of John Masefield with poetry about the sea. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Journeys | 20150301 | 20150307 (R4) | Roger McGough presents listeners' requests for poetry about journeys. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Julia Copus | 20210704 | 20210710 (R4) | The poet and biographer selects poems requested by listeners, with Roger McGough. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
June Miscellany | 20150621 | 20150627 (R4) | Roger McGough with a miscellany of poems about sun, sleep, love and loss. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Karen Mccarthy Woolf | 20190526 | 20190601 (R4) | Karen McCarthy Woolf joins Roger McGough Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Kate Tempest | 20180812 | 20180818 (R4) | Roger McGough is joined by Kate Tempest, who shares a selection of her favourite poems from the Poetry Please archive of listeners' requests. A playwright, poet, novelist and spoken word artist who began performing when she left school at the age of 16, Kate Tempest has gone from performing to strangers on buses to winning accolades including being the youngest winner of the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry with her piece, Brand New Ancients in 2013, and she was selected as one of the 2014 Next Generation Poets by the Poetry Society, a once-in-a-decade award. She's been nominated for the Mercury Music Prize and won Best Female Solo Performer at The Brits for her music. Equally influenced by Joyce, Bukowski, Blake and the Wu-Tang Clan she has a musical sense of language, bridging the worlds of rap and traditional lyric verse. She joins Roger on the publication of her new collection of poetry, Running Upon The Wires (Picador) with poem choices including Wislawa Szymborska, Yusef Komunyakaa, Zia Ahmed, Sharon Olds, Christopher Logue, Langston Hughes and readings by Kim Moore and one of the children from the anthology, Poems From A School, Maah Noor Ali. Producer: Sarah Addezio. Roger McGough and Kate Tempest present a selection of listeners' requests. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Kathleen Jamie | 20200628 | 20200704 (R4) | Kathleen Jamie guests with a selection of listener requests Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Kathryn Simmonds | 20191027 | Kathryn Simmonds joins Roger McGough to choose her favourite poems from listener requests. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
Kenneth Steven | 20210110 | 20210116 (R4) | The Scottish poet guests. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Kim Moore | 20201220 | 20201226 (R4) | Kim, the award-winning poet who lives and works in Cumbria, chooses her favourites from listener requests, including an old favourite from Thomas Hardy and new discoveries from Abeer Ameer, William Gee and Caleb Femi. She's also very honest about why she began writing poetry... Produced by Sally Heaven for BBC Audio in Bristol The award-winning Cumbrian poet selects her favourites from the list of listener requests. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Larry Beckett | 20220109 | Larry Beckett is an American poet who collaborated with singer-songwriter Tim Buckley in the 1960s and 70s. His poem Song To The Siren became a hit for Buckley. His latest work in American Cycle is drawn from American language and folklore and was written over 40 years. His choice of poems has been picked from requests sent in by listeners to include Matthew Arnold, WB Yeats, Shakespeare and Keats. He also reads two of his own poems Blue Ridge and John Lennon. Producer: Maggie Ayre This week's guest is Larry Beckett. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
Lavinia Greenlaw | 20230122 | 20230128 (R4) | Lavinia Greenlaw is the author of The Importance of Music To Girls as well as most recently Some Answers Without Questions. Her latest poetry collection The Built Moment was published in 2019. She sifts through the poetry requests and chooses amongst others work by William Blake, Raymond Antrobus and Denise Levertov. Guest poet Lavinia Greenlaw makes her selection of poems. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Lemn Sissay | 20180708 | 20180714 (R4) | Roger McGough is joined by celebrated poet, writer and playwright, Lemn Sissay MBE, who shares a selection of his favourite poems from the archive of listeners' requests. Lemn talks about how poets and poems are like his family, his nearest and dearest being choices including the Ethiopian Poet Laureate, Tsegaye Gabriel-Medhin, American Poet Laureate, Tracy K Smith, Michael Rosen, Britain's Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy and Scottish Makar, Jackie Kay. Also joining Roger and Lemn in the studio is the poet, Caroline Bird, shortlisted for the TS Eliot Award 2017, the Ted Hughes Award 2017, and the Dylan Thomas Prize twice in 2008 and 2010. Producer: Sarah Addezio. Roger McGough and poet Lemn Sissay MBE present a selection of listeners' requests. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Lindsey Hilsum | 20230108 | 20230114 (R4) | Foreign correspondent Lindsey Hilsum - newly returned from reporting from the trenches in Ukraine - joins Roger McGough to discuss whether poetry can tell us something about war that TV and news reporting can't. Together they make a selection from our listeners' requests for poetry about war and Lindsey shares some of the poems that have accompanied her through her years of reporting from war zones. Her choices include poems by Ilya Kaminsky, Fiona Benson, Warsan Shire, WB Yeats, Siegfried Sassoon, AE Housman, WH Auden and Wis?awa Szymborska, And Roger shares one of his own poems, inspired by his childhood experiences of sheltering with his parents in the bomb shelter during the bombing of Liverpool. Lindsey Hilsum is Channel 4 News' International Editor. Her book, In Extremis; the Life of War Correspondent Marie Colvin, won the 2019 James Tait Black Prize for biography Recently she has reported the war in Ukraine, and the aftermath of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. She has covered the major conflicts and refugee movements of the past three decades, including Syria, Mali, Iraq, and Kosovo and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. From 2006-8 she was based in China, and in 1994 was the only English-speaking foreign correspondent in Rwanda as the genocide started. She has won many awards, including the Royal Television Society Journalist of the Year and the Royal Geographical Society Patron's Medal. She contributes regularly to newspapers and literary magazines. Her first book was Sandstorm; Libya in the Time of Revolution. Produced in Bristol by Mair Bosworth for BBC Audio Roger McGough is joined by foreign correspondent Lindsey Hilsum to discuss war poetry. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Listener Stories | 20160501 | 20160507 (R4) | Listeners tell Roger McGough the stories behind their poetry requests. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Live Audience Requests At Bristol Food Connections Festival | 20140518 | 20140524 (R4) | Roger McGough presents a selection of the programme's most-requested poems, as chosen by the audience at Bristol Food Connections festival. With readers James Fleet, Alex Lanipekun and Pippa Haywood. No emailing or posting requests this time: here Roger comes eyeball-to-eyeball with his listeners to find out why they want the poem they've chosen. Will it be WB Yeats, Maya Angelou, Shakespeare or Robert Frost? Roger and readers won't know until the audience make their choice. Readers...James Fleet, Alex Lanipekun and Pippa Haywood Producer...Mary Ward-Lowery. Roger McGough presents best-loved poems chosen by an audience at Bristol Food Connections. