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Poetry Please

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Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners.

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Poetry Please: 26/08/2012

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26/08/2012

BBC Radio 4 - Poetry Please, 26/08/2012

Roger McGough with a brand new series, and a cheery selection of poetry requests.

Roger McGough begins a new series with a cheery selection of poetry by Auden, Keats and Jenny Joseph. The readers are Pippa Haywood, Patrick Romer and Harry Livingstone.

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.

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Poetry Please

26/08/2012

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