Three Faces of WH Auden

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Michael Symmons Roberts sets out to consider three different aspects of Auden's poetry.

Fifty years on from the death of one of the 20th century's greatest poets, WH Auden, Michael Symmons Roberts sets out to consider three different aspects of his work.

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Three Faces of WH Auden: Episode 2

Episode 2

BBC Radio 4 - Three Faces of WH Auden, Episode 2

Michael Symmons Roberts considers the place of religion in Auden's life and his poetry.

The poet Michael Symmons Roberts looks at the place of religion in the life and work of WH Auden, whose childhood faith returned on an evening recorded in the poem A Summer Night.

WH Auden was one of the most important religious poets of the Twentieth Century, but his relationship with faith was never straightforward. His life as an active and proud gay man put him at odds with the church, and he turned his back on his childhood faith in his teens, returning to it following a moment of quiet epiphany recorded in his poem 'A Summer Evening'. Religion remained important to him for the rest of his life but he remained wary of poetry that dealt with the subject too directly - but poet Michael Symmons Roberts hears from the likes of former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and poet and Archdeacon Rachel Mann, this doesn't stop those poems that do consider faith, such as Horae Canonicae, A Christmas Oratorio and Friday's Child containing sometimes difficult but often beautiful and deeply profound metaphysical meditations.  

Produced by Geoff Bird 

Poems referred to in this episode include:
The Age of Anxiety (1947)
Horae Canonicae (1948 - 1955)
Friday's Child (1958)
For The Time Being - A Christmas Oratorio (1966)
AS I Walked Out One Evening (1940) 
all published by Faber and Faber.

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