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Poetry & I

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media: Arts

BBC Radio 4 - Poetry & I

Poet Jay Bernard explores the power and potency of the letter I.

Poet Jay Bernard explores the power of the letter I. For marginalised poets, the first person can hold immense potential - but it comes with significant challenges.

I think. I feel. I am. 

Award winning poet Jay Bernard explores the power and potency carried in one small stroke - the letter I.

The first person has been used by poets to explore identity, expression and the self for centuries. Lyric poems, a type of short, introspective poem most associated with the I, are everywhere. We read them aloud at pivotal moments - births, weddings, funerals. It’s Keats, Wordsworth, Shakespeare’s sonnets.

But now the lyric I is being re-imagined by a new generation of poets who are tackling burning social questions. For poets from marginalised communities, the simple act of saying ‘this is what I see’ can be revolutionary, an assertion of their humanity. But, as Jay explains, it isn’t always easy.

Jay’s been tussling with the I in their poems for years. They identify as a lyric poet. But they’ve also had to figure out their relationship to the first person in the context of a Western canon where the I in poetry has been overwhelmingly configured as white and male.

In this programme, Jay embarks on a deep exploration of their own relationship with the I they set down on paper, and hears from other poets grappling with the same tensions.

In the poems and testimony of Harry Josephine Giles, Nuala Watt, Sandeep Parmar and Claudia Rankine, Jay meets a multifaceted, shape-shifting I, with the capacity to re-imagine the world and expand our understanding of the human experience.

Presenter: Jay Bernard
Producer: Caroline Thornham
Executive Producer: Max O'Brien
A Novel production for BBC Radio 4

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