Poetry Extra: The Person From Porlock

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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

The Person From Porlock

BBC Radio 4 Extra - Poetry Extra, The Person From Porlock

Daljit Nagra selects the best programmes from the BBC's poetry archive.

Daljit Nagra selects The Person From Porlock on whom Coleridge laid the blame when he failed to complete Kubla Khan.  From 2012.

Daljit Nagra revists the BBC's poetry archive and selects The Person From Porlock.  Presented by Paul Farley.  

When the poet Coleridge failed to complete his 'dream poem' Kubla Khan, he laid the blame on a 'person from Porlock' who had called to see him on business, thereby fatally interrupting his writing. 

'The Person from Porlock' has come to represent anything that interrupts the creative process, and he has inspired a number of poems in his own right, from writers as diverse as Stevie Smith and R S Thomas.

Paul Farley travels to Porlock in Somerset in search of Coleridge's mysterious visitor and, in the company of Tim Liardet, Hester Jones and Tom Mayberry, contemplates a number of poetic interruptions - both obstructive and curiously inspirational.  

Producer: Emma Harding

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2012.

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