Words and Music

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BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

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A journey of discovery, weaving music with poetry and prose read by leading actors.

A weekly journey of discovery, weaving together a range of music with poetry and prose read by leading actors.

Words and Music: The Ledbury Poets

The Ledbury Poets

BBC Radio 3 - Words and Music, The Ledbury Poets

Prose and verse from Gloucestershire and the Cotswolds inspired by Ledbury Poetry Festival

Inspired by Ledbury Poetry Festival, texts from Gloucestershire: John Masefield, Lascelles Abercrombie, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Rupert Brooke, Jade Cuttle, Anthony Anaxagorou.

Actors Adrian Scarborough and Skye Hallam read prose and verse from Gloucestershire and the Cotswolds inspired by the Ledbury Poetry Festival, which runs in early July, set alongside a range of music. We hear work by poets who were born there or lived and worked in the region, like John Masefield, Lascelles Abercrombie, John Drinkwater, Rupert Brooke, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, William Langland, and WH Auden. We also feature contemporary poets, who've taken part in the Ledbury festival, reading their own poems, like Jade Cuttle, Anthony Anaxagorou and Victoria Adukwei Bulley.
As for the music, we hear settings of some of these poems by the likes of John Ireland and Ivor Gurney, as well as pieces from composers associated broadly with the region, like Edward Elgar. 
Producer: Juan Carlos Jaramillo

TEXTS
Cotswold Love, by John Drinkwater (read by the poet)
Edward Thomas (excerpt), by Eleanor Farjeon
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, by William Wordsworth
Bright Clouds, by Edward Thomas
An ecology of words: four seasons - after Roland Barthes, by Jade Cuttle (read by the poet)
Prose excerpt on living in Gloucestershire, by Lascelles Abercrombie
The Voices of a Dream, by Lascelles Abercrombie
Reflections on arriving at Ledbury, by Katrina Porteous
Prologue (excerpt) from Piers Plowman, by William Langland (trans. by Peter Sutton)
Ode to the Medieval Poets, by WH Auden
Saying, by Anthony Anaxagorou (read by the poet)
Floating Island, by Dorothy Wordsworth
Sea Fever, by John Masefield (read by the poet)
On Malvern Hill, by John Masefield
Excerpt from letter, by Edward Thomas
The Dead, by Rupert Brooke
Under Storm's Wing (excerpt), by Helen Thomas
The Preparative, by Thomas Traherne
How Do I Love Thee?, by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
The Trumpet, by Edward Thomas
This poem, by Victoria Adukwei Bulley (read by the poet)
A Musical Instrument, by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
In Pursuit of Spring (excerpt), by Edward Thomas

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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