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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

Discussion & Talk

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 3: Michael Donaghy's 'The Hunter's Purse'

Five Poems I wish I had written

Episode 3

Episode 3: Michael Donaghy's 'The Hunter's Purse'

Five Poems I Wish I Had Written

Michael Donaghy's 'The Hunter's Purse'

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Poet Don Paterson reflects on Michael Donaghy's 'The Hunter's Purse'.

Poet Don Paterson reflects with a mixture of admiration and rueful envy on five poems he wishes he had written. Michael Donaghy 'The Hunter's Purse'.

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, Michael Donaghy 'The Hunter's Purse'.

The Hunter's Purse

is the last unshattered 78 
by 'Patrolman Jack O'Ryan, violin', 
a Sligo fiddler in dry America.

A legend, he played Manhattan's ceilidhs,
fell asleep drunk one snowy Christmas
on a Central Park bench and froze solid.
They shipped his corpse home, like his records.

This record's record is its lunar surface. 
I wouldn't risk my stylus to this gouge, 
or this crater left by a flick of ash -

When Anne Quinn got hold of it back in Kilrush,
she took her fiddle to her shoulder
and cranked the new Horn of Plenty
Victrola over and over and over,
and scratched along until she had it right 
or until her father shouted

'We'll have no more 
Of that tune
In this house tonight'.

She slipped out back and strapped the contraption 
to the parcel rack and rode her bike
to a far field, by moonlight.

It skips. The penny I used for ballast slips. 
O'Ryan's fiddle pops, and hiccoughs
back to this, back to this, back to this:
a napping snowman with a fiddlecase;
a flask of bootleg under his belt;
three stars; a gramophone on a pushbike; 
a cigarette's glow from a far field;
over and over, three bars in common time.

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

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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