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Liz Berry | 20180218 | 20180224 (R4) | Liz Berry joins Roger McGough to present a selection of listeners' requests. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Liz Lochhead | 20180225 | 20180303 (R4) | Roger McGough and Liz Lochhead present a selection of listeners' poetry requests. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Love And The Rest | 20160214 | 20160220 (R4) | Roger McGough with poetry of love, hate and everything in between on Poetry Please. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Malika Booker | 20191020 | 20191026 (R4) | Roger McGough talks to Malika Booker as she chooses her favourite poems. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Matt Harvey | 20220213 | 20220219 (R4) | Devon poet Matt Harvey delves into the listener requests. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Michael Morpurgo | 20230625 | 20230701 (R4) | Roger's guest is children's writer Michael Morpurgo. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Michael Pedersen | 20230709 | 20230715 (R4) | The Scottish poet Michael Pederson joins Roger McGough to make a selection of listener requests, including poems by Jackie Kay, Edwin Morgan, Maggie Smith, Ted Hughes and Ada Lim n. Michael has published three collections of poetry, including his most recent, The Cat Prince. His prose memoir, Boy Friends, was published in 2022. He won a Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship, the John Mather's Trust Rising Star of Literature Award. Pedersen also co-founded Neu! Reekie! a prize-winning literary production house that produced cutting edge shows in Scotland and the world over for over ten years. Produced by Eliza Lomas for BBC Audio. The writer Michael Pedersen joins Roger McGough to share some favourite poems. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Midwinter | 20161218 | 20161227 (R4) | Roger McGough explores the archives to find the most evocative winter poems read by some of our best actors. Poets Thomas Hardy, Miroslav Holub, Robert Frost and Shakespeare are brought to life by actors including Juliet Stevenson, Dame Harriet Walter and Hugh Laurie. Steeleye Span and Bert Jansch make up the numbers. Roger McGough presents a selection of winter poems read by some celebrated actors. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Mike Garry | 20191013 | Roger McGough is joined by Manchester poet Mike Garry to hear his poetry choices. For Mike music is the key to poetry, a way of introducing it to people who believe it's not for them. Mike himself has collaborated with different musicians including New Order and Philip Glass. Producer: Maggie Ayre Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
Miles Chambers | 20180819 | 20180825 (R4) | Bristol's first poet laureate, Miles Chambers, joins Roger McGough with a selection of his favourite poems from the Poetry Please archive of listeners' requests. His choices include requests for Benjamin Zephaniah, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Azfa Awad and Robert Burns. Miles Chambers is a performance poet, slam champion and playwright, who was appointed Bristol's first City Poet in 2016. Roger McGough and Miles Chambers present a selection of listeners' requests. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Milosz And Dickinson | 20140309 | 20140315 (R4) | Roger McGough presents a selection of poems by Czeslaw Milosz and Emily Dickinson read by Peter Marinker and Eleanor Tremain. A Polish veteran of many of the upheavals of the middle of the Twentieth Century and a Nineteenth Century New Englander who kept to her house and communicated with the world by post: perhaps not much connects these poets and yet their poems speak to one another across the years. Producer: Tim Dee. Roger McGough presents a selection of poems by Czeslaw Milosz and Emily Dickinson. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Miscellany | 20160529 | 20160604 (R4) | Roger McGough presents a miscellany of listeners' poetry requests. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Miscellany From Persia To Eaglehawk | 20150510 | 20150516 (R4) | Roger McGough travels from 13th-century Persia to Eaglehawk, Australia. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Mona Arshi | 20210103 | 20210109 (R4) | Mona Arshi was awarded the Forward Prize in 2015 for her debut poetry collection Small Hands. She's a former human rights lawyer and soon to be novelist. Her poetry selection includes work by Adrienne Rich, Caleb Femi and Gerard Manley Hopkins whose poem God's Grandeur she assesses from a 21st century perspective. Produced by Maggie Ayre for BBC Audio in Bristol The former human rights lawyer selects her favourite poems from listener requests. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Murray Lachlan Young | 20210124 | 20210130 (R4) | Performance poet Murray Lachlan Young makes his selection of listeners' requests Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Music And Lyrics | 20120129 | 20120204 (R4) | Roger McGough presents poetry requests based on the themes of music and lyrics, featuring work by Yeats, Maya Angelou, Joanna Newsom, Louis MacNeice, and Patti Smith. There are musical interpretations by the likes of The Waterboys, The Wraiths, Cantamus Girls' Choir, and Natalie Merchant. There's also a chance to hear Scroobius Pip read his inventive Mr Otis Regrets, a response to Miss Otis Regrets, and Kenneth Patchen delivering Lonesome Boy Blues against a gritty jazz soundtrack. The readers are Peter Marinker, Pippa Haywood, Mark Meadows and Nadia Williams. Producer: Toby Field. Roger McGough presents poetry requests based on the themes of music and lyrics. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
New Poems From Old Stories | 20130707 | 20130713 (R4) | Roger McGough introduces new poems made out of the oldest stories. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Nikita Gill | 20230101 | 20230107 (R4) | Nikita Gill chooses poems of renewal from the listener requests. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Owen Sheers | 20191006 | 20191012 (R4) | The Welsh poet Owen Sheers is Roger McGough's guest choosing some of his favourite poems. He has chosen work with an ecological theme, pieces which reflect his concern for the environment. Poems include The Horses by Edwin Muir, The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry and a new poem by Poet Laureate Simon Armitage. Producer: Maggie Ayre Roger McGough invites Welsh poet Owen Sheers to select favourite poetry. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Parenting | 20170219 | 20170225 (R4) | Sally Phillips and Matt Harvey join Roger McGough to read poems about parenting. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Paul Muldoon | 20210131 | 20210206 (R4) | Paul Muldoon delves into the listener requests to choose his favourites Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Philip Larkin | 20170212 | 20170218 (R4) | Roger McGough celebrates Hull's most famous librarian, Philip Larkin. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Poems About Love | 20150208 | 20150214 (R4) | Roger McGough introduces poems requested by listeners on the theme of love. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Poems For Dark Days | 20170129 | 20170204 (R4) | Roger McGough presents a selection of poems for dark days: poems to get you through the saggy bit of the year between Christmas and spring, to sustain us during the dark days of late winter, and to bring comfort and cheer (whether our dark days be actual, personal or political). Listener requests for poems by Raymond Carver, Kathleen Jamie, WH Auden, Emily Dickinson and many more are read by Siobhan Redmond and Peter Marinker. Producer: Mair Bosworth. Roger McGough presents a selection of listeners' requests for poems for dark days. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Poems For Winter | 20150201 | 20150207 (R4) | Roger McGough with requests for wintry poems. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Poems To Make You Laugh | 20150118 | 20150124 (R4) | Roger McGough presents poetry to make you laugh, with poets from Wendy Cope to Ivor Cutler, taking in Kit Wright, Clive James and Adrian Mitchell along the way. There's Carol Ann Duffy's ode to the Kray Sisters, Michael Rosen's mickey-taking brother, and Roger throws a few of his own into the mix for good measure. Producer Sally Heaven. Roger McGough presents poetry to make you laugh. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Poetry And Music | 20140615 | 20140621 (R4) | Roger McGough presents a programme examining the long relationship between poetry and music. Poets through the ages have collaborated with musicians from every genre from classical to drum and bass, taking in folk, punk and reggae. Featuring Edward Elgar, Sir John Betjeman, ee cummings, Gregory Porter, Michael Horovitz, Joan Baez, Leonard Cohen, John Cooper Clarke, Benjamin Zephaniah, Kate Tempest and the Scaffold. Roger McGough presents an LP of poems set to music. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Poetry And Religion | 20150315 | 20150321 (R4) | Roger McGough explores a wide range of poetry about religion. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Poetry, By Heart | 20140525 | 20160917 (R4) | Roger McGough presents a selection of poems recited by finalists at Poetry by Heart, a competition for students at school and college in England to learn and recite poems from memory. Also featuring Jean Sprackland, Andrew Motion and Roger himself, all treating us to some of their favourite poetry without using any words on a page to prompt them. Roger McGough presents poems recited from memory by school pupils. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Poetry, By Heart | 20150517 | 20150523 (R4) | Poetry Please at the Poetry by Heart finals. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. ~Poetry Please at the Poetry by Heart finals. | |
Poetry, By Heart | 20160417 | 20160423 (R4) | Roger McGough is back with the first in a new series of the poetry requests show. This programme comes from the annual Poetry by Heart competition. Students learn and recite a variety of poems, from Sylvia Plath's Morning Song to A Satirical Elegy by Jonathan Swift. There's a wealth of talent on display, but who will be crowned winner? If you fancy making a request then get in touch at poetryplease@bbc.co.uk or tweet us @bbcpoetryplease. Producer Sally Heaven. Roger McGough presents the first in a new series from the Poetry by Heart competition. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Poetry, By Heart Finals 2017 | 20170514 | 20170520 (R4) | Roger McGough presents a selection of poems recited by finalists at Poetry by Heart, a competition for students at school and colleges in England to learn and recite poems from memory. Recorded at the national finals at the British Library in London, we hear the regional champions battle it out to hear who becomes the regional Poetry by Heart champion for 2017. Producer: Mair Bosworth and Eliza Lomas. Roger McGough presents a selection of poems recited at the Poetry by Heart competition. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Poets Reading Other Poets | 20130602 | 20130608 (R4) | Roger McGough presents a selection of poetry requests. This week; poets reading other poets' work, including Maya Angelou reading Shakespeare and Alice Oswald reading Milton. Also featuring Christopher Logue's rendition of Neruda's work with jazz accompaniment, and translations of Rilke and Machado by Don Paterson. Producer: Sarah Langan. Roger McGough presents listeners' poetry requests. Poets reading other poets' work. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Pot Luck | 20151018 | 20151024 (R4) | Roger McGough presents half an hour of satirical poetry, read by Rory Bremner. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Pot Luck | 20151025 | 20180318 (R4) | Roger McGough presents a pot luck of poetry from Byron and Keats to Charles Tomlinson. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Rachel Long | 20230716 | 20230722 (R4) | The poet Rachel Long joins Roger McGough to make a selection of listener requests, from Kei Miller to Sarah Howe, Emily Dickinson to Gboyega Odubanjo. Rachel Long's debut poetry collection, My Darling from the Lions, was published in 2020. It was shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize, the Costa Poetry Award, the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, the Jhalak Prize and was a TIME book of the year and a Best Poetry Book by the Guardian. Produced by Eliza Lomas for BBC Audio. Rachel Long joins Roger McGough to make her selections from listeners' poetry requests. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Raymond Antrobus | 20190512 | 20190518 (R4) | Raymond Antrobus is Roger McGough's guest and chooses his favourite poems. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Remember | 20140928 | 20141004 (R4) | Roger McGough with poetry requests on the theme of Remember. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Richard Scott | 20190310 | 20190316 (R4) | Roger McGough is joined by Richard Scott (whose debut poetry collection Soho was shortlisted for the 2018 TS Eliot Prize), who shares a selection of his favourite poems from the Poetry Please archive of listeners' requests. His choices include poems by Rainer Maria Rilke, Jane Yeh, Mary Ruefle, Denise Riley, Daljit Nagra and Mark Doty. Richard Scott was born in London in 1981. His poems have appeared widely in magazines and anthologies including Poetry Review, Poetry London, PN Review, Swimmers and The Poetry of Sex (Penguin). He has been a winner of the Wasafiri New Writing Prize, a Jerwood/Arvon Poetry Mentee and a member of the Aldeburgh 8. His pamphlet 'Wound' (Rialto) won the Michael Marks Poetry Award 2016 and his poem 'crocodile' won the 2017 Poetry London Competition. Soho (Faber & Faber) is his first book. Producer: Mair Bosworth. Roger McGough and Richard Scott present a selection of listeners' poetry requests. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Robert Burns And More | 20160124 | 20160130 (R4) | Roger McGough with listeners' requests, including poetry by Robert Burns. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Robert Lowell And The Pulitzer Prize For Poetry | 20170430 | 20170506 (R4) | Roger McGough celebrates American poet Robert Lowell and the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Roger Robinson | 20200614 | 20200620 (R4) | Poet and musician Roger Robinson brings us a selection of his favourite poems. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Rommi Smith | 20230702 | 20230708 (R4) | With poet, playwright and librettist Rommi Smith. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Rs Thomas At 100 | 20130922 | 20130928 (R4) | Roger McGough presents a selection of listeners' requests for the poems of RS Thomas. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Rural Miscellany | 20151011 | 20151017 (R4) | Roger McGough presents listeners' favourite poetry, including works by Robert Frost. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Sabrina Mahfouz | 20200621 | 20200627 (R4) | Award-winning poet and playwright Sabrina Mahfouz brings us a selection of her favourite poems, from Wendy Cope to Raymond Antrobus, Matthew Arnold to Mary Ann Evans, aka George Elliott. Her selection is rounded off with a reading from her son, whose favourite poetry book is 'A is for Activist'. Producer Becky Ripley. Poet and playwright Sabrina Mahfouz brings us a selection of her favourite poems. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Salena Godden | 20190317 | 20190323 (R4) | Salena Godden talks to Roger McGough about her favourite poetry. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Seamus Heaney | 20130901 | 20130907 (R4) | Roger McGough presents a selection of Seamus Heaney's poems read by the author himself. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Seamus Heaney, Death Of A Naturalist | 20161002 | 20161008 (R4) | Roger McGough marks 50 years since Seamus Heaney published his first collection, Death of a Naturalist. Featuring interviews from Heaney's childhood home of Bellaghy, and archive recordings of the poet reading his work. Poems include Digging, Mid Term Break and Blackberry Picking. Producer Sally Heaven. Roger McGough marks 50 years since Seamus Heaney published Death of a Naturalist. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Secrets | 20170618 | 20170624 (R4) | Roger McGough presents a selection of listeners poetry requests on the theme of Secrets, partly inspired by Helen Dunmore's 1995 collection of the same name. With poems by Seamus Heaney, Blake Morrison and G K Chesterton dealing with the subject, the programme features an interview with a poet; Don Paterson OBE and a priest; Father Christopher Hilton. Readers are Pippa Haywood and Anton Lesser. Producer: Sarah Addezio. Roger McGough presents a selection of listeners' poetry requests on the theme of secrets. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Shakespeare's Sonnets | 20150308 | 20150314 (R4) | Roger McGough presents a selection of Shakespeare's sonnets. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Simon Armitage | 20201213 | 20201219 (R4) | The Poet Laureate Simon Armitage is Roger McGough's guest with his pick of listeners' favourite poems. Many have an environmental theme and Simon talks about his responsibility as a poet to write about the natural world. There's also the chance to hear his own translation of an old English text documenting an argument between The Owl and The Nightingale The programme includes: Shakespeare - from Richard II from The Owl and the Nightingale (anonymous - translated by Simon Armitage) Alison Brackenbury - Honeycomb Lorna Goodison - My Mother's Sea Chanty Shivanee Ramlochan - Caracara (or Kiskadee Bride) William Wordsworth - a section from Michael Thomas Hardy - A Light Snow-Fall After Frost Wilfred Owen - Parable of the Old Man and the Young Producer: Maggie Ayre The Poet Laureate makes his pick of listeners' choices. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Sinead Morrissey | 20180204 | 20180210 (R4) | Sinead Morrissey joins Roger McGough to share her favourite poems from listeners' requests Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Sophie Hannah | 20220116 | Poet and novelist talks to Roger about her favourite poetry Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
Special: Edge | 20131215 | 20131221 (R4) | Edge' is an extraordinary new poem that brings together two major talents in a confluence of science and art. The poem is a journey through space, in words by Katrina Porteous, and music for computer by the pioneering composer Peter Zinovieff. It was recorded, live, in front of an audience in the planetarium at the Centre for Life in Newcastle during this year's British Science Festival. Edge' visits four moons, each representing one of the primary elements: Water, Fire, Earth and Air. They are Jupiter's fiery moon Io; two of Saturn's moons, icy Enceladus and methane-rich Titan, which could possibly host primitive life. The fourth is Earth's own Moon, that witness to life on Earth. The poem is performed by Katrina Porteous and the actor David Seddon. It draws on a range of dramatic voices - whispers, chants and incantations. Peter Zinovieff's music incorporates sounds collected from space - from Sputnik, the Apollo and Voyager missions, and the landing of the Cassini-Huygens probe on Titan. Edge' follows a tidal structure, visiting and revisiting each 'world', exploring the relation between chaos and cosmos. Along the way, we pick up clues to the possibility of the first stirrings of life, and finally, from Earth's Moon, we catch sight of our own planet, distinguished by the emergence not only of life but of consciousness and imagination. Out of the stuff of stars - Gas, dust, ice - Someone is painstakingly Threading a necklace. Extract II (Saturn's moon, Titan) At the Centre for Life 'Edge' was accompanied by a sequence of images of the moons and the cosmos beyond compiled by planetarium supervisor Christopher Hudson. This will be streamed on the Radio 4 website as 'Edge' is broadcast. Producer: Julian May. Edge - a journey through space in poetry by Katrina Porteous, music by Peter Zinovieff. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Spring | 20170319 | 20170325 (R4) | Daffodils, lambs, snow melt, green shoots and lengthening days... Roger McGough explores the BBC archives to find the most evocative spring poems read by some of our best actors. With poems by Alice Oswald, Laurie Lee, Robin Robertson, Philip Larkin, Kathryn Simmonds and Edward Thomas. Producer: Mair Bosworth. Roger McGough explores the archives to find the most evocative poems of spring. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Stages Of Life | 20140622 | 20140628 (R4) | Roger McGough presents poems which deal with some of the stages of life we go through. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Story Poems 1 | 20130908 | 20130914 (R4) | Roger McGough presents some requested poems that tell a story. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Story Poems 2 | 20130915 | 20130921 (R4) | Roger McGough presents some requested poems that tell a story. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Teenagers | 20150222 | 20150228 (R4) | Roger McGough presents poetry by, for and about teenagers. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
