0:00:05 > 0:00:07Since its inception,
0:00:07 > 0:00:10the BBC has captured the greatest names in poetry.
0:00:14 > 0:00:17The BBC's archive features some of the most popular
0:00:17 > 0:00:19literary figures of the modern era.
0:00:19 > 0:00:22Here is a poor man who got drowned.
0:00:22 > 0:00:24His friends thought he was waving to them from the sea
0:00:24 > 0:00:26but really he was drowning.
0:00:28 > 0:00:32This programme will look at how bards turned into broadcasters...
0:00:32 > 0:00:35Poetry is religion, religion is poetry.
0:00:35 > 0:00:39The core of both are imagination, as far as I'm concerned.
0:00:39 > 0:00:41..as poets braved the cameras
0:00:41 > 0:00:44to be beamed into the nation's living rooms,
0:00:44 > 0:00:46a tradition that still continues today.
0:00:57 > 0:01:01The First World War saw industrial slaughter across Europe.
0:01:06 > 0:01:09Out of the horrors of the front lines would come
0:01:09 > 0:01:11a new, more direct kind of writing.
0:01:16 > 0:01:19Robert Graves was a captain in the Royal Welch Fusiliers
0:01:19 > 0:01:21and a budding poet.
0:01:22 > 0:01:26The war had a profound effect on his poetry
0:01:26 > 0:01:30and in 1916, Graves' first volume of verse was published.
0:01:31 > 0:01:35That same year, his name appeared in print again,
0:01:35 > 0:01:37this time in a national newspaper,
0:01:37 > 0:01:38listed among the dead.
0:01:41 > 0:01:46Many years later, Graves reflected on his own death for the BBC.
0:01:49 > 0:01:52I was 22 hours dead. It was on my 21st birthday
0:01:52 > 0:01:56and that's where I started again, so I'm now only 53 instead of 74.
0:01:57 > 0:01:59You were reported dead.
0:01:59 > 0:02:02They... They closed my bank account.
0:02:02 > 0:02:05They wrote to my parents and said how heroic I was.
0:02:05 > 0:02:09They did everything. They stole all my kit and I appealed for it,
0:02:09 > 0:02:12but I never got it back.
0:02:16 > 0:02:19As the war ended, Graves wrote a poem recalling
0:02:19 > 0:02:21the jubilation of Armistice Day.
0:02:23 > 0:02:25Armistice Day, 1918.
0:02:27 > 0:02:29What's all this hubbub and yelling,
0:02:29 > 0:02:31Commotion and scamper of feet
0:02:31 > 0:02:33With ear-splitting clatter of kettles and cans,
0:02:33 > 0:02:36Wild laughter down Mafeking Street?
0:02:36 > 0:02:38O, those are the kids whom we fought for
0:02:38 > 0:02:41You might think they'd been scoffing our rum
0:02:41 > 0:02:44With flags that they waved when we marched off to war
0:02:44 > 0:02:45In the rapture of bugle and drum.
0:02:47 > 0:02:51But his anger at the futility of the war meant that celebrations
0:02:51 > 0:02:52were of little comfort.
0:02:54 > 0:02:56When the days of rejoicing are over,
0:02:56 > 0:02:58When the flags are stowed safely away,
0:02:58 > 0:03:01They will dream of another wild "War to End Wars"
0:03:01 > 0:03:04And another wild Armistice Day.
0:03:04 > 0:03:06But the boys who were killed in the trenches,
0:03:06 > 0:03:09Who fought with no rage and no rant,
0:03:09 > 0:03:12We left them stretched out on their pallets of mud
0:03:12 > 0:03:15Low down with the worm and the ant.
0:03:20 > 0:03:23SWING MUSIC
0:03:28 > 0:03:32In the 1920s, a weary post-war Britain was keen to put the misery
0:03:32 > 0:03:34of the trenches behind it.
0:03:35 > 0:03:37But perhaps it wasn't quite ready
0:03:37 > 0:03:40for a poet who was about to make a dramatic entrance.
0:03:42 > 0:03:45The eccentric, aristocratic Edith Sitwell.
0:03:47 > 0:03:51At that time a change in the direction, imagery and rhythms
0:03:51 > 0:03:53in poetry was taking place,
0:03:53 > 0:03:55owing to the rhythmical flaccidity,
0:03:55 > 0:03:59the verbal deadness, the dead and expected patterns
0:03:59 > 0:04:03of some of the poetry immediately preceding us.
0:04:03 > 0:04:05It was therefore necessary to find
0:04:05 > 0:04:09rhythmical expression for the heightened speed of our time.
0:04:11 > 0:04:13Sitwell was a poetic innovator
0:04:13 > 0:04:17but it was her strikingly eccentric looks that drew the most attention.
0:04:17 > 0:04:21At six foot tall and draped in Tudor gowns and jewels,
0:04:21 > 0:04:22she cut quite a dash.
0:04:24 > 0:04:26Everything about Sitwell was a performance.
0:04:26 > 0:04:30The clothes, the face - and she knew she looked weird,
0:04:30 > 0:04:32and so her decision was
0:04:32 > 0:04:36to look even weirder, and to make no allowances for people.
0:04:36 > 0:04:41People had to know that, "Look, she has to be a poet, look at her."
0:04:43 > 0:04:45In 1959 she was interviewed
0:04:45 > 0:04:49by John Freeman for the celebrated BBC series Face To Face.
0:04:53 > 0:04:57Dame Edith, the world outside your own circle of friends
0:04:57 > 0:05:00tends to think of you as being remote, eccentric,
0:05:00 > 0:05:02forbidding and rather dangerous.
0:05:02 > 0:05:06Now, perhaps that's a false impression and I want you to tell me
0:05:06 > 0:05:08face-to-face what sort of person you really are.
0:05:08 > 0:05:12Now, first, your appearance, which everybody knows - why did you
0:05:12 > 0:05:16devise the very personal style of clothes that you wear so often?
0:05:16 > 0:05:20Well, because I can't wear fashionable clothes.
0:05:20 > 0:05:25You see, I'm a throwback to remote ancestors of mine
0:05:25 > 0:05:29and I really would look so extraordinary if I wore coats and skirts.
0:05:29 > 0:05:31I would be followed for miles
0:05:31 > 0:05:33and people would doubt the existence of the Almighty
0:05:33 > 0:05:36if they saw me looking like that.
0:05:36 > 0:05:40There was the dressing-up aspect but there was also the idea
0:05:40 > 0:05:43that she is, as we think of her,
0:05:43 > 0:05:47a kind of a series of modernist lines and angles.
0:05:47 > 0:05:50She somehow transcends the flesh,
0:05:50 > 0:05:55which she didn't really have much of, and becomes lines and bones
0:05:55 > 0:05:59and costume jewellery and turbans and rings.
0:05:59 > 0:06:01She is a confection, a construction,
0:06:01 > 0:06:03she's like something that's been built
0:06:03 > 0:06:05rather than something that was lived.
0:06:05 > 0:06:09You ask me, just now you said that people's idea of me
0:06:09 > 0:06:13was that I was eccentric and... and savage?
0:06:13 > 0:06:16No, forbidding, I said, and dangerous.
0:06:16 > 0:06:19Well, I don't think I'm forbidding, excepting when I absolutely refuse
0:06:19 > 0:06:23to be taught my job by people who know nothing about it.
0:06:23 > 0:06:25I have devoted my whole life to writing poetry,
0:06:25 > 0:06:28which is to be a form of religion, and I'm not going to be taught
0:06:28 > 0:06:31by people who don't know anything about it.
0:06:31 > 0:06:32I think it's very impertinent.
0:06:32 > 0:06:35I mean, I don't teach plumbers how to plumb.
0:06:36 > 0:06:41Ever the innovator, Sitwell worked with composer William Walton
0:06:41 > 0:06:44to create lively musical settings for her poems.
0:06:44 > 0:06:46ORCHESTRA PLAYS JAUNTILY
0:06:46 > 0:06:48# So do not take a bath in Jordan, Gordon
0:06:48 > 0:06:50# On the holy Sabbath, on the peaceful day
0:06:50 > 0:06:53# Or you'll never go to heaven, Gordon Macpherson,
0:06:53 > 0:06:55# And speaking purely as a private person
0:06:55 > 0:06:58# That is the place, that is the place
0:06:58 > 0:07:00# That is the place for me! #
0:07:03 > 0:07:07There is a genealogical relationship between Sitwell and rap,
0:07:07 > 0:07:11because her poetry was popular in recorded form.
0:07:11 > 0:07:16You bought a Sitwell LP. Her work should always be listened to.
