Poetry Extra

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BBC Radio 4 Extra

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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: We Will Arise and Go Now

We Will Arise and Go Now

BBC Radio 4 Extra - Poetry Extra, We Will Arise and Go Now

Poet Daljit Nagra selects the very best riches from the BBC's poetry archive.

Poet Daljit Nagra selects We Will Arise and Go Now marking WB Yeats’ birth and his poem the Lake Isle of Innisfree. From 2015.

Poet Daljit Nagra revisits the BBC's radio poetry archive and chooses We Will Arise and Go Now marking the birth of WB Yeats.

On the 150th anniversary of WB Yeats' birth, Irish Chair of Poetry Paula Meehan, selects three Irish poets who will arise and go with presenter Marie-Louise Muir to The Lake Isle of Innisfree in County Sligo, a location made famous by Yeats's iconic poem of the same name.   

Elayne Harrington, aka 'Temper-Mental Miss-Elayneous'   is a hip-hop poet and spoken word artist from Dublin; Stephen Sexton a PhD student at the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry in Belfast; Paula Cunningham was brought up in Omagh, County Tyrone, and works as a part-time dentist.

While Yeats's poem speaks of a desire to build 'a cabin of clay and wattles' on Innisfree, Marie-Louise and our three poets will be sleeping under canvas and cooking on a campfire.  As they discover if the reality of this tiny uninhabited island on Lough Gill lives up to the bucolic idyll which Yeats so famously portrayed, they'll ask if 'peace comes dropping slow' in the 'bee loud glade' as they each reflect on how The Lake Isle of Innisfree resonates with them and come up with their own poetic responses to it.

Produced by Conor Garrett

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2015.

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