As summer begins to wane, we observe its passing with Emily Dickinson and Edward Arlington Robinson, and comment on the gradual fading of human relationships with a number of poets new to the program - Medbh McGuckian, Thomas Blackburn, Esta Spalding, Michael Laskey, Mairi MacInnes and, from America, Gjertrud Schnackenberg.
Old favorites are here too - Shelley and Tennyson, Ted Hughes and Thom Gunn, Dorothy Parker and John Betjeman ...
We have summer poems from across the world, interspersed, as always, by meditations on the human condition.
Sadly, my attempt at sympathetic magic - to bring summer conditions to the UK through evoking images of warmth, fruitfulness and languor - has only succeeded in bringing yet further downpours.
I thought it might be time to build an ark but the hardware stores are all out of gopherwood.
June's poems group themselves around the theme of living with suffering.
The theorist Theodor Adorno famously said that to write a poem after Auschwitz was barbaric. We discuss this thought on the 18th and 19th with poems from Geoffrey Hill in memory of the holocaust and a poem by Paul Celan about being in a work camp. Earlier Thomas Hardy and Dom Moraes envision the end of things, Franz Kafka examines the strange fact that desire can be the only affirmation of life, and James Fenton, John Gillespie Magee,Stephen Crane, W B Yeats and Anna Akhmatova speak of living through conflict.
We also have poems celebrating new life - from Kate Clanchy on the 11th, and Amy Clampitt on the 16th, as well as famous memorials of death from Thomas Gray, Paul Muldoon and Anna Akhmatova.
The month ends with summer and boyhood - descriptions from Britiish poets including Dylan Thomas, Philip Larkin and BarryTebb and Americans - Charles Simic and James Whitcomb Riley,
May's programs are shaped around the theme of faith.
Robert Browning's great diatribe The Lost Leader (May 8) bemoans the loss of faith in a cause, while Jenny Jospeh's The Road from Glastonbury (on the same day) explores how to live in a post-religious age.
How to approach a God who is now mythical but still ever-present in the imagination is the subject of the two poems on May 9 by the current Library of Congress Poet Laureate Charles Simic. while two English Poets Laureate, John Betjeman and Andrew Motion explore the difficulties of resisting the metaphysical on the approach of death.
Karl Shapiro (May 14) and Erich Fried (May 2) discuss the abandonment of left-wing idealism by the fellow-travellers of the reform movement. While Joseph Brodsky in his long poem Nunc Dmittis (May 28) describes with a mood of celebration the feeling of certain proof in belief.
Enjoy ... and let's hope our faith in the weather may finally bring on Spring!
We continue our theme of story poems this month with engrossing tales from Muriel Spark, Czeslaw Milosz, Maurice Riordan, Seamus Heaney and John Keats.
Newcomers to the program include Mimi Khalvati, Sinead Morrissey, Dick Davis, Frieda Hughes and the New Zealand poet Lauris Edmond.
We celebrate the birthdays of the two great Willliams - Wordsworth on the 7th and 8th and Shakespeare on the 23rd.
American contributions come from Louise Gluck, Maya Angelou and the author of All The King's Men - Robert Penn Warren; and we have much-loved poems from old favourites - Adrian Henri, Constantin Cavafy, Tony Harrison, E J Scovell, John Donne and George Herbert.
True to John Fletcher's description, in England March came in like a lion and stayed roaring; only now has it decided to go out like a lamb ...
As well as celebrating Spring - with A E Housman, Robert Frost, Salvatore Quasimodo. e e cummings and John Burnside - we also celebrate Lady Day with Denise Levertov's Annunciatiion.
Central to this month's schedule is the beginning of an exploration of story-telling in poetry. We start with perhaps the most famous - Browning's The Pied Piper of Hamelin, spread over the 7th and 10th - and continue with story poems by W H Auden, Ovid (in a translation by Ted Hughes), Brendan Kennally, the Palestinian Mahmoud Darwish, Derek Mahon and the brilliant new English poet Frances Leviston.