0:07:16 > 0:07:18Don't read it if you don't have to.
0:07:18 > 0:07:22Hear her perform it, because the music of it is there in her voice.
0:07:22 > 0:07:25# "As they watch me dance the polka"
0:07:25 > 0:07:28# Said Mr Wagg like a bear
0:07:28 > 0:07:30# "In my top hat and my whiskers that
0:07:30 > 0:07:32# "Tra la la trap the Fair."
0:07:32 > 0:07:34# Tra la la la la la Tra la la la la la
0:07:34 > 0:07:36# Tra la la la la la la la la
0:07:36 > 0:07:37# La la. #
0:07:44 > 0:07:47The 1930s took Britain into an age of political tension,
0:07:47 > 0:07:50economic crisis and high unemployment.
0:07:53 > 0:07:56In Europe, political leaders were squaring up
0:07:56 > 0:07:58for another devastating war.
0:08:01 > 0:08:04From this uncertainty, a young writer emerged
0:08:04 > 0:08:08convinced that poetry should have an engaged political voice.
0:08:12 > 0:08:16Wystan Hugh Auden was born in York, the son of a doctor.
0:08:18 > 0:08:21He won a scholarship to Oxford University, where he held sway
0:08:21 > 0:08:26over a group of idealistic young writers with strong left-wing views.
0:08:26 > 0:08:31They believed their duty as poets was to inspire political change.
0:08:33 > 0:08:36In his 20s, Auden travelled to Berlin
0:08:36 > 0:08:39to bear witness and report back.
0:08:40 > 0:08:45There, he discovered and wrote about a Europe on the brink of catastrophe.
0:08:49 > 0:08:51If you read Auden's poetry of the '30s,
0:08:51 > 0:08:53there's a kind of urgency to it.
0:08:53 > 0:08:55He wrote about demagogues,
0:08:55 > 0:08:59dangerous leaders such as he was seeing in Hitler and Mussolini.
0:08:59 > 0:09:01You know, he's engaged and politicised.
0:09:01 > 0:09:05At the same time he's a very individual voice.
0:09:05 > 0:09:08Fantastically mature and precocious from the start.
0:09:10 > 0:09:15The six-line poem Epitaph on a Tyrant shows Auden's gift
0:09:15 > 0:09:17for devastating political verse.
0:09:19 > 0:09:21Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,
0:09:21 > 0:09:25And the poetry he invented was easy to understand.
0:09:27 > 0:09:29He knew human folly like the back of his hand
0:09:29 > 0:09:33And was greatly interested in armies and fleets.
0:09:34 > 0:09:38When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter
0:09:38 > 0:09:42And when he cried, the little children died in the streets.
0:09:46 > 0:09:50Hungry to experience conflict, in 1937, Auden volunteered
0:09:50 > 0:09:55for the Republican forces fighting fascism in the Spanish Civil War.
0:09:57 > 0:10:00My first guest, WH Auden.
0:10:00 > 0:10:02APPLAUSE
0:10:02 > 0:10:06But in later life, Auden would come to reject his youthful belief
0:10:06 > 0:10:09in the power of poetry to inspire change.
0:10:09 > 0:10:12He was interviewed by Michael Parkinson in 1972.
0:10:14 > 0:10:19You seem to deny the thing that a lot of people might suspect a poet
0:10:19 > 0:10:23hopes he could be, which is some kind of social political reformer.
0:10:23 > 0:10:26No, that they can't be. I mean...
0:10:26 > 0:10:28At least, not in the West.
0:10:28 > 0:10:31By all means, I...
0:10:31 > 0:10:34Let a writer, a poet, if he feels like it,
0:10:34 > 0:10:38write what we now call an engagee poem,
0:10:38 > 0:10:41but he must not imagine that by doing so
0:10:41 > 0:10:44he will change the course of history.
0:10:44 > 0:10:48Nothing I wrote postponed the war for five seconds
0:10:48 > 0:10:50or prevented one Jew being gassed.
0:10:50 > 0:10:53- Yes.- No. I mean, of course one can do them
0:10:53 > 0:10:55as long as one doesn't imagine
0:10:55 > 0:10:58that one will change the course of history by doing it.
0:10:58 > 0:11:02I mean, I think if you ask what the function of not only literature,
0:11:02 > 0:11:05of writing, but also of all the arts is,
0:11:05 > 0:11:09I would say, first, I'd say what Dr Johnson said -
0:11:09 > 0:11:12"The aim of writing is to enable readers
0:11:12 > 0:11:17"a little better to enjoy life or a little better to endure it."
0:11:20 > 0:11:23When the BBC visited Auden in Austria,
0:11:23 > 0:11:27the poem they recorded had nothing to do with politics.
0:11:27 > 0:11:30Instead, it was an ode to melancholic love.
0:11:31 > 0:11:33As I walked out one evening
0:11:33 > 0:11:35Walking down Bristol Street
0:11:35 > 0:11:38The crowds upon the pavement
0:11:38 > 0:11:40Were fields of harvest wheat.
0:11:40 > 0:11:43And down by the brimming river I heard a lover sing
0:11:43 > 0:11:46Under an arch of a railway
0:11:46 > 0:11:48"Love has no ending.
0:11:48 > 0:11:52"I'll love you till the ocean is folded and hung up to dry
0:11:52 > 0:11:56"And the seven stars go squawking Like geese about the sky."
0:11:58 > 0:12:04The reason that he's so important is to do with the incredible
0:12:04 > 0:12:08technical versatility and freedom of his poetry.
0:12:08 > 0:12:12It was often said that WH Auden had this peculiar gift
0:12:12 > 0:12:16of making ordinary words sound terribly poetic
0:12:16 > 0:12:21by putting them into echoing patterns of sounds.
0:12:21 > 0:12:25"Stand, stand at the window As the tears scald and start
0:12:25 > 0:12:30"You must love your crooked neighbour with your crooked heart."
0:12:30 > 0:12:33It was late, late in the evening
0:12:33 > 0:12:35The lovers they were gone
0:12:35 > 0:12:37The clocks had ceased their chiming
0:12:37 > 0:12:40And the deep river ran on.
0:12:43 > 0:12:49On the whole, I think one's rather proud to serve a medium
0:12:49 > 0:12:52which in our time, when the public
0:12:52 > 0:12:57has learned to consume almost everything like cans of soup,
0:12:57 > 0:13:01poetry has somehow or other remained something that you either have to read it or leave it alone.
0:13:01 > 0:13:06It's rather nice, I think, that one has this medium,
0:13:06 > 0:13:09that at any rate, as few as one's readers may be,
0:13:09 > 0:13:11at any rate one knows they can read.
0:13:20 > 0:13:23If Auden came to distance himself from politics,
0:13:23 > 0:13:27one fellow poet never wavered in his political commitment.
0:13:29 > 0:13:33Hugh MacDiarmid was born Christopher Grieve
0:13:33 > 0:13:36in the Scottish Borders in 1892.
0:13:36 > 0:13:40Fiercely patriotic, MacDiarmid was a member of both the Communist Party
0:13:40 > 0:13:43and the Scottish National Party.
0:13:43 > 0:13:46He also listed Anglophobia as one of his hobbies.
0:13:49 > 0:13:51I'm a Scotsman, as you can hear.
0:13:51 > 0:13:53APPLAUSE
0:13:53 > 0:13:56In the Declaration of Arbroath, away back in 1320,
0:13:56 > 0:14:00perhaps the greatest democratic pledge of all time,
0:14:00 > 0:14:02my people, the Scottish people,
0:14:02 > 0:14:05swore that as long as 100 of them remained alive,
0:14:05 > 0:14:09they would never allow themselves to be dominated by the English.
0:14:09 > 0:14:11LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
0:14:14 > 0:14:19My people have done little but betray that oath ever since.
0:14:19 > 0:14:21APPLAUSE
0:14:21 > 0:14:25Some poets get their engine out of a kind of rebellion against the world.
0:14:25 > 0:14:28He was deliberately very provocative.
0:14:28 > 0:14:31He thought that was part of his duty, to be provocative.
0:14:32 > 0:14:35MacDiarmid felt that Scotland had lost itself
0:14:35 > 0:14:39and that its identity could be reclaimed through poetry,
0:14:39 > 0:14:43but for him, the experience of being Scottish could not be
0:14:43 > 0:14:45properly expressed in English.
0:14:45 > 0:14:49He formulated an ambitious plan to create a new Scots language.
0:14:51 > 0:14:55I myself was convinced that there was nothing that the Scottish mind
0:14:55 > 0:15:00could conceive that couldn't be better expressed in Scots
0:15:00 > 0:15:02than in English or any other language.
