Robin Blaser , the final survivor of the 1950s American West Coast poets, talks to Patrick Wright about the parting of the ways between
American avant-garde poetry and the British return to the milieu of Philip Larkin in the work of Blake Morrison and Andrew Motion. Is free verse an outmoded form? Poets from both sides are invited to the battle of words.
At the National Portrait Gallery in London, a photography exhibition reveals the creative personalities of great 20th-century British composers. And from New York there is a report on the reception of Sebastian Barry 's play The Steward of Christendom. Its portrayal of a crucial moment in Ireland's history after the war of independence in 1922 provoked a sell-out success in London and Dublin. Producer Nicki Paxman