The month starrts by celebrating the birthdays of five American male poets and two American women poets and - remembering that Spring is also the season of love - we revisit Anna Akhmatova's wonderful poem Cinque and explore the nature of love with Colette Bryce, Elizabeth Barrett Browniing and Michelangelo. as well as through two Forward Prize-winning poems from Kate Bingham.
February - as is appropriate for the month of St Valentine's - is all about love.
We build up to Valentine's Day in England with Brian Patten and in America with Louise Bogan, Marianne Moore and Judith Viorst, celebrate it with Sharon Olds, then, returning to Europe, remember Christopher Marlowe's The Passionate Shepherd to his Love and continue with versions of his lyric by Sir Walter Raleigh, John Donne, C Day Lewis, Ogden Nash and W D Snodgrass.
Also on the subject of love we hear the experts - Edna St Vincent Millay, W H Auden, Sylvia Plath and A R Ammons.
In between we cross the continents with poems from India, Pakistan, Iran, France, Greece, Italy and Ancient Rome.
A fantastic feast of wooing, anticipation, ecstasy and their aftermath ....
As is appropriate for the month of Christmas, December centres on the point of view of the child, with versions of Christmas from the perspectives of children.
We also celebrate the month with lyrical descriptions from John Clare, John Donne, Carol Ann Duffy and Richard Wilbur and make frequent visits to Dylan Thomas's A Child's Christmas in Wales.
Apart from this, the view of Christmas is alternative rather than traditional - taken from views across the centuries, aerial perspectives, St Stephen's martyrdom - and of course interpreted by children.
We also have fine poems from a newcomers Helen Dunmore and Edwin Brock as well as old faithfuls such as Robert Graves, Carolyn Kizer, Muriel Rukeyser, Zsuzsa Rakovsky and Adrian Mitchell.
The month closes, as it begins, with the "peasant poet" John Clare. We hope it makes a pleasant accompaniment to the stuffing and crackers, as well as the wrapping ... and thankyou letters.
As summer begins to wane, we observe its passing with Emily Dickinson and Edward Arlington Robinson, and comment on the gradual fading of human relationships with a number of poets new to the progra...
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July 08
Celebrate Summer with Poem for Today!
We have summer poems from across the world, interspersed, as always, by meditations on the human condition.
Sadly, my attempt at sympathetic magic -...
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June 08
June's poems group themselves around the theme of living with suffering.
The theorist Theodor Adorno famously said that to write a poem after Auschwitz was barbaric. We discuss this thou...
Read More ...
May 08
May's programs are shaped around the theme of faith.
Robert Browning's great diatribe The Lost Leader (May 8) bemoans the loss of faith in a cause, while Jenny Jospeh's The Road from Glastonbu...
Read More ...
April 08
We continue our theme of story poems this month with engrossing tales from Muriel Spark, Czeslaw Milosz, Maurice Riordan, Seamus Heaney and John Keats.
Newcomers to the program include Mimi Kh...
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March 08
Welcome to the month of Spring!
As well as celebrating Spring - with A E Housman, Robert Frost, Salvatore Quasimodo. e e cummings and John Burnside - we also celebrate Lady Day with Denise Lev...
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February 08
February - as is appropriate for the month of St Valentine's - is all about love.
We build up to Valentine's Day in England with Brian Patten and in America with Louise Bogan, Marianne Moore a...
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December 07
As is appropriate for the month of Christmas, December centres on the point of view of the child, with versions of Christmas from the perspectives of children.
We also celebrate the month with...
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November 07
November consists of an exploration of the way we live, epitomised by Vicki Feaver's poem of that title, central to the month, and Edmund Blunden's Report on Experience on the 1st and George Szirtes...
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adrian mitchell
On October 24 we celebrate Adrian's 75th birthday.
Read a new poem of Adrian's
...
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