0:15:02 > 0:15:08There's a whole range of feelings, of combinations of ideas,
0:15:08 > 0:15:13all related to the specific character of Scottish landscapings
0:15:13 > 0:15:17and to the history of Scottish race and relation to the landscape,
0:15:17 > 0:15:21which was embodied in the vocabulary of Scots,
0:15:21 > 0:15:25and which is very little used the last couple of hundred years.
0:15:25 > 0:15:28He passionately wanted to write Scots
0:15:28 > 0:15:30and he wanted that not to be a backward-looking thing.
0:15:30 > 0:15:36He wanted to fuse modernism and language that often was antique.
0:15:36 > 0:15:39He didn't write dialect.
0:15:39 > 0:15:42He made a new, plastic language.
0:15:42 > 0:15:44He was actually before his time.
0:15:44 > 0:15:49He was before his time while using this old language
0:15:49 > 0:15:51in this amazing way.
0:15:52 > 0:15:56In 1978, MacDiarmid read his most famous work,
0:15:56 > 0:15:59A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle, for the BBC.
0:16:00 > 0:16:03O Scotland is the barren fig
0:16:03 > 0:16:06Up, carles, up, and round it jig!
0:16:06 > 0:16:11Old Moses took a dry stick and instantly it floo'ered in his hand.
0:16:11 > 0:16:13Pu' Scotland up, and wha can say
0:16:13 > 0:16:15It winna bad and blossom tae.
0:16:15 > 0:16:18A miracle's oor only chance.
0:16:18 > 0:16:19Up, carles, up
0:16:19 > 0:16:20And let us dance!
0:16:23 > 0:16:25The poem is a long monologue
0:16:25 > 0:16:28in which a drunk man lying on a hillside contemplates
0:16:28 > 0:16:33Scotland's position in the world and rages against its seeming passivity
0:16:33 > 0:16:35in the face of English domination.
0:16:37 > 0:16:41Inside this flimsy story of somebody lying drunk in a ditch,
0:16:41 > 0:16:47all this stuff goes through his head, and it's ancient, it's modern
0:16:47 > 0:16:52and it's very angry, and it's very anti-British-Empire.
0:16:52 > 0:16:56It's one of the most brilliant and game-changing poems
0:16:56 > 0:16:58that have ever existed.
0:17:01 > 0:17:05MacDiarmid helped spark a renaissance in Scottish literature,
0:17:05 > 0:17:08but in later life he felt the battle was far from over.
0:17:09 > 0:17:15It's very questionable whether the whole business that I started
0:17:15 > 0:17:17wasn't too late.
0:17:20 > 0:17:27I was hopeful, when England lost its empire, that it might not be,
0:17:27 > 0:17:30but England's fighting back, of course,
0:17:30 > 0:17:36and still thinks it has a world influence and a world mission, so...
0:17:36 > 0:17:40Let's get rid of England somehow or other, completely.
0:17:40 > 0:17:41- You're still hopeful?- Hmm?
0:17:41 > 0:17:44- You're still hopeful? - I'm still hopeful, yes.
0:17:48 > 0:17:50In the suburbs of north London,
0:17:50 > 0:17:54another poet was planning her own quiet rebellion.
0:17:56 > 0:18:00Stevie Smith is a rebel, complete.
0:18:00 > 0:18:02She's going to write poetry
0:18:02 > 0:18:05and she's going to mock the way we write poetry.
0:18:06 > 0:18:12She was actually taking the kind of assumptions we make about poetry
0:18:12 > 0:18:14and what's important and how poetry works,
0:18:14 > 0:18:19and she was just refusing to even try.
0:18:21 > 0:18:23Her verse seemed jaunty...
0:18:25 > 0:18:28..yet it was hugely preoccupied with death.
0:18:29 > 0:18:32As you can hear in her most renowned poem.
0:18:35 > 0:18:39In my poems the dead often speak and the ghosts come back.
0:18:39 > 0:18:42Here is a poor man who got drowned.
0:18:42 > 0:18:44His friends thought he was waving to them from the sea,
0:18:44 > 0:18:46but really he was drowning.
0:18:48 > 0:18:50Nobody heard him, the dead man,
0:18:50 > 0:18:52But still he lay moaning
0:18:52 > 0:18:55"I was much further out than you thought
0:18:55 > 0:18:57"And not waving but drowning."
0:18:59 > 0:19:01Poor chap, he always loved larking
0:19:01 > 0:19:03And now he's dead
0:19:03 > 0:19:07It must have been too cold for him, his heart gave way, they said.
0:19:08 > 0:19:12"Oh, no, no, no, it was too cold always"
0:19:12 > 0:19:15(Still the dead one lay moaning)
0:19:15 > 0:19:19"I was much too far out all my life
0:19:19 > 0:19:22"And not waving but drowning."
0:19:25 > 0:19:28Beyond the apparent simplicity of her poetry
0:19:28 > 0:19:31lay a carefully crafted and innovative style.
0:19:34 > 0:19:37The poetry that was written by gentlemen for gentlemen to read
0:19:37 > 0:19:41in the years when everybody learnt Latin and Greek at school
0:19:41 > 0:19:43is over, it's gone.
0:19:43 > 0:19:46You want rhyme? Bugger you. You're not getting a rhyme.
0:19:46 > 0:19:50You want a story? I can't even be bothered telling you a story.
0:19:50 > 0:19:51She's going to write
0:19:51 > 0:19:54in chip-chop rhythm,
0:19:54 > 0:19:58she's going to use extraordinary, limited vocabulary,
0:19:58 > 0:20:00high level of repetition
0:20:00 > 0:20:04and it works in a minimalist way.
0:20:05 > 0:20:09People in rather odd circumstances are what most of my poems are about,
0:20:09 > 0:20:10mixed up with
0:20:10 > 0:20:13arguments, religious difficulties,
0:20:13 > 0:20:16ghosts, death, fairy stories...
0:20:16 > 0:20:20and a general feeling of guilt for not writing more.
0:20:23 > 0:20:28Humdrum suburbia was also to inspire another great writer,
0:20:28 > 0:20:31John Betjeman, who delighted the nation
0:20:31 > 0:20:34with poems that celebrated ordinary life.
0:20:35 > 0:20:39Miss J Hunter Dunn, Miss J Hunter Dunn,
0:20:39 > 0:20:42Furnish'd and burnish'd by Aldershot sun,
0:20:42 > 0:20:45What strenuous singles we played after tea,
0:20:45 > 0:20:48We in the tournament - you against me!
0:20:48 > 0:20:53Love-thirty, love-forty, oh! weakness of joy,
0:20:53 > 0:20:56The speed of a swallow, the grace of a boy,
0:20:56 > 0:20:59With carefullest carelessness, gaily you won,
0:20:59 > 0:21:04I am weak from your loveliness, Joan Hunter Dunn.
0:21:04 > 0:21:07John Betjeman was born in 1906,
0:21:07 > 0:21:09the son of a luxury-goods tradesman.
0:21:09 > 0:21:14As a child, Betjeman was painfully aware of his family's low status
0:21:14 > 0:21:16in Britain's class system,
0:21:16 > 0:21:20a preoccupation that would later come to define his poetry.
0:21:20 > 0:21:24Around us are Rovers and Austins afar,
0:21:24 > 0:21:28Above us the intimate roof of the car,
0:21:28 > 0:21:31And here on my right is the girl of my choice,
0:21:31 > 0:21:35With the tilt of her nose and the chime of her voice.
0:21:35 > 0:21:39And the scent of her wrap, and the words never said,
0:21:39 > 0:21:43And the ominous, ominous dancing ahead.
0:21:43 > 0:21:46We sat in the car park till twenty to one
0:21:46 > 0:21:50And now I'm engaged to Miss Joan Hunter Dunn.
0:21:54 > 0:21:59Betjeman's verse saw a return to old-fashioned elements of poetry -
0:21:59 > 0:22:03regular rhyme, familiar rhythm
0:22:03 > 0:22:06and a wry sense of humour.
0:22:06 > 0:22:11A passionate lover of buildings, he championed Victorian architecture
0:22:11 > 0:22:13at a time when historic towns and cities
0:22:13 > 0:22:18were being threatened by modern ideas of progress.
0:22:19 > 0:22:23He became a poet of a passing England,
0:22:23 > 0:22:25an England that was being subsumed
0:22:25 > 0:22:29under the concrete of new developments.
0:22:29 > 0:22:32And there's something in the work like that, too.
