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BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

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The Essay Podcast

The Essay

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Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Essays from leading writers on arts, history, philosophy, science, religion and beyond.

Leading writers on arts, history, philosophy, science, religion and beyond, themed across a week - insight, opinion and intellectual surprise.

The Essay: Five Poems I Wish I Had Written

The Essay: Five Poems I Wish I Had Written: Episode 1: Seamus Heaney's 'The Underground'

Five Poems I wish I had written

Episode 1

Episode 1: Seamus Heaney's 'The Underground'

Five Poems I Wish I Had Written

Seamus Heaney's 'The Underground'

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Poet Don Paterson reflects on Seamus Heaney's 'The Underground'.

Poet Don Paterson reflects with a mixture of admiration and rueful envy on five poems he wishes he had written - starting with Seamus Heaney's 'The Underground'.

Don Paterson is an award-winning poet, editor and teacher, but for all his technical ability and the recognition that has been paid to his work Paterson is acutely aware of awe and sometimes envy when he looks at the work of other writers. Here he applies his wit and skills of technical analysis to discussing the five poems he wishes he had written.
Tonight, Seamus Heaney's 'The Underground' .

The Underground

There we were in the vaulted tunnel running,
You in your going-away coat speeding ahead
And me, me then like a fleet god gaining
Upon you before you turned to a reed

Or some new white flower japped with crimson
As the coat flapped wild and button after button
Sprang off and fell in a trail
Between the Underground and the Albert Hall.

Honeymooning, moonlighting, late for the Proms,
Our echoes die in that corridor and now
I come as Hansel came on the moonlit stones
Retracing the path back, lifting the buttons

To end up in a draughty lamplit station
After the trains have gone, the wet track
Bared and tensed as I am, all attention
For your step following and damned if I look back.

from Station Island (Faber, 1984), copyright (c) Seamus Heaney 1984,.

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Poet Don Paterson reflects on five poems he wishes he had written

Poet Don Paterson reflects with a mixture of admiration and rueful envy on five poems he wishes he had written

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