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Adventures in Poetry

Programme exploring the background, effect and lasting appeal of some well-loved poems

Adventures in Poetry: Series 11

Adventures in Poetry: Series 11: Episode 6: Kubla Khan

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Episode 6

Episode 6: Kubla Khan

Series 11

Kubla Khan

BBC Radio 4 - Adventures in Poetry, Series 11, Kubla Khan

Peggy Reynolds explores Samuel Taylor Coleridge's dream-like poem Kubla Khan.

Peggy Reynolds explores the enduring appeal of one of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's greatest poems, Kubla Khan.

Peggy Reynolds continues her Adventures in Poetry as she explores Samuel Taylor Coleridge's celebrated poem Kubla Khan. Written in 1797 in a remote farmhouse in the Quantock Hills, the poem came to Coleridge as a vision in an opium-induced dream, which was famously interrupted by a visitor from the nearby village of Porlock. Peggy is fascinated by the fragmentary nature of the poem and the way in which phrases from it have resonated through literature, and even music, ever since. She is joined by Coleridge's biographer Richard Holmes; James Watt, an expert on the real Kubla Khan; Tim Clayton an expert in 18th culture; and by Martyn Ware, a sound artist who has been inspired by the poem to create a new, and vividly evocative soundscape based on the poem. 

Produced by Jane Greenwood.

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Peggy Reynolds explores the background, effect and lasting appeal of some well-loved poems

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Episode 6: Kubla Khan

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