0:22:32 > 0:22:35It's attached to rhyme and rhythm
0:22:35 > 0:22:41in an attractively conventional, consoling, comforting kind of way.
0:22:41 > 0:22:45So just as he defended the Victorian architrave,
0:22:45 > 0:22:49he's there defending certain kinds of end-stopped rhyme,
0:22:49 > 0:22:51when other people are rejecting it
0:22:51 > 0:22:53or seeing that as like the equivalent of having
0:22:53 > 0:22:56too many knick-knacks over your fireplace.
0:22:58 > 0:23:00He slightly strikes you as a fuddy-duddy,
0:23:00 > 0:23:07but actually, he embraced TV, modern media, newspaper, radio.
0:23:07 > 0:23:09You know, he wanted to run with that,
0:23:09 > 0:23:13and I think he understood how poetry could work,
0:23:13 > 0:23:17you know, with a general reader and the general public.
0:23:17 > 0:23:20Well, if you mention the word "poet" to most people,
0:23:20 > 0:23:24they reach for the sleeping tablets. Well, there's one poet who manages
0:23:24 > 0:23:28to bridge that hitherto unbridgeable gap between the public and his art.
0:23:28 > 0:23:30Here's Sir John Betjeman.
0:23:30 > 0:23:32APPLAUSE
0:23:33 > 0:23:36Betjeman found a natural home in front of the camera
0:23:36 > 0:23:39and was a regular guest on prime-time chat shows.
0:23:47 > 0:23:49What is the function of a poet, Sir John?
0:23:49 > 0:23:54I think primarily it's to say things simply,
0:23:54 > 0:23:56shortly,
0:23:56 > 0:23:58rhythmically,
0:23:58 > 0:23:59memorably.
0:23:59 > 0:24:02And it's luck, it's inspiration.
0:24:02 > 0:24:04- There is such a thing as inspiration.- Yes.
0:24:04 > 0:24:07And when you tell me that thing, if it's true,
0:24:07 > 0:24:09that my poetry is read by
0:24:09 > 0:24:12lots of people who don't ordinarily read poetry,
0:24:12 > 0:24:15that's all I could want to happen.
0:24:15 > 0:24:20'Betjeman could speak to a couple of million people
0:24:20 > 0:24:24'through one transmission. And I take my hat off to anybody'
0:24:24 > 0:24:28who can take poetry out to the general public,
0:24:28 > 0:24:31because the general public don't always want it.
0:24:31 > 0:24:34And he forged a link and a bond with them,
0:24:34 > 0:24:36and some of that was through his personality,
0:24:36 > 0:24:39but a lot of it was through his work.
0:24:40 > 0:24:43Betjeman could even be highly satirical.
0:24:43 > 0:24:45He attacked the administrators
0:24:45 > 0:24:48who were casually laying waste to British heritage
0:24:48 > 0:24:51in his poem Executive.
0:24:53 > 0:24:55I am a young executive.
0:24:55 > 0:24:57No cuffs than mine are cleaner;
0:24:57 > 0:25:01I own an oblong briefcase and I use the firm's Cortina.
0:25:01 > 0:25:05In every roadside hostelry from here to Burgess Hill
0:25:05 > 0:25:09The maitres d'hotel all know me well, and let me sign the bill.
0:25:09 > 0:25:12You ask me what it is I do. Well, actually, you know,
0:25:12 > 0:25:16I'm partly a liaison man, and partly PRO.
0:25:16 > 0:25:19Essentially, I integrate the current export drive
0:25:19 > 0:25:23And basically I'm viable from ten o'clock till five.
0:25:23 > 0:25:27'Those poems, they're not facile, they're not just party tricks.'
0:25:27 > 0:25:30He's got a good eye for social conventions
0:25:30 > 0:25:34and...a tongue for undermining things when he chooses.
0:25:34 > 0:25:39I do some mild developing. The sort of place I need
0:25:39 > 0:25:43Is a quiet country market town that's rather run to seed
0:25:43 > 0:25:47A luncheon and a drink or two, a little savoir faire -
0:25:47 > 0:25:50I nobble half the council, the banks, the clerk, the Mayor.
0:25:50 > 0:25:54And if some Preservationist attempts to interfere
0:25:54 > 0:25:57A "dangerous structure" notice from the Borough Engineer
0:25:57 > 0:26:01Will settle any buildings that are standing in our way -
0:26:01 > 0:26:05The modern style, sir, with respect, has really come to stay.
0:26:05 > 0:26:07That's beautiful.
0:26:07 > 0:26:11APPLAUSE
0:26:12 > 0:26:16In the post-war Britain of the 1950s,
0:26:16 > 0:26:19Betjeman's knack for capturing the everyday
0:26:19 > 0:26:22foreshadowed a group of new voices in poetry
0:26:22 > 0:26:25known as "the Movement".
0:26:26 > 0:26:28The early poetry of those writers
0:26:28 > 0:26:32was full of observation and anecdote,
0:26:32 > 0:26:35and often observation and anecdote
0:26:35 > 0:26:37drawn from the daily lives of the poets,
0:26:37 > 0:26:40which mean the daily lives of the readers too.
0:26:41 > 0:26:45The Movement was made up of mostly male white-collar workers,
0:26:45 > 0:26:47including librarian Philip Larkin
0:26:47 > 0:26:51and university lecturer Kingsley Amis.
0:26:51 > 0:26:55When you have movements and generations and little collectives
0:26:55 > 0:26:57there's always one person that stands out, really,
0:26:57 > 0:26:59and it's around them everything revolves.
0:26:59 > 0:27:02And in the case of those '50s poets, it's Larkin.
0:27:03 > 0:27:08Philip Larkin was affectionately known as "the hermit of Hull".
0:27:08 > 0:27:11Though he won critical acclaim in his thirties,
0:27:11 > 0:27:12he shunned the limelight
0:27:12 > 0:27:15for a quiet career as a university librarian
0:27:15 > 0:27:17for over three decades.
0:27:18 > 0:27:22But in 1964, he allowed himself to be filmed
0:27:22 > 0:27:25for the BBC's flagship arts programme, Monitor.
0:27:25 > 0:27:29Work and I get on fairly well, I think.
0:27:29 > 0:27:33There are just these occasions when one would like to prove it
0:27:33 > 0:27:35by not working for a bit.
0:27:35 > 0:27:40When I bind up library committee minutes at the end of five years,
0:27:40 > 0:27:41it makes a great, fat volume,
0:27:41 > 0:27:45but it's not the same as a volume of poetry.
0:27:45 > 0:27:48Larkin was always described to me at school
0:27:48 > 0:27:50as "the voice of the man next door".
0:27:50 > 0:27:54He didn't sound like the man who lived next door to me,
0:27:54 > 0:27:57but I understand where that comment comes from.
0:27:57 > 0:28:03There's a sense of him describing the daily, the ordinary,
0:28:03 > 0:28:05er, the domestic.
0:28:05 > 0:28:11It was a language that came out of the bus stop and the newspaper.
0:28:11 > 0:28:15Transformed through his poetic powers.
0:28:16 > 0:28:19This gift for ordinary and even vulgar language
0:28:19 > 0:28:23was captured in poems like A Study Of Reading Habits.
0:28:24 > 0:28:29When getting my nose in a book Cured most things short of school,
0:28:29 > 0:28:35It was worth ruining my eyes To know I could still keep cool,
0:28:35 > 0:28:40And deal out the old right hook To dirty dogs twice my size.
0:28:41 > 0:28:46Later, with inch-thick specs, Evil was just my lark:
0:28:46 > 0:28:51Me and my coat and fangs Had ripping times in the dark.
0:28:51 > 0:28:57The women I clubbed with sex! I broke them up like meringues.
0:28:57 > 0:29:03Don't read much now: the dude Who lets the girl down before
0:29:03 > 0:29:07The hero arrives, the chap Who's yellow and keeps the store
0:29:07 > 0:29:11Seem far too familiar. Get stewed:
0:29:11 > 0:29:14Books are a load of crap.
0:29:14 > 0:29:19The striking thing about Larkin's poetry is, in a way,
0:29:19 > 0:29:21its eloquent ordinariness.
0:29:21 > 0:29:24You can analyse as much as you want his poetry
0:29:24 > 0:29:28in terms of sort of the nerves it touches
0:29:28 > 0:29:33and the experiences of sort of welfare state Britain,
0:29:33 > 0:29:37life in the post-war world that it illuminates, and that's all true,
0:29:37 > 0:29:42but in the end, it's his gift for memorable phrases and lines.
0:29:43 > 0:29:47He had the tendency to send himself up, rather.
