Poetry Extra: In The Studio 

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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

Poetry Extra: In The Studio - Sharon Olds: Poetry Coming Down My Arm

In The Studio - Sharon Olds: Poetry Coming Down My Arm

BBC Radio 4 Extra - Poetry Extra, In The Studio - Sharon Olds: Poetry Coming Down My Arm

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

Daljit Nagra chooses In The Studio - Sharon Olds: Poetry Coming Down My Arm featuring the US poet.  From 2020.

Daljit Nagra revisits the BBC's poetry archive and chooses In The Studio - Sharon Olds: Poetry Coming Down My Arm.  

The American poet Sharon Olds has been one of the leading voices in contemporary poetry since her first book was published in 1980. She won the Pulitzer Prize in 2013 for Stag’s Leap, her extraordinary collection of poems chronicling the breakup of her marriage, with its themes of love, family, sorrow, desire and memory, which have echoed throughout her work.

But her career as a poet nearly didn’t happen. Her first poems were dismissed by some editors who saw them as not literary enough, perhaps objecting to the intense way she wrote about sexual love and the minutiae of being a woman. But it’s precisely those qualities that have won her new generations of fans and critical praise across the world.

After a period of long isolation due to the pandemic, Sharon talks to Emma Kingsley about her work and how lockdown has affected her perception of the world. She describes how she creates new poems and how the words and images travel down her arm and out through the pen.

Presented and produced by Emma Kingsley,

First broadcast on the BBC World Service in October 2020.

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