BBC Radio 4 LW

Modern Metamorphoses

Modern Metamorphoses: Episode 3

The Poet Librettists

Episode 3

BBC Radio 4 - Modern Metamorphoses, Episode 3

The series ends by looking at how poets deal with bodily changes wrought over a lifetime.

Michael Symmons Roberts concludes his exploration of the body, metamorphosis and poetry by examining the physical changes that occur to us over the course of our lives.

In the final episode of the series, Michael Symmons Roberts confronts some of the most important metamorphoses that occur to our bodies over the course of our lives, taking Shakespeare’s Seven Ages of Man speech as his starting point. 

He asks how poets react to the changes brought about by adolescence,  by pregnancy or by serious illness? How much of our spirit and our voice remains constant as our physical being encounters such dramatic transformations? And are the ravages brought about by old age necessarily a thing to fear, or - as Jorie Graham and Michael Longley suggest - an opportunity to find poetic inspiration in the face of the dying of the light?


A TBI Media production for BBC Radio 4

BBC Radio 4

BBC Radio 4 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced BBC Home Service.

Radio 4

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media: Arts

Michael Symmons Roberts hears how poets today are offering new perspectives on Ovid.

In his new series on poetry, change and the body, Michael Symmons Roberts hears how poets today are offering urgent new perspectives on Ovid's great work, Metamorphosis.

Accessibility links

Programme Index

Modern Metamorphoses

Episode 3

Genres

Series

BBC Radio 4 LW

About BBC Radio 4