0:29:47 > 0:29:49So when he appears on camera he is,
0:29:49 > 0:29:51in a way, playing a kind of a part.
0:29:51 > 0:29:54I read that, er...
0:29:54 > 0:29:57you know, I'm a miserable sort of fellow
0:29:57 > 0:30:01writing a sort of welfare state sub-poetry,
0:30:01 > 0:30:05er - doing it well, perhaps, but it isn't really what poetry is
0:30:05 > 0:30:08and it isn't really the sort of poetry we want.
0:30:08 > 0:30:13But I wonder whether it ever occurs to the writer of criticism like that
0:30:13 > 0:30:15that, really, one agrees with them,
0:30:15 > 0:30:19that what one writes is based so much on the kind of person one is
0:30:19 > 0:30:23and the kind of environment one's had and has now.
0:30:23 > 0:30:26Er, one doesn't really choose the poetry one writes -
0:30:26 > 0:30:29one writes the kind of poetry one has to write, or can write.
0:30:33 > 0:30:36Living on the margins suited Larkin.
0:30:36 > 0:30:39His writing captured a remote awkwardness
0:30:39 > 0:30:41with the world around him.
0:30:41 > 0:30:45He's always very keen to make us understand
0:30:45 > 0:30:48that sense of separation,
0:30:48 > 0:30:50partly because we all feel it.
0:30:50 > 0:30:52It's particularly powerful, I think, in Church Going,
0:30:52 > 0:30:57where you get that self-irony of him taking off his bicycle clips
0:30:57 > 0:30:59because he feels there's something about it,
0:30:59 > 0:31:02you just shouldn't be in a church with bicycle clips on.
0:31:02 > 0:31:04It's somehow disrespectful.
0:31:06 > 0:31:10Hatless, I take off My cycle-clips in awkward reverence.
0:31:10 > 0:31:14Move forward, run my hand around the font.
0:31:14 > 0:31:18From where I stand, the roof looks almost new -
0:31:18 > 0:31:23Cleaned, or restored? Someone would know: I don't.
0:31:23 > 0:31:28Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few Hectoring large-scale verses,
0:31:28 > 0:31:33and pronounce "Here endeth" much more loudly than I'd meant.
0:31:33 > 0:31:35The echoes snigger briefly.
0:31:35 > 0:31:40Back at the door I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence,
0:31:40 > 0:31:44Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.
0:31:49 > 0:31:54If Larkin thrived on solitude, his close friend Kingsley Amis
0:31:54 > 0:31:58embraced the celebrity of being a writer.
0:32:02 > 0:32:04He frequently appeared on television.
0:32:07 > 0:32:10On the BBC, Amis voiced his disappointment
0:32:10 > 0:32:13with the conservatism of '50s Britain.
0:32:14 > 0:32:18I personally then was suffering from a good deal of depression
0:32:18 > 0:32:23for quite a long time over the results of the 1951 election,
0:32:23 > 0:32:27which seemed to me to say that the modest bit of social revolution
0:32:27 > 0:32:30that the British might have been going in for
0:32:30 > 0:32:32between 1945 and 1951
0:32:32 > 0:32:35had now come to an end and the public had turned their back on that
0:32:35 > 0:32:38and, er, were trying to reverse the process.
0:32:38 > 0:32:40Which I found depressing.
0:32:41 > 0:32:44Although Amis was better known as a novelist,
0:32:44 > 0:32:47most famously with Lucky Jim,
0:32:47 > 0:32:49he actually began his career as a poet.
0:32:49 > 0:32:53I think Kingsley Amis would see himself as a light-verse poet.
0:32:53 > 0:32:56He edited an anthology of light verse,
0:32:56 > 0:32:58he enjoyed making people laugh.
0:32:58 > 0:33:00Lucky Jim, how I envy him!
0:33:00 > 0:33:04Author, poet, fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge, jazz critic.
0:33:04 > 0:33:06You ask what his name is - I say Kingsley Amis.
0:33:06 > 0:33:09LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
0:33:12 > 0:33:14The first poem is on an ever-interesting topic,
0:33:14 > 0:33:17though you might not think so to start with.
0:33:17 > 0:33:20There's a poem of his called The Bookshop, which sort of...
0:33:20 > 0:33:24looks at the differences between what men read and what women read.
0:33:24 > 0:33:27But interestingly it's a poem that turns everything on its head
0:33:27 > 0:33:30at the end and admits that actually, men have got a softer side too.
0:33:30 > 0:33:33Should poets bicycle-pump the human heart
0:33:33 > 0:33:35Or squash it flat?
0:33:35 > 0:33:37Man's love is of man's life a thing apart;
0:33:39 > 0:33:41Girls aren't like that.
0:33:42 > 0:33:45We men have got love well weighed up; our stuff
0:33:45 > 0:33:48Can get by without it.
0:33:48 > 0:33:50Women don't seem to think that's good enough;
0:33:50 > 0:33:52They write about it.
0:33:52 > 0:33:56And the awful way their poems lay them open
0:33:56 > 0:33:58Just doesn't strike them.
0:33:59 > 0:34:01Women are really much nicer than men:
0:34:01 > 0:34:03No wonder we like them.
0:34:05 > 0:34:08Deciding this, we can forget those times
0:34:08 > 0:34:09We sat up half the night
0:34:09 > 0:34:15Chock-full of love, crammed with bright thoughts, names, rhymes,
0:34:15 > 0:34:17And couldn't write.
0:34:17 > 0:34:19APPLAUSE
0:34:21 > 0:34:26Poets of Amis's generation were all about emotional restraint.
0:34:28 > 0:34:32Across the pond, a new type of verse was emerging
0:34:32 > 0:34:34that was visceral and cathartic.
0:34:36 > 0:34:41The Bostonian Anne Sexton was breathtakingly honest,
0:34:41 > 0:34:45and her verse was informed by her battles with mental illness.
0:34:48 > 0:34:50I did get very manic once,
0:34:50 > 0:34:53and they told me I was psychotic in the hospital.
0:34:53 > 0:34:56And I thought that was a riot, cos I was still me.
0:34:56 > 0:34:59You know, I thought psychotic was someplace else, but I was still me.
0:35:01 > 0:35:02Sexton more than anybody else
0:35:02 > 0:35:06wrote about previously taboo subjects in her poetry.
0:35:06 > 0:35:09She wrote about menstruation, she wrote about masturbation,
0:35:09 > 0:35:11she wrote about incest, she wrote about adultery,
0:35:11 > 0:35:13and she wrote about them in ways
0:35:13 > 0:35:16that suggested that she was not imagining them -
0:35:16 > 0:35:20that these were things she had intimate personal experience.
0:35:20 > 0:35:23Menstruation at Forty.
0:35:24 > 0:35:27I was thinking of a son.
0:35:28 > 0:35:32The womb is not a clock nor a bell tolling,
0:35:32 > 0:35:34but in the eleventh month of its life
0:35:34 > 0:35:36I feel the November
0:35:36 > 0:35:40of the body as well as of the calendar.
0:35:40 > 0:35:42In two days it will be my birthday
0:35:42 > 0:35:46and as always the earth is done with its harvest.
0:35:46 > 0:35:49This time I hunt for death...
0:35:50 > 0:35:55She was forcing in subject matter that was definitionally ugly.
0:35:55 > 0:35:57It was in the womb all along.
0:35:59 > 0:36:01I was thinking of a son...
0:36:01 > 0:36:04You! The never acquired,
0:36:04 > 0:36:09the never seeded or unfastened, you of the genitals I feared,
0:36:09 > 0:36:11the stalk and the puppy's breath.
0:36:13 > 0:36:15It was at the suggestion of Sexton's therapist
0:36:15 > 0:36:17that she began writing poetry.
0:36:17 > 0:36:20She was what we would now call bipolar -
0:36:20 > 0:36:22at the time called manic depressive -
0:36:22 > 0:36:24and it was suggested to her
0:36:24 > 0:36:28that poetry might help her in a therapeutic way.
0:36:28 > 0:36:32Um, many people have tried to write poetry in therapy.
0:36:32 > 0:36:34Anne Sexon wrote very great poetry.
0:36:34 > 0:36:38My psychiatrist suggested that I watch Channel 2.
0:36:40 > 0:36:43"You have an educational television there, why don't you look at it?"
0:36:43 > 0:36:47So I did, and IA Richards was explaining the form of the sonnet,
0:36:47 > 0:36:49and I thought, "Oh, so that's a sonnet!"
0:36:49 > 0:36:52So I sat down and tried to write one. It was a pretty bad thing.