The Ballad Of Reading Gaol, By Oscar Wilde | 20121007 | 20121013 (R4) | Oscar Wilde's The Ballad of Reading Gaol, read by Alex Jennings. Presented by Roger McGough. In May 1897 Oscar Wilde was released from Reading Gaol. That month he began to write The Ballad of Reading Gaol - to express his horror and outrage at what he had witnessed during his years in prison. The poem memorialises a fellow prisoner, who was hanged for murder in 1896. Wilde wrote it in exile in Dieppe, then Naples. He finished it in October that same year, and it was published the following year, 1898. The author's name was given simply as C. 3. 3., Wilde's number in Reading Gaol, his cell being the third on the third floor of Block C. Producer Beth O'Dea. Roger McGough presents Alex Jennings reading Oscar Wilde's The Ballad of Reading Gaol. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
The Body | 20170604 | 20170610 (R4) | Roger McGough presents a selection of listeners' requests for poems which celebrate the body in all its forms whether stretched, flabby, swollen or svelte. Inspired by Walt Whitman's 'I Sing The Body Electric', the programme features poems from Sylvia Plath, Stevie Smith, Sharon Olds and P J Harvey as well as an interview and reading from Andrew McMillan whose first ever poetry collection, 'Physical' won The Guardian First Book Award in 2015. Readers are Rosie Cavaliero and John Mackay. Producer: Sarah Addezio. Roger McGough presents a selection of listeners' requests for poems about the body. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
The Brownings | 20141005 | 20141011 (R4) | Roger McGough with a special programme on Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
The Lakes And The Caribbean | 20160207 | 20160213 (R4) | Roger McGough with a miscellany including poetry from the Lakes and the Caribbean. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
The Poem As Portrait | 20170226 | 20170304 (R4) | Roger McGough presents a selection of requests for poems that paint a portrait. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Thomas Gray | 20160904 | 20160910 (R4) | Roger McGough marks 300 years since the birth of the influential poet Thomas Gray. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Time, Memory And Remembrance | 20160424 | 20160430 (R4) | Roger McGough marks a series of poetic anniversaries with a programme on the theme of time, memory and remembrance. Shakespeare, of course, makes an appearance, as does Charlotte Bronte. It's also a century since the Easter Rising in Dublin inspired WB Yeats and others to put pen to paper. More reflections on time and memory come from poets including TS Eliot and Thomas Hardy. Producer Sally Heaven. Roger McGough presents a selection of listeners' poetry requests. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Vicki Feaver | 20191103 | 20191109 (R4) | Vicki Feaver delves into the listener poetry requests and shares her favourites with Roger Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Virtue And Vice | 20170611 | 20170617 (R4) | Roger McGough presents a selection of listeners poetry requests on the theme of Virtue and Vice, that moral tug of war. Guiding us through the moral maze will be poems from Thomas Hardy, Simon Armitage and Ogden Nash about temptation, conflict and the pleasures of resisting or succumbing to everything in between. How could you resist? Readers are Rosie Cavaliero and John Mackay. Producer: Sarah Addezio. Roger McGough presents listeners' poetry requests on the theme of Virtue and Vice. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Wendy Cope | 20180805 | 20180811 (R4) | Roger McGough is joined by Wendy Cope, with a selection of her favourite poems from the Poetry Please archive of listeners' requests. Choices include requests for poems by A E Housman, Philip Larkin, W H Auden, Fleur Adcock, Edna St Vincent Millay and Charles Causley. Wendy Cope has published several volumes of poetry including Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis and Serious Concerns. A remarkable talent for parody and for using humour to address grave topics, she also recites some of her new poems from her recent collection, Anecdotal Evidence (Faber 2018). Producer: Sarah Addezio. Roger McGough and Wendy Cope present a selection of listeners' requests. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
West African Poetry And Sinead Morrissey | 20140302 | 20140308 (R4) | Roger McGough presents the winner of the 2014 TS Eliot prize and poetry from West Africa. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Winter, Star-gazing And Time | 20120108 | 20120114 (R4) | Roger McGough presents a selection of poetry about Winter, star-gazing and time, read by Pippa Haywood, Peter Marinker, Mark Meadows and Nadia Williams. There are well-known works by Sheenagh Pugh and Alfred Tennyson contemplating the new year. Roger marks Stephen Hawking's 70th birthday with a poem by Robert Frost about the importance of telescopes. Winter looms large, with poems by Longfellow, Edna St. Vincent Millay and Dana Gioia, but in contrast there are rays of sunshine from John Lyons. Producer: Toby Field. Roger McGough presents a selection of poetry about winter, star-gazing and time. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Women Poets | 20160306 | 20160312 (R4) | Roger McGough presents a selection of poetry written by women. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Words For Weddings And Other Celebrations | 20130623 | 20130629 (R4) | Roger McGough finds words for weddings and other celebrations in poems requested by listeners. With readers Juliet Aubrey, Mark Meadows and Harry Livingstone. Carol Ann Duffy says that 'Britain has many countries and one of them is poetry.' Today's programme is all about where we go when we want words to mark a celebration and take us somewhere memorable and extraordinary, with an emphasis on weddings. Roger includes two 'wedding' sonnets by Shakespeare, 116 and 8; 'Sunrise' by Mary Oliver; 'Poem for a North London Wedding' by Tobias Hill and Christopher Marlowe's beautiful pastoral poem: 'The Passionate Shepherd to His Love'. Producer...Mary Ward-Lowery. Bells, brides and vows: Roger McGough finds words for weddings and other celebrations. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Work | 20170528 | 20170603 (R4) | Roger McGough presents a selection of listeners' requests for poems on the theme of work; praising meaningful days, night shifts and tool boxes. Today's programme features poets Liz Berry, William Letford and Caleb Parkin reading their own works, and others from Carolyn Wells, Phillip Levine and U. A Fanthorpe. Producer: Eliza Lomas. Roger McGough presents a selection of listeners' requests for poems on the theme of work. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Wounds And Scars | 20160522 | 20160528 (R4) | Roger McGough presents a selection of poetry requests on the theme of wounds and scars, both literal and metaphorical. Including poems specially recorded for the programme by Hollie McNish, work by Siegfried Sassoon and Rumi, and an archive recording of Juliet Stevenson reading Edna St Vincent Millay's Time Does Not Bring Relief. Producer Sally Heaven. Roger McGough presents a selection of poetry requests on the theme of wounds and scars. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Yeats | 20140831 | 20140906 (R4) | Roger McGough presents a special programme marking 75 years since the death of WB Yeats. With Yeats' biographer Professor Roy Foster, voices from the archive including Seamus Heaney, Sinead Cusack and Steven Rea, and of course some of Yeats' best loved poetry. Poems requested by listeners and featured on the programme include He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven, The Lake Isle of Innisfree and The Second Coming. Roger McGough presents a programme marking 75 years since the death of WB Yeats. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
