Poetry Extra: Poems for Idle Workers

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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

Poems for Idle Workers

BBC Radio 4 Extra - Poetry Extra, Poems for Idle Workers

Daljit Nagra heads back to work and selects a highlight from the BBC's poetry archive.

Daljit Nagra selects Poems for Idle Workers featuring Holly Pester's poems set in the brief pauses of work-breaks.  From 2019.

Daljit Nagra revisits the BBC's poetry archive and chooses Poems for Idle Workers.

Featuring a series of small poems by Holly Pester, set in the brief pauses of work-breaks. Inspired by Virgil, absurdism, and sound poetry. 

Performed by Maggie Nicols and Keeley Forsyth.

In the year 42 BC, the Latin poet Virgil began to write his famous Eclogues (the term comes from a word meaning sketch or draft), reflecting tensions in the countryside caused by civil-war in Italy and the assassination of Caesar. In these pieces, dispossessed herdsmen gossip, sing and fight alongside those who have been granted land by the new regime.

Since Virgil, poets including Percy B Shelley and WH Auden have used the eclogue form to explore more modern ideas of labour and land, touching on the real and the mythic at once. 

Here, Holly Pester presents a set of experimental eclogues that take place in a contemporary work-space, where two lowly office workers find themselves united yet divided, trying to find a connection in the stolen moments of not-working. 

But is there ever really such a moment? 

Magatha is read and sung by Maggie Nicols.

Terry is read and sung by Keeley Forsyth.

Written and introduced by Holly Pester.

Produced by Jack Howson

A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 4, first broadcast in 2019.

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