The Body
A
new programme introduced by Paul Farley featuring the best of poetry
now. The first in the series looks at the body in question - the shapes
of poems and the people in them. How does a poet decide on the form of
their poem? What do different poetic forms do the subject of a poem? The
programme travels the country and anatomises its poetic body. With
found poems and field-notes, a diary of failure and success, the sound
of the world being taken down in rhyme, and a look into a hive of dead
bees in midwinter. With new poems from Sean Borodale, Don Paterson, Robin Robertson and
Alice Oswald.
Episode 1 of 4
Episode 1 of 4
- First broadcast: Sunday 24 February 2013
- BBC Radio 4 - The Echo Chamber, The Body
- Alice Oswald - Poetry Archive
- Two Trees One morning, Don Miguel got out of bed
with one idea rooted in his head:
to graft his orange to his lemon tree.
It took him the whole day to work them free,
lay open their sides, and lash them tight.
For twelve months, from the shame or from the fright
they put forth nothing; but one day there appeared
two lights in the dark leaves. Over the years
the limbs would get themselves so tangled up
each bough looked like it gave a double crop,
and not one kid in the village didn't know
the magic tree in Miguel's patio.The man who bought the house had had no dream
so who can say what dark malicious whim
led him to take his axe and split the bole
along its fused seam, and then dig two holes.
And no, they did not die from solitude;
nor did their branches bear a sterile fruit;
nor did their unhealed flanks weep every spring
for those four yards that lost them everything
as each strained on its shackled root to face
the other's empty, intricate embrace.
They were trees, and trees don't weep or ache or shout.
And trees are all this poem is about. - Don Paterson - Official Website
- Don Paterson - Poetry Archive
Diamonds and rust
An anthology edited by poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy recalls each year of the Queen’s reignThis is a high quality carnival, with Robin Roberston’s “The Halving” putting in a good claim for the title of star turn. It’s a poem about being operated on under general anaesthetic, and perhaps if I hadn’t been undergoing a bit of that myself lately I would have hurried on by; but no, Robertson’s language is too vivid to ignore.- General anaesthesia: a median sternotomyachieved by sternal saw; the ribsheld aghast by retractor [ ... ]That placement of the word “aghast” is right out of a whole European tradition of the painter at the anatomy school. I had not thought to find anything quite so cutting – if that’s the word we’re looking for – in a book that, at first sight, might look like a toy, one of those little anthologies put together for Queen Mary’s dolls’ house back there in the long ago.
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