0:36:52 > 0:36:56And that just turned me on, and then I, you know, turned on.
0:36:56 > 0:37:00Eventually, it became impossible to separate Sexton
0:37:00 > 0:37:04from her intensely autobiographical work.
0:37:04 > 0:37:07She has a role she sees for herself
0:37:07 > 0:37:09and she insists on playing it.
0:37:09 > 0:37:13And I just got sick of it - the endless posturing
0:37:13 > 0:37:18and just thinking, "I don't want to go on any more about female stuff,
0:37:18 > 0:37:21"I don't want to be wombing and entrailing all over the place,"
0:37:21 > 0:37:25all that stuff. And I just wanted her to...go for a walk.
0:37:29 > 0:37:34I myself will die without baptism, a third daughter they didn't bother.
0:37:34 > 0:37:38My death will come on my name day.
0:37:38 > 0:37:40What's wrong with the name day?
0:37:40 > 0:37:42It's only an angel of the sun.
0:37:42 > 0:37:44Woman,
0:37:44 > 0:37:47weaving a web over your own,
0:37:47 > 0:37:49a thin and tangled poison.
0:37:49 > 0:37:50Scorpio,
0:37:50 > 0:37:52bad spider -
0:37:52 > 0:37:54die!
0:38:00 > 0:38:05But there were still poets who turned their focus not inwards,
0:38:05 > 0:38:09but outwards, towards the beauty of the natural world.
0:38:10 > 0:38:14Seamus Heaney grew up on a cattle farm in rural Northern Ireland,
0:38:14 > 0:38:18an experience that fed directly into his verse.
0:38:20 > 0:38:24There are two ways to look at Seamus Heaney's early poetry,
0:38:24 > 0:38:27and indeed English writers did look at them in these two ways.
0:38:27 > 0:38:29One, to think it's wonderful, about nature,
0:38:29 > 0:38:33and two, to think it's rural, earthy,
0:38:33 > 0:38:37it's all about root vegetables and crops and so on.
0:38:37 > 0:38:40Both, actually, reactions are rather condescending
0:38:40 > 0:38:41to what Heaney was actually doing.
0:38:41 > 0:38:44Heaney's so-called nature poetry is actually dealing with
0:38:44 > 0:38:48a lot of other things to do with identity, his own,
0:38:48 > 0:38:51to do with family and tribe and home,
0:38:51 > 0:38:54and belonging.
0:38:54 > 0:38:57It's not just about describing blackberries or potatoes.
0:38:59 > 0:39:02Heaney linked poetic creating to farming life
0:39:02 > 0:39:05in one of his most famous poems.
0:39:05 > 0:39:09He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
0:39:09 > 0:39:12To scatter new potatoes that we picked
0:39:12 > 0:39:15Loving their cool hardness in our hands.
0:39:15 > 0:39:18By God, the old man could handle a spade.
0:39:18 > 0:39:20Just like his old man.
0:39:21 > 0:39:25The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
0:39:25 > 0:39:28Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
0:39:28 > 0:39:31Through living roots awaken in my head.
0:39:32 > 0:39:36But I've no spade to follow men like them.
0:39:36 > 0:39:38Between my finger and my thumb
0:39:38 > 0:39:39The squat pen rests.
0:39:40 > 0:39:42I'll dig with it.
0:39:44 > 0:39:48In Heaney's verse, the natural world provided a way of understanding
0:39:48 > 0:39:50profound human experience.
0:39:50 > 0:39:56In Personal Helicon, nature was a way of explaining the transition
0:39:56 > 0:39:58from childhood to adulthood.
0:40:04 > 0:40:08As a child, they couldn't keep me from wells
0:40:08 > 0:40:11And old pumps with buckets and windlasses.
0:40:11 > 0:40:13I loved the dark drop,
0:40:13 > 0:40:16the trapped sky, the smells
0:40:16 > 0:40:20Of waterweed, fungus and dank moss.
0:40:20 > 0:40:24One, in a brickyard, with a rotted board top.
0:40:24 > 0:40:27I savoured the rich crash when a bucket
0:40:27 > 0:40:29Plummeted down at the end of a rope.
0:40:29 > 0:40:33So deep you saw no reflection in it.
0:40:33 > 0:40:37The magic of poetry is that the individual can take an experience,
0:40:37 > 0:40:39paint it in words,
0:40:39 > 0:40:42and other people can see themselves in it.
0:40:42 > 0:40:44He's not... He's not about anything,
0:40:44 > 0:40:46there's no polemic in his poetry.
0:40:46 > 0:40:51Now, to pry into roots, to finger slime,
0:40:51 > 0:40:56To stare, big-eyed Narcissus, into some spring
0:40:56 > 0:41:00Is beneath all adult dignity. I rhyme
0:41:00 > 0:41:04To see myself, to set the darkness echoing.
0:41:08 > 0:41:10Heaney grew up in a rural community and that was his world,
0:41:10 > 0:41:14the world that he wrote about in his first two or three collections.
0:41:14 > 0:41:17But then he was living in Belfast at the time of the Troubles.
0:41:17 > 0:41:20Suddenly, the urgency of that matter
0:41:20 > 0:41:22was something he felt he had to address as a poet,
0:41:22 > 0:41:25to be a public voice, to be a political voice,
0:41:25 > 0:41:28to show solidarity with his own people.
0:41:30 > 0:41:33Interviewed on the BBC in 1973,
0:41:33 > 0:41:36at the height of the Northern Irish conflict,
0:41:36 > 0:41:40Heaney was forced to consider how he would play a public role.
0:41:40 > 0:41:43In your early years, your first poetry,
0:41:43 > 0:41:47wrote what I'd call modern landscape poetry, basically, of the land.
0:41:47 > 0:41:50And now that landscape that you're all too familiar with
0:41:50 > 0:41:54is torn by often arbitrary but certainly tormenting violence.
0:41:54 > 0:41:57Surely this must have some effect on the poetry you're writing now?
0:41:57 > 0:42:01My...view and way with poetry
0:42:01 > 0:42:04has never been to use it
0:42:04 > 0:42:09as a vehicle for making statements about situations.
0:42:09 > 0:42:13The poems have more, er, they have more come up like
0:42:13 > 0:42:18bodies out of the bog of my own imagination.
0:42:18 > 0:42:21Er, I want to wait, in a sense,
0:42:21 > 0:42:25until the violence comes out of the pores of my mind, naturally.
0:42:25 > 0:42:27I think it does, in a way.
0:42:34 > 0:42:38While Heaney drew inspiration from Irish landscape and history,
0:42:38 > 0:42:43the hills of Wales found their own bard with RS Thomas.
0:42:45 > 0:42:49Thomas was a Welsh Anglican priest and a staunch nationalist.
0:42:51 > 0:42:53His poems were deeply rooted in
0:42:53 > 0:42:56the atmosphere of some of the remoter parts of North Wales.
0:43:00 > 0:43:03His poem The Welsh Hill Country
0:43:03 > 0:43:05evoked the harshness of the landscape
0:43:05 > 0:43:09and the struggles of isolated farming communities
0:43:09 > 0:43:10in the mid 20th century.
0:43:13 > 0:43:15Too far for you to see
0:43:15 > 0:43:19The fluke and the foot-rot and the fat maggot
0:43:19 > 0:43:22Gnawing the skin from the small bones,
0:43:22 > 0:43:26The sheep are grazing at Bwlch-y-Fedwen,
0:43:26 > 0:43:30Arranged romantically in the usual manner
0:43:30 > 0:43:33On a bleak background of bald stone.
0:43:36 > 0:43:38Too far for you to see
0:43:38 > 0:43:42The moss and the mould on the cold chimneys,
0:43:42 > 0:43:47The nettles growing through the cracked doors,
0:43:47 > 0:43:50The houses stand empty at Nant-yr-Eira,
0:43:51 > 0:43:56There are holes in the roofs that are thatched with sunlight,
0:43:56 > 0:43:59And the fields are reverting to the bare moor.
0:44:01 > 0:44:03Though he shunned the media,
0:44:03 > 0:44:06Thomas agreed to make two films with the BBC
0:44:06 > 0:44:09about his life and work in the Welsh hills.
0:44:09 > 0:44:15Well, I came out of a kind of bourgeois environment
0:44:15 > 0:44:20and, er, this muck and blood and, er, hardness,
0:44:20 > 0:44:27the rain and the spittle and phlegm of farm life
0:44:27 > 0:44:29was of course a shock to begin with,
0:44:29 > 0:44:32and one felt that this was something not, er...
0:44:32 > 0:44:36not quite part of the order of things, but...
