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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: Listen to Them Breathing

Listen to Them Breathing

BBC Radio 4 Extra - Poetry Extra, Listen to Them Breathing

Poet Sibyl Ruth explores the connections between the Quakers and poetry.

4 Extra Debut. Daljit Nagra chooses Listen to Them Breathing – an exploration into the Quakers and poetry. Presented by Sibyl Ruth. From August 2011.

Poet Daljit Nagra revisits the BBC's radio poetry archive and  chooses Listen to Them Breathing – an exploration into the Quakers and poetry. 

Presenter Sibyl Ruth is a poet who is also a practising Quaker. For many years she thought her poetry had little to do with her Quaker background. But then, after a meeting with the poet and Quaker Dorothy Nimmo,  she began to see connections between her Quaker beliefs and the poetry that spoke most clearly to her.

 In this programme she goes in search of other poets who are Quakers, to try and find out if there is a relationship between their belief in the Quaker ministry and their writing. She talks to Rosie Bailey about her late partner UA Fanthorpe; to publishers Anne and Peter Sansom about the writing workshops they organise which draw on many of the principles of Quaker meeting; to Gerard Benson, the co-founder of Poems on the Underground, who became a Quaker quite late in life; and to Philip Gross, a line from whose poem 'The Quakers of Pompeii' provides the programme's title. 

Producer: Sara Davies

The poems included in the programme are:

Friends Meeting House, Frenchay by UA Fanthorpe
The Black Parrot by Dorothy Nimmo
Pottery Lesson by Dorothy Nimmo
Zero by Philip Gross
Song of Jean by Sybil Ruth
The Quakers of Pompeii by Philip Gross

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2011.

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