"We're bringing poetry to the screen in a new way," says producer
Tim May , "treating poems for their value as words, rather than as an accompaniment to images of trees or flowers, and I hope we'll overcome some prejudices."
For the next week poetry will be making impromptu appearances on BBC2, popping up unscheduled between programmes. One fixed point will be Poets'News each weekday evening after Newsnight.
Tonight's anthology launches the week, and includes historic archive film featuring such as T S Eliot, W H Auden and Robert Graves. "These clips will be linked and commented on by today's poets," says May. "The living speakingto the dead."
Executive producer Roland Keating