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Front Row: Poet Sharon Olds, Squeeze on tour

Poet Sharon Olds, Squeeze on tour

23/10/2012

BBC Radio 4 - Front Row, Poet Sharon Olds, Squeeze on tour

Sharon Olds on her poems charting the end of her marriage; Squeeze on writing new songs.

Poet Sharon Olds on her new volume charting the end of her marriage, plus the band Squeeze on their new tour, and reviews of Russian film Elena and TV drama Scandal.

With Kirsty Lang.

When poet Sharon Olds' husband told her he was leaving her, she took out her notebook and started writing. Her new volume, Stag's Leap, charts the death of that marriage in a collection of poems now shortlisted for the T S Eliot Prize for Poetry. Sharon Olds is known for being a poet of the personal, and she joins Kirsty to discuss her latest revelations. 

A black female lead character is a rare sight in television, which is why Scandal - a new drama from the US about political corruption - has attracted attention. It stars Kerry Washington as Olivia Pope, a crisis-management expert in Washington DC, and is loosely based on Judy Smith, former press aide to President George H. W. Bush. Gaylene Gould reviews. 

Elena, a new film from Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev, won the Cannes Film Festival's Un Certain Regard Special Jury Prize earlier this year. Elena is forced to fight for an inheritance from her wealthy husband, in a modern take on the classic noir. Author A D Miller, a former Moscow correspondent for The Economist, discusses what the film tells us about contemporary Russia.

Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook of the band Squeeze are preparing to tour the UK next month. Following each performance they will be behind the counter of their Pop-Up Shop, where they'll be selling recordings of that evening's concert. Tilbrook and Difford discuss this new venture, the first music they've written together for 14 years, and what it's like to sing the old hits more than 30 years on.

Producer Rebecca Nicholson.

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