Yomi Sode | 20210620 | 20210626 (R4) | Poet Yomi Sode shares a selection of his favourite poems, including Roger Robinson, Sin退ad Morrissey, Casey Bailey and Raymond Carver. Yomi also reads a poem from his upcoming collection MANORISM, which explores fatherhood and masculinity. Producer: Caitlin Hobbs for BBC Audio in Bristol Egusi Soup by Jackie Kay From Fiere Published by Picador Mother to Son by Langston Hughes From The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes Published by Vintage How Do I Love Thee by Elizabeth Barrett Browning From The Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning Published by The Wordsworth Poetry Library We Drink for Them by Casey Bailey From Adjusted Published by Verve Poetry Press Grace by Roger Robinson From A Portable Paradise Published by Peepal Tree Press On Fatherhood: Proximity to Death by Yomi Sode From Manorism Published by Penguin The Colonel by Carolyn Forche From The Country Between Us Published by Harper Collins Genetics by Sinead Morrissey From The State of the Prisons Published by Carcanet The poet Yomi Sode brings us a selection of his favourite poems. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | |
01 | 20070708 | Roger McGough presents a selection of poems requested by listeners. Featured works include John Gay's Trivia, AK Ramanujan's Small Scale Reflections on a Great House, Tony Connor's On the Cliff, John Keats' Ode on a Grecian Urn and Wallace Stevens' Anecdote of the Jar. The readers are John Telfer and Hayley Doherty. Morning at the Window by T.S. Eliot From: Prufrock and Other Observations Publ: faber Extracts from Trivia; or, the Art of Walking the Streets of London by John Gay From: The Poetical Works of John Gay Publ: Oxford University Press Small-Scale Reflections on a Great House by A.K. Ramanujan From: The Oxford Book of Contemporary Verse 1945-1980 On Not Writing a Letter From Iona by Carol Satyamurti From: Stitching the Dark Publ: Bloodaxe To Go to Lvov by Adam Zagajewski, translated Renata Corczynski From: Without End Publ: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux Majorca by John Cooper-Clarke From: Ten Years in an Open-Neck Stuffed Shirt Publ: Arena Books Ode on a Grecian Urn by John Keats From: The Poetical Works of John Keats Anecdote of the Jar by Wallace Stevens From: Selected Poems Publ: faber and faber The Hung Wu Vase by Robert Graves From: Collected Poems Publ: Cassell Seeing by Kenneth Steven From: Salt and Light (published September 07) Publ: Saint Andrew Press The Watch by May Swenson From: The Harper Anthology of Poetry Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
01 | 20070714 | Roger McGough presents a selection of poems requested by listeners. Featured works include John Gay's Trivia, AK Ramanujan's Small Scale Reflections on a Great House, Tony Connor's On the Cliff, John Keats' Ode on a Grecian Urn and Wallace Stevens' Anecdote of the Jar. The readers are John Telfer and Hayley Doherty. Morning at the Window by T.S. Eliot From: Prufrock and Other Observations Publ: faber Extracts from Trivia; or, the Art of Walking the Streets of London by John Gay From: The Poetical Works of John Gay Publ: Oxford University Press Small-Scale Reflections on a Great House by A.K. Ramanujan From: The Oxford Book of Contemporary Verse 1945-1980 On Not Writing a Letter From Iona by Carol Satyamurti From: Stitching the Dark Publ: Bloodaxe To Go to Lvov by Adam Zagajewski, translated Renata Corczynski From: Without End Publ: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux Majorca by John Cooper-Clarke From: Ten Years in an Open-Neck Stuffed Shirt Publ: Arena Books Ode on a Grecian Urn by John Keats From: The Poetical Works of John Keats Anecdote of the Jar by Wallace Stevens From: Selected Poems Publ: faber and faber The Hung Wu Vase by Robert Graves From: Collected Poems Publ: Cassell Seeing by Kenneth Steven From: Salt and Light (published September 07) Publ: Saint Andrew Press The Watch by May Swenson From: The Harper Anthology of Poetry Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
02 | 20070715 | Roger McGough hosts the programme from the Latitude music and arts festival in Suffolk. Performers include Mark Steel, Simon Armitage, Rickie Lee Jones and Rachel Pantechnicon. Readers are John Lightbody and Eleanor Tremain. Causeway by Simon Armitage From: T Rex Versus The Corduroy Kid Publ: faber Friends of the River Trent by Stevie Smith From: The Collected Poems Publ: Penguin Don't Hurt Your Coccyx by Rachel Pantechnicon The Silken Tent by Robert Frost From: The Poetry of Robert Frost Publ: Jonathan Cape To His Lost Lover by Simon Armitage From: Book of Matches Little Boy Blue by Eugene Field From: The Oxford Book of American Light Verse Inexpensive Progress by John Betjeman Publ: John Murray First Time In by Ivor Gurney From: Selected Poems Publ: Oxford O What is that Sound by WH Auden From: Collected Shorter Poems Great God Quetzalcoatl Green Hot Water Bottle by Rachel Pantechnicon The Rev'd Arbuthnot-Armitage-Brown by George Barker From: Funny Folk The Memories of Fish by James Tate From: Return to the City of White Donkeys Publ: ecco Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
02 | 20070721 | Roger McGough hosts the programme from the Latitude music and arts festival in Suffolk. Performers include Mark Steel, Simon Armitage, Rickie Lee Jones and Rachel Pantechnicon. Readers are John Lightbody and Eleanor Tremain. Causeway by Simon Armitage From: T Rex Versus The Corduroy Kid Publ: faber Friends of the River Trent by Stevie Smith From: The Collected Poems Publ: Penguin Don't Hurt Your Coccyx by Rachel Pantechnicon The Silken Tent by Robert Frost From: The Poetry of Robert Frost Publ: Jonathan Cape To His Lost Lover by Simon Armitage From: Book of Matches Little Boy Blue by Eugene Field From: The Oxford Book of American Light Verse Inexpensive Progress by John Betjeman Publ: John Murray First Time In by Ivor Gurney From: Selected Poems Publ: Oxford O What is that Sound by WH Auden From: Collected Shorter Poems Great God Quetzalcoatl Green Hot Water Bottle by Rachel Pantechnicon The Rev'd Arbuthnot-Armitage-Brown by George Barker From: Funny Folk The Memories of Fish by James Tate From: Return to the City of White Donkeys Publ: ecco Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
03 | 20070722 | Roger McGough hosts a second programme from the Latitude music and arts festival in Suffolk. Performers include Mark Steel, Simon Armitage, Rickie Lee Jones and Rachel Pantechnicon. Readers are John Lightbody and Eleanor Tremain. Quiet Zone by Roger McGough To the Women of the Merrie England Coffee Houses, Huddersfield by Simon Armitage From: Tyrannosaurus Rex versus The Corduroy Kid Publ: faber The Unsettled Motorcyclist's Vision of his Death by Thom Gunn From: Collected Poems Elf-Shelf by Rachel Pantechnicon Donegal by Robin Robertson From: Swithering Publ: Picador from Sir Gawain and The Green Knight translation by Simon Armitage Self-Portrait by David Whyte In Paris With You by James Fenton From: Selected Poems Publ: Penguin Teenybop Theologian by Rachel Pantechnicon The Tale of Custard the Dragon by Ogden Nash From: Candy is Dandy Publ: Methuen from Killing Time by Simon Armitage Roger McGough hosts the programme from the Latitude music and arts festival in Suffolk. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