0:44:37 > 0:44:40..as one experienced it and saw
0:44:40 > 0:44:43how definitely part of their lives this was,
0:44:43 > 0:44:46sympathy grew in oneself,
0:44:46 > 0:44:51and compassion, and admiration.
0:44:51 > 0:44:53And I did find that
0:44:53 > 0:44:59the strongly charactered hardness of these border people
0:44:59 > 0:45:02really did make an impression on me
0:45:02 > 0:45:05as far as poetic material was concerned.
0:45:05 > 0:45:07BELL TOLLS
0:45:12 > 0:45:14For Thomas, language and imagery
0:45:14 > 0:45:17connected his work as priest and as poet.
0:45:19 > 0:45:23Poetry is religion, religion is poetry.
0:45:23 > 0:45:26The message of the New Testament is poetry.
0:45:26 > 0:45:28Christ was a poet.
0:45:28 > 0:45:34The New Testament as metaphor, the Resurrection as metaphor,
0:45:34 > 0:45:40and...when I preach poetry I am preaching Christianity.
0:45:40 > 0:45:46And when one discusses Christianity, one is discussing poetry
0:45:46 > 0:45:49in its imaginative aspects -
0:45:49 > 0:45:54the core of both are imagination as far as I'm concerned.
0:45:54 > 0:45:56He couldn't bear literalism.
0:45:56 > 0:45:59He loved the fact that poetry and
0:45:59 > 0:46:02religion provided for each other
0:46:02 > 0:46:05very ready explanations.
0:46:05 > 0:46:09He could link in his imagination
0:46:09 > 0:46:13the idea of the story of the Resurrection
0:46:13 > 0:46:16with the word "metaphor".
0:46:16 > 0:46:21It's how he wrote his sermons, how he thought about God,
0:46:21 > 0:46:23how he wrote his poems,
0:46:23 > 0:46:27and I believe it all to be one whole way of being.
0:46:27 > 0:46:30Nes bod ni wedi ymffurfio...
0:46:30 > 0:46:33Despite his isolated existence,
0:46:33 > 0:46:36Thomas was passionately committed to contemporary causes.
0:46:36 > 0:46:39He was well known for his campaigning -
0:46:39 > 0:46:40for nuclear disarmament
0:46:40 > 0:46:43and for wider use of the Welsh language.
0:46:45 > 0:46:48- NEWSREADER:- As the arson campaign enters its 14th week,
0:46:48 > 0:46:52police in Wales have warned that all homes owned by English people
0:46:52 > 0:46:54are now at risk.
0:46:54 > 0:46:57Most controversially, when a militant Welsh nationalist group
0:46:57 > 0:47:01burnt down English-owned holiday homes in the 1970s,
0:47:01 > 0:47:03Thomas was moved to defend them.
0:47:05 > 0:47:09TRANSLATION:
0:47:20 > 0:47:22One supremely bleak poem
0:47:22 > 0:47:26summed up Thomas's despair about the fate of Welsh culture.
0:47:30 > 0:47:32I have walked the shore
0:47:32 > 0:47:34For an hour and seen the English
0:47:34 > 0:47:37Scavenging among the remains Of our culture,
0:47:37 > 0:47:39covering the sand
0:47:39 > 0:47:42Like the tide and, with the roughness
0:47:42 > 0:47:45Of the tide, elbowing our language
0:47:45 > 0:47:49Into the grave that we have dug for it.
0:48:02 > 0:48:08In the '60s, defiantly urban voices began to break through.
0:48:08 > 0:48:10The Liverpool Poets were
0:48:10 > 0:48:13geography graduate turned pop star Roger McGough,
0:48:13 > 0:48:15music journalist Brian Patten
0:48:15 > 0:48:18and artist Adrian Henri.
0:48:20 > 0:48:24Together, they would bring poetry into the heart of '60s pop culture.
0:48:26 > 0:48:29The BBC filmed the group in 1966.
0:48:29 > 0:48:33They captured McGough performing a witty poem
0:48:33 > 0:48:37that was infused with the language of modern consumerism.
0:48:37 > 0:48:40Monika, the tea things are taking over,
0:48:40 > 0:48:43the cups are as big as bubble cars, they throttle round the room,
0:48:43 > 0:48:45the tin-openers skate on the greasy plates
0:48:45 > 0:48:47by the light of the silvery moon.
0:48:47 > 0:48:51The biscuits are having a party, they're necking in our bread bin,
0:48:51 > 0:48:54that's jazz you hear in the salt cellars
0:48:54 > 0:48:56but they don't let non-members in.
0:48:56 > 0:48:58The egg spoons had our eggs for breakfast,
0:48:58 > 0:49:00the sauce bottle's asleep in our bed,
0:49:00 > 0:49:01I overheard the knives and forks,
0:49:01 > 0:49:03it won't be long, they said
0:49:03 > 0:49:05it won't be long, they said...
0:49:05 > 0:49:09In 1967, the hugely influential Mersey Sound was published
0:49:09 > 0:49:14and became Britain's bestselling poetry anthology of the time.
0:49:14 > 0:49:17I remember finding Roger McGough's
0:49:17 > 0:49:19Let Me Die A Youngman's Death -
0:49:19 > 0:49:23not a clean and inbetween the sheets holywater death.
0:49:23 > 0:49:26I remember reading it in the Sunday Times one Sunday
0:49:26 > 0:49:29and thinking, "Wow, I want to do that."
0:49:30 > 0:49:33McGough became a familiar face on television
0:49:33 > 0:49:37performing cheeky and affectionate poems like Summer With The Monarch.
0:49:39 > 0:49:42The Queen came up to Liverpool To dine at our Town Hall
0:49:42 > 0:49:46In the evening wrote to her husband "Dear Philip, I'm having a ball
0:49:46 > 0:49:49"I think I'll hang about I mean everything's happening here
0:49:49 > 0:49:51"I'm beginning to dig the poetry scene
0:49:51 > 0:49:53"And the ale is bloody gear."
0:49:53 > 0:49:55So while she was having a castle built
0:49:55 > 0:49:57Down in Castle Street
0:49:57 > 0:49:59She had a look round Liverpool 8
0:49:59 > 0:50:01Found a pad there, small but neat
0:50:01 > 0:50:03She moved in a few belongings
0:50:03 > 0:50:05Corgis, crown, a throne...
0:50:05 > 0:50:07LAUGHTER
0:50:07 > 0:50:10And blueblood in the neighbourhood Really raised the tone.
0:50:10 > 0:50:13It seemed very near
0:50:13 > 0:50:15and seemed very approachable
0:50:15 > 0:50:18and yet when you look at it now, in some respects,
0:50:18 > 0:50:20of course it was very formal poetry.
0:50:20 > 0:50:24There they are in little four-line verses, rhyming perfectly.
0:50:24 > 0:50:27So it was... It was magical.
0:50:28 > 0:50:32McGough could tell a whole life story in a handful of words.
0:50:34 > 0:50:37Out of work, divorced, usually pissed
0:50:37 > 0:50:38He aimed low in life
0:50:38 > 0:50:40and missed.
0:50:40 > 0:50:42LAUGHTER
0:50:45 > 0:50:49But McGough's popular approach met a critical backlash.
0:50:49 > 0:50:52If you write about ordinary stuff,
0:50:52 > 0:50:53and if you write about things
0:50:53 > 0:50:56that other poets have written about in quite high-falutin' ways
0:50:56 > 0:50:58and you write about it in very ordinary ways,
0:50:58 > 0:51:00people will treat you with disdain.
0:51:00 > 0:51:02There was still a lot of hostility
0:51:02 > 0:51:03towards the Liverpool Poets.
0:51:03 > 0:51:06Poets found it unbearable. They do,
0:51:06 > 0:51:08if somebody comes along who's popular.
0:51:08 > 0:51:12I once read a review that was outrageous.
0:51:12 > 0:51:16I mean, it was just as if somehow or other he had profaned poetry.
0:51:16 > 0:51:20He hasn't, he hasn't at all. He's done the opposite.
0:51:20 > 0:51:21He's kept it alive.
0:51:21 > 0:51:24What do you think the role of the poet is? Or your poetry?
0:51:24 > 0:51:27Um, I don't quite know, really.
0:51:27 > 0:51:29I think... I do things I think are...
0:51:29 > 0:51:31There are two reasons - reasons for writing,
0:51:31 > 0:51:33I'm not sure why one writes poetry, it's very personal.
0:51:33 > 0:51:36But then when you actually stand and read it to people,
0:51:36 > 0:51:38then I think it possibly can be entertaining.
