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BBC Radio 4 Extra

Poetry Extra

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Weekly opportunity for listeners to revisit the riches of the BBC radio poetry archive

A brand new poetry slot on Radio 4 Extra gives listeners a weekly opportunity to revisit the riches of the BBC radio poetry archive

Poetry Extra: Lost Voices - Herbert Read

12/11/2017

Lost Voices - Herbert Read

BBC Radio 4 Extra - Poetry Extra, Lost Voices - Herbert Read

Poet Daljit Nagra introduces Lost Voice, Herbert Read, an unsentimental war poet.

4 Extra Debut. Poet Daljit Nagra introduces Herbert Read, an unsentimental war poet. Presented by Brian Patten. From April 2011.

Poet Daljit Nagra revisits the BBC's radio poetry archive with 'Lost Voices: Herbert Read' featuring his First World War poetry. 

Herbert Read was a man of many contradictions. Though a dedicated socialist and a committed anarchist, he was knighted by Winston Churchill; he was a pacifist but was twice decorated for bravery in the First World War; he was a strong advocate for Modernism in British art but could not accept the concept of Post Modernism. 

His towering presence in the post-war art world (he co-founded the Institute of Contemporary Arts) almost totally eclipsed his abilities as a poet, and yet his son - the writer Piers Paul Read - believes he always thought of himself as a poet.

Presenter Brian Patten - who met Herbert Read towards the end of his life - finds an impressively mature voice; cool in tone but full of humanitarian feeling towards the men - he characterised them as 'children' - involved on both sides. 

Poems read by Samuel West.

Producer Christine Hall

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2011.

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