03 | 20070728 | Roger McGough hosts a second programme from the Latitude music and arts festival in Suffolk. Performers include Mark Steel, Simon Armitage, Rickie Lee Jones and Rachel Pantechnicon. Readers are John Lightbody and Eleanor Tremain. Quiet Zone by Roger McGough To the Women of the Merrie England Coffee Houses, Huddersfield by Simon Armitage From: Tyrannosaurus Rex versus The Corduroy Kid Publ: faber The Unsettled Motorcyclist's Vision of his Death by Thom Gunn From: Collected Poems Elf-Shelf by Rachel Pantechnicon Donegal by Robin Robertson From: Swithering Publ: Picador from Sir Gawain and The Green Knight translation by Simon Armitage Self-Portrait by David Whyte In Paris With You by James Fenton From: Selected Poems Publ: Penguin Teenybop Theologian by Rachel Pantechnicon The Tale of Custard the Dragon by Ogden Nash From: Candy is Dandy Publ: Methuen from Killing Time by Simon Armitage Roger McGough hosts the programme from the Latitude music and arts festival in Suffolk. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
04 | 20070729 | Roger McGough presents a selection of listeners' requests. Stephen Rea and Fiona Shaw read poems by Irish authors, from WB Yeats to Seamus Heaney. Where My Books Go by WB Yeats From: The Oxford Book of Voctorian Verse Publ: Oxford Pangur Bကn by anon translated by Robin Flower From: The Rattle Bag anthology Publ: faber Swineherd by Eil退an N퀀 Chuilleanကin From: Modern Irish Poetry Publ: Sphere Books Ltd The Wild Swans at Coole by WB Yeats From: The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats Publ: Palgrave The Wayfarer by Padraic Pearse From: The Oxford Book of Irish Verse Entirely by Louis MacNeice From: Collected Poems Meeting Point by Louis MacNeice Night by Moya Cannon From: The Parchment Boat Publ: Gallery Books When You Are Old by WB Yeats Shards by Moya Cannon Sailing to Byzantium by WB Yeats An Irish Childhood in England 1951 by Eavan Boland From: Sixty Women Poets Publ: Bloodaxe Mother of the Groom by Seamus Heaney From: Opened Ground My House by WB Yeats (from Meditations in Time of Civil War) The Song of Wandering Aengus by WB Yeats Stephen Rea and Fiona Shaw read poems by Irish authors, from W B Yeats to Seamus Heaney. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
04 | 20070804 | Roger McGough presents a selection of listeners' requests. Stephen Rea and Fiona Shaw read poems by Irish authors, from WB Yeats to Seamus Heaney. Where My Books Go by WB Yeats From: The Oxford Book of Voctorian Verse Publ: Oxford Pangur Bကn by anon translated by Robin Flower From: The Rattle Bag anthology Publ: faber Swineherd by Eil退an N퀀 Chuilleanကin From: Modern Irish Poetry Publ: Sphere Books Ltd The Wild Swans at Coole by WB Yeats From: The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats Publ: Palgrave The Wayfarer by Padraic Pearse From: The Oxford Book of Irish Verse Entirely by Louis MacNeice From: Collected Poems Meeting Point by Louis MacNeice Night by Moya Cannon From: The Parchment Boat Publ: Gallery Books When You Are Old by WB Yeats Shards by Moya Cannon Sailing to Byzantium by WB Yeats An Irish Childhood in England 1951 by Eavan Boland From: Sixty Women Poets Publ: Bloodaxe Mother of the Groom by Seamus Heaney From: Opened Ground My House by WB Yeats (from Meditations in Time of Civil War) The Song of Wandering Aengus by WB Yeats Stephen Rea and Fiona Shaw read poems by Irish authors, from W B Yeats to Seamus Heaney. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
05 | 20070805 | Roger McGough presents a selection of listeners' favourite poetry, read by Peter Marinker, Tom Lawrence, Phyllida Nash and Susan Jameson. Pretty Halcyon Days by Ogden Nash From: Candy is Dandy Publ: Methuen Beach, Morning by Fiona Hamilton From: Skinandi Publ: Two Turtles Press Links of Love by Fiona Hamilton Waste by Harry Graham From: The Faber Book of Comic Verse Opportunity by Harry Graham Bath by Virginia Graham From: Consider the Years - 1938-1946 Publ: Persephone Books Bath - Avon by Roger From: Collected Poems Publ: Viking On the Road to Bath by Tony Stowell Publ: Cotswold Writers' Circle From de Bello Gothico by Claudian from De Bello Gothico tr. Waddell From: More Latin Lyrics, from Virgil to Milton Publ: Victor Gollancz Roman Centurion's Song by Kipling From: Rudyard Kipling's Verse - Definitive Edition Publ: Hodder & Stoughton Roman Wall Blues by WH Auden From: Collected Shorter Poems 1927-1957 Publ: faber The Whispering Roots by C. Day Lewis From: The Complete Poems Publ: Sinclair-Stevenson Touch and Go by Stevie Smith From: The Collected Poems Publ: Penguin The River God by Stevie Smith Rising Damp by UA Fanthorpe From: Selected Poems Roger McGough presents a selection of listeners' favourite poetry. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
05 | 20070811 | Roger McGough presents a selection of listeners' favourite poetry, read by Peter Marinker, Tom Lawrence, Phyllida Nash and Susan Jameson. Pretty Halcyon Days by Ogden Nash From: Candy is Dandy Publ: Methuen Beach, Morning by Fiona Hamilton From: Skinandi Publ: Two Turtles Press Links of Love by Fiona Hamilton Waste by Harry Graham From: The Faber Book of Comic Verse Opportunity by Harry Graham Bath by Virginia Graham From: Consider the Years - 1938-1946 Publ: Persephone Books Bath - Avon by Roger From: Collected Poems Publ: Viking On the Road to Bath by Tony Stowell Publ: Cotswold Writers' Circle From de Bello Gothico by Claudian from De Bello Gothico tr. Waddell From: More Latin Lyrics, from Virgil to Milton Publ: Victor Gollancz Roman Centurion's Song by Kipling From: Rudyard Kipling's Verse - Definitive Edition Publ: Hodder & Stoughton Roman Wall Blues by WH Auden From: Collected Shorter Poems 1927-1957 Publ: faber The Whispering Roots by C. Day Lewis From: The Complete Poems Publ: Sinclair-Stevenson Touch and Go by Stevie Smith From: The Collected Poems Publ: Penguin The River God by Stevie Smith Rising Damp by UA Fanthorpe From: Selected Poems Roger McGough presents a selection of listeners' favourite poetry. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
06 | 20070812 | Roger McGough presents a selection of listeners' favourite poetry, read by Susan Jameson, Tom Lawrence, Peter Marinker, Jenny Coverack and Phyllida Nash. Psalm Concerning the Castle by Denise Levertov From: The Sorrow Dance Publ: Jonathan Cape The Secret by Denise Levertov From: New selected Poems Publ: Bloodaxe The Levelled Churchyard by Thomas Hardy From: Thomas Hardy Publ: Oxford The Walk by Thomas Hardy The Haunter by Thomas Hardy A Quoi Bon Dire by Charlotte Mew From: The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse No Road by Philip Larkin From: Collected Poems Publ: faber Men and their Boring Arguments by Wendy Cope From: Serious Concerns Loss by Wendy Cope After Blenheim by Robert Southey From: The School Bag The Old Man's Comforts by Robert Southey From: Everyman's Book of Evergreen Verse Publ: Everyman Menelaus and Helen by Rupert Brooke From: The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke Publ: Sidgwick and Johnson Mirror Image by Anne Ridler Publ: Carcanet Jenny Kissed Me by Leigh Hunt From: The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse From Morituri Salutamus by Longfellow From: Selected Poems Publ: Penguin Go the Long Way, the Long Way Home by Sylvia Townsend Warner From: Poems of Twenty Years 1918-1938 Publ: MacMillan Roger McGough presents a selection of listeners' favourite poetry. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