0:51:38 > 0:51:40The choice of poems should be entertaining.
0:51:40 > 0:51:43Do you see yourself as an entertainer?
0:51:43 > 0:51:44Not in the sense of, er,
0:51:44 > 0:51:46like a showbusiness sort of thing, not really.
0:51:46 > 0:51:48I think it's all sorts of things.
0:51:48 > 0:51:52You know, it can be serious, it can be entertaining, it can be funny.
0:51:52 > 0:51:55I think entertaining tends to mean funny, I think, that's the problem.
0:51:55 > 0:51:56In people's minds.
0:51:56 > 0:51:59LAUGHTER
0:51:59 > 0:52:02Poetry had become a familiar part of popular entertainment
0:52:02 > 0:52:05and was reaching a wider audience than ever before.
0:52:10 > 0:52:15But in the mid 1970s, at a time of deep social unrest in Britain,
0:52:15 > 0:52:19more urgent marginalised voices started to be heard.
0:52:23 > 0:52:29Linton Kwesi Johnson wrote about the disaffection of British black youth.
0:52:30 > 0:52:33He was the only voice that was speaking to us,
0:52:33 > 0:52:35putting our situation under a microscope,
0:52:35 > 0:52:39and not only just reporting and observing
0:52:39 > 0:52:42but kind of offering direction and ideas.
0:52:42 > 0:52:43You look at the body of his work
0:52:43 > 0:52:46and he sums up the '70s into the early '80s,
0:52:46 > 0:52:50what it was like to be black in Britain, like nobody else.
0:52:51 > 0:52:57Kwesi Johnson used poetry to tackle the riots of the early '80s.
0:52:57 > 0:52:59Madness, madness
0:52:59 > 0:53:02Madness tight on the heads of the rebels
0:53:02 > 0:53:05The bitterness erup's like a heart blas'
0:53:05 > 0:53:12Broke glass, rituals of blood an' a-burnin'...
0:53:12 > 0:53:15Kwesi Johnson wrote in a Jamaican dialect
0:53:15 > 0:53:18and performed his poems over reggae beats.
0:53:18 > 0:53:23Broke glass, cold blades as sharp as the eyes of hate
0:53:23 > 0:53:25And the stabbin', it's
0:53:25 > 0:53:29War amongs' the rebels...
0:53:29 > 0:53:31One of the fibs about British poetry
0:53:31 > 0:53:33is that it's always been written in Standard English.
0:53:33 > 0:53:36The point is, many poets, both in Britain and America,
0:53:36 > 0:53:39have written in what you might call non-standard, or in dialect.
0:53:39 > 0:53:42So when Linton was writing in patois,
0:53:42 > 0:53:44people said, "Oh, well, I don't understand it."
0:53:44 > 0:53:46I think they were making a statement
0:53:46 > 0:53:47that they didn't want to understand it.
0:53:47 > 0:53:50Kwesi Johnson's unique style of performance
0:53:50 > 0:53:54attracted the curiosity of even the most traditional BBC programmes.
0:53:54 > 0:53:57You do use a Creole patois, don't you, which is very difficult
0:53:57 > 0:54:00for a white person to understand. I found listening to some of them
0:54:00 > 0:54:01that I would have liked to
0:54:01 > 0:54:03understand them more than I did and that in a way
0:54:03 > 0:54:06you weren't actually reaching me as a white person.
0:54:06 > 0:54:11Well, perhaps it forces you, if you're really that interested,
0:54:11 > 0:54:13you know, to try and penetrate the language
0:54:13 > 0:54:15and check it out and try and understand it.
0:54:15 > 0:54:17But would you not also like the white people to understand
0:54:17 > 0:54:20a little bit of what the black people are going through?
0:54:20 > 0:54:25Sure, um... and I think they, um, some people do
0:54:25 > 0:54:30get some insights into our experiences from my poetry.
0:54:30 > 0:54:33We looked to our language and the way we delivered our language
0:54:33 > 0:54:35as part of our rebelliousness.
0:54:35 > 0:54:38You know, our parents, you know, when they came over in the mid '50s,
0:54:38 > 0:54:41the way that they thought they'd succeed is by assimilating,
0:54:41 > 0:54:45which...you know, really meant trying to play the white man.
0:54:45 > 0:54:48I mean, you know, Jamaican language, it's got a bass, man.
0:54:48 > 0:54:51It's got a certain power to it.
0:54:51 > 0:54:56..So smooth So tight and ripe and smash!
0:54:56 > 0:54:58You like also to perform your poems, don't you,
0:54:58 > 0:55:00rather than to actually have people read them?
0:55:00 > 0:55:02Absolutely, because it's oral poetry.
0:55:02 > 0:55:07The emphasis is on the spoken word as opposed to the written word.
0:55:07 > 0:55:11And of course the spoken word has a greater immediacy
0:55:11 > 0:55:14and impact than the written word does.
0:55:17 > 0:55:20Published in the run-up to the Brixton riots of the early '80s,
0:55:20 > 0:55:24Dread Beat An' Blood became Kwesi Johnson's politically charged anthem
0:55:24 > 0:55:28to his generation's struggle with police brutality and injustice.
0:55:30 > 0:55:34Dread Beat An' Blood is a really powerful piece of work
0:55:34 > 0:55:36that's definitely informed by the times,
0:55:36 > 0:55:39and I don't think there's any better encapsulation
0:55:39 > 0:55:44of what the Black British experience was at that time.
0:55:44 > 0:55:46I mean, it certainly changed my life.
0:55:48 > 0:55:51The BBC arts documentary strand Omnibus
0:55:51 > 0:55:55followed Kwesi Johnson's campaign for George Lindo,
0:55:55 > 0:56:00a Black British man who had been wrongfully imprisoned for robbery.
0:56:02 > 0:56:05The slogans that the demonstrators were chanting
0:56:05 > 0:56:07had a kind of a calypso tempo.
0:56:07 > 0:56:09# Jailhouse ain't George house
0:56:09 > 0:56:11# Jailhouse ain't George house... #
0:56:11 > 0:56:16And, um, that simple chant gave me the inspiration to write this poem.
0:56:16 > 0:56:19Dem frame up George Lindo up in Bradford town
0:56:19 > 0:56:23but de Bradford blaks dem a rally round
0:56:23 > 0:56:26Maggi Tatcha on di go wid a racist show
0:56:26 > 0:56:28but a she haffi go
0:56:28 > 0:56:30Kaw, rite now,
0:56:30 > 0:56:33African, Asian, West Indian,
0:56:33 > 0:56:35an' Black British
0:56:35 > 0:56:37stan firm inna Inglan
0:56:37 > 0:56:39Inna disya time yah.
0:56:46 > 0:56:50Throughout its history, the BBC has always used radio and television
0:56:50 > 0:56:52to broadcast poetry.
0:56:53 > 0:56:58But in the 21st century, it is showcasing poetic genius online.
0:56:58 > 0:57:01The iPlayer series Women Who Spit
0:57:01 > 0:57:04drew on the most exciting new female poets.
0:57:06 > 0:57:09And the last word goes to Vanessa Kisuule
0:57:09 > 0:57:13with her plea for women to claim their place in the world.
0:57:13 > 0:57:14Take up space.
0:57:14 > 0:57:17Wear pink skirts or black Doc Martens.
0:57:17 > 0:57:19Know that souls
0:57:19 > 0:57:21can dance unchecked beneath the fortress of a hijab
0:57:21 > 0:57:24as well as baggy T-shirts and ripped jeans
0:57:24 > 0:57:27Shave your legs, or don't
0:57:27 > 0:57:30Smile from ear to ear, or don't
0:57:30 > 0:57:33Liberation has no dress code, etiquette or secret dialect
0:57:33 > 0:57:36Give yourself the space to be fickle
0:57:36 > 0:57:37to bumble with your faith to fail
0:57:37 > 0:57:40to fluff up your lines and make things up
0:57:40 > 0:57:44Your shabby slip-stitch mistakes make you miraculous
0:57:44 > 0:57:48A goddess of spit and sweat stumbling in a pit of phoenix ashes.
0:57:48 > 0:57:51Take up space.
0:57:51 > 0:57:54Believe the compliments you are given
0:57:54 > 0:57:56Give yourself the benefit of the doubt
0:57:56 > 0:57:58Don't doubt the benefits
0:57:58 > 0:58:01of being the brightest shade of you on the spectrum
0:58:01 > 0:58:02You
0:58:02 > 0:58:04You with the shoulders prone to shrugs
0:58:04 > 0:58:06and the throat full of half-formed whispers
0:58:06 > 0:58:09You are indispensable.