Sunday Feature: The Most Contrary Region

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The Most Contrary Region

BBC Radio 3 - Sunday Feature, The Most Contrary Region

Paul Muldoon on how the arts influenced a century of broadcasting at the BBC in Belfast.

As the BBC marks its centenary, poet Paul Muldoon examines how he and his fellow Northern Irish writers responded to the challenges of broadcasting in a divided community.

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon is one of a large number of Northern Ireland artists who spent some of their formative years, in the 1970s and 80s, contributing to BBC Northern Ireland's schools and arts programming.  Nobel Laureate, the late Seamus Heaney, Michael Longley and Derek Mahon were amongst a tight-knit group who regularly wrote and narrated scripts and took part in live discussion programmes.  Muldoon was a staff producer for thirteen years and agrees with many of his former colleagues that radio played a major role in developing his writing skills with its imaginative pull and the disciplines of clarity, conciseness and use of sound. 

Paul and his colleagues created a new, sometimes controversial, wave of programmes exploring identity, religion, language, history and culture – highly contested areas in Northern Ireland - and they are credited with helping their audiences, particularly schoolchildren, come to a better understanding of their divided society. 

Northern Ireland's divisions and politics posed huge dilemmas for the BBC, in Belfast and London, from its earliest days.  As the corporation marks its centenary, Paul returns to Broadcasting House, in Belfast, to trace some of the landmark programming from this 'contrary region' and reflect on the output he and his colleagues crafted during some of the worst years of the Troubles.

He discusses with his close friend and fellow poet, Michael Longley, and former schools producer, Pat Loughrey, the challenges they faced, and he asks broadcasting historians, Jean Seaton and Gillian McIntosh for their assessments of the contribution poets and writers made to BBC Northern Ireland over the century.

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

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