06 | 20070818 | Roger McGough presents a selection of listeners' favourite poetry, read by Susan Jameson, Tom Lawrence, Peter Marinker, Jenny Coverack and Phyllida Nash. Psalm Concerning the Castle by Denise Levertov From: The Sorrow Dance Publ: Jonathan Cape The Secret by Denise Levertov From: New selected Poems Publ: Bloodaxe The Levelled Churchyard by Thomas Hardy From: Thomas Hardy Publ: Oxford The Walk by Thomas Hardy The Haunter by Thomas Hardy A Quoi Bon Dire by Charlotte Mew From: The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse No Road by Philip Larkin From: Collected Poems Publ: faber Men and their Boring Arguments by Wendy Cope From: Serious Concerns Loss by Wendy Cope After Blenheim by Robert Southey From: The School Bag The Old Man's Comforts by Robert Southey From: Everyman's Book of Evergreen Verse Publ: Everyman Menelaus and Helen by Rupert Brooke From: The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke Publ: Sidgwick and Johnson Mirror Image by Anne Ridler Publ: Carcanet Jenny Kissed Me by Leigh Hunt From: The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse From Morituri Salutamus by Longfellow From: Selected Poems Publ: Penguin Go the Long Way, the Long Way Home by Sylvia Townsend Warner From: Poems of Twenty Years 1918-1938 Publ: MacMillan Roger McGough presents a selection of listeners' favourite poetry. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
07 | 20070819 | Roger McGough presents poems which use as imagery the sea, trees and autumn fruits. The theme of summer food leads to a delightful piece about an end-of-school picnic which hints at grown-up pleasures to come. The readers are Phyllida Nash, Jenny Coverack, Tom Lawrence and Peter Marinker. Diving for Pearls by Virginia Warbey From: Ratified Publ: The Merdon Marque The Sea-House by Kathleen Jamie From: Mr and Mrs Scotland are Dead Publ: Bloodaxe Books The River by Mary Oliver From: Dream Work Publ: Atlantic Monthly Press August by Mary Oliver From: New Selected Poems Publ: Beacon Press The Cider House by Leonard Clark From: Forest and Vale and High Blue Hill Publ: Cassell Birches by Robert Frost From: The Poetry of Robert Frost Publ: Jonathan Cape Planting Trees by V.H. Friedlaender From: Spirit of the Trees Publ: Society of the Men of Trees Binsey Poplars by Gerard Manley Hopkins From: Hopkins Publ: Everyman Landscape with Dog by Paul Mariani From: Poems from a Small Planet - Contemporary American Nature Poetry Publ: Middlebury College Press Inscription on the Monument of a Newfoundland Dog by Lord Byron From: The Poetical Works of Lord Byron Publ: Oxford University Press One of Our Saint Bernard Dogs is Missing by N.F. Simpson From: The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of the English Language Publ: Cambridge University Press Lone Dog by Irene McLeod From: The New Oxford Book of Children's Verse The Picnic by John Logan From: Voices, third book Publ: Penguin Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
07 | 20070825 | Roger McGough presents poems which use as imagery the sea, trees and autumn fruits. The theme of summer food leads to a delightful piece about an end-of-school picnic which hints at grown-up pleasures to come. The readers are Phyllida Nash, Jenny Coverack, Tom Lawrence and Peter Marinker. Diving for Pearls by Virginia Warbey From: Ratified Publ: The Merdon Marque The Sea-House by Kathleen Jamie From: Mr and Mrs Scotland are Dead Publ: Bloodaxe Books The River by Mary Oliver From: Dream Work Publ: Atlantic Monthly Press August by Mary Oliver From: New Selected Poems Publ: Beacon Press The Cider House by Leonard Clark From: Forest and Vale and High Blue Hill Publ: Cassell Birches by Robert Frost From: The Poetry of Robert Frost Publ: Jonathan Cape Planting Trees by V.H. Friedlaender From: Spirit of the Trees Publ: Society of the Men of Trees Binsey Poplars by Gerard Manley Hopkins From: Hopkins Publ: Everyman Landscape with Dog by Paul Mariani From: Poems from a Small Planet - Contemporary American Nature Poetry Publ: Middlebury College Press Inscription on the Monument of a Newfoundland Dog by Lord Byron From: The Poetical Works of Lord Byron Publ: Oxford University Press One of Our Saint Bernard Dogs is Missing by N.F. Simpson From: The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of the English Language Publ: Cambridge University Press Lone Dog by Irene McLeod From: The New Oxford Book of Children's Verse The Picnic by John Logan From: Voices, third book Publ: Penguin Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
08 | 20070826 | Roger McGough presents poems on themes reflecting the end of the summer such as enjoying the garden, working the land and preparing for the inevitable return to school. He also looks at a collection of artwork drawn especially for him by a class of primary school pupils who were inspired by one of his own poems. The Writer of This Poem by Roger McGough From: Pie in the Sky Publ: Viking Warning by Kate Scott From: Stitches Publ: Peterloo Poets Arithmetic by Carl Sandburg From: The Random House Book of Poetry for Children Publ: Random House Scenes from Childhood by Charles Causley From: Collected Poems Publ: MacMillan First Day by Charles Causley From The Land by Vita Sackville-West Publ: The Hogarth Press Philosophy Lectures by C. Day Lewis From: The Complete Poems of C Day-Lewis Publ: Sinclair-Stevenson The Wishing Tree by Kathleen Jamie From: The Tree House Publ: Picador Garden in Progress by Berthold Brecht, translated by John Willett From: Poems 1913-1956 Publ: Methuen Towards the End of Summer by Jenny Joseph From: Read Me (2) - a Poem for Every Day of the Year Publ: MacMillans Children's First Day at School by Roger McGough From: All the Best Publ: Puffin Roger McGough presents poems on themes reflecting the end of the summer. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. | ||
08 | 20070901 | Roger McGough presents poems on themes reflecting the end of the summer such as enjoying the garden, working the land and preparing for the inevitable return to school. He also looks at a collection of artwork drawn especially for him by a class of primary school pupils who were inspired by one of his own poems. The Writer of This Poem by Roger McGough From: Pie in the Sky Publ: Viking Warning by Kate Scott From: Stitches Publ: Peterloo Poets Arithmetic by Carl Sandburg From: The Random House Book of Poetry for Children Publ: Random House Scenes from Childhood by Charles Causley From: Collected Poems Publ: MacMillan First Day by Charles Causley From The Land by Vita Sackville-West Publ: The Hogarth Press Philosophy Lectures by C. Day Lewis From: The Complete Poems of C Day-Lewis Publ: Sinclair-Stevenson The Wishing Tree by Kathleen Jamie From: The Tree House Publ: Picador Garden in Progress by Berthold Brecht, translated by John Willett From: Poems 1913-1956 Publ: Methuen Towards the End of Summer by Jenny Joseph From: Read Me (2) - a Poem for Every Day of the Year Publ: MacMillans Children's First Day at School by Roger McGough From: All the Best Publ: Puffin Roger McGough presents poems on themes reflecting the end of the summer. Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners. |