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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: The Fisher Poets Gathering

The Fisher Poets Gathering

BBC Radio 4 Extra - Poetry Extra, The Fisher Poets Gathering

Daljit Nagra selects The Fisher Poets Gathering presented by Katrina Porteous.

4 Extra Debut. Daljit Nagra introduces The Fisher Poets Gathering from the fishing community in Oregon. Presented by Katrina Porteous. From May 2014.

Poet Daljit Nagra revisits the BBC's radio poetry archive selecting The Fisher Poets Gathering in which Katrina Porteous visits Astoria, Oregon, where each February commercial fishermen and women gather for a festival of poems, songs and stories they've written about their lives.  

Fisher poets come from all over America - Florida, Maine, Chesapeake Bay, Alaska. These tough characters, who all know someone who has drowned, stand up and read their poems. Hundreds listen: there are sessions in bars and readings all over town. There are workshops, exhibitions, and the community radio station broadcasts proceedings, live.

In 2014, a poet came from beyond the United States. Katrina Porteous lives in the Northumbrian fishing village of Beadnell. For years she has worked with, recorded and written about her local fishing people.

She hears astonishing work from Dave Densmore, on his boat Cold Stream; from Moe Bowstern, an extraordinarily prolific writer about the lives of fisher women; from Richard King who fishes in Alaska, and farms in Hawaii. She meets, too, Lloyd Montgomery, an Aleut fisher poet. And wherever they are from, Katrina discovers, fisher poets share concerns over sustainability - of fish stocks, their communities, their way of life.
 
Producer: Julian May

First broadcast on Radio 4 in 2014.

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