0:00:02 > 0:00:04Hello and welcome to The Arts Show.
0:00:04 > 0:00:07Tonight, we shine a light on Northern Ireland's
0:00:07 > 0:00:08vibrant poetry scene.
0:00:35 > 0:00:39I'm here at the Sunflower bar on Belfast's Union Street
0:00:39 > 0:00:41to meet a group called The Lifeboat
0:00:41 > 0:00:44who meet here to air and share new writing.
0:00:52 > 0:00:55I'm very excited about what we're going to hear tonight,
0:00:55 > 0:00:58so I would like you to welcome Padraig Reagan.
0:01:03 > 0:01:07The chef will shake your hand Talk in a hammed-up French accent
0:01:07 > 0:01:11Speak carefully, tell him to use lots of butter, tarragon,
0:01:11 > 0:01:13Just a twist of lemon juice
0:01:13 > 0:01:17Remember that whatever happens next is entirely his choice
0:01:17 > 0:01:20If you have followed my instructions exactly
0:01:20 > 0:01:24He'll show you down a corridor to a small, dark room
0:01:24 > 0:01:26Take out the lemons you have been hiding in your bag
0:01:26 > 0:01:30Arrange them on the huge, gold plate on the floor
0:01:30 > 0:01:32Lie down and wait.
0:01:32 > 0:01:34- APPLAUSE - Thank you.
0:01:37 > 0:01:40For over a year now, The Lifeboat has hosted
0:01:40 > 0:01:44a series of readings in quirky venues around Belfast.
0:01:44 > 0:01:46It's a chance for an established poet
0:01:46 > 0:01:49and an emerging poet to stand together on the same stage
0:01:49 > 0:01:52to read new writing in front of a live audience.
0:01:52 > 0:01:54With me are the co-founders of Lifeboat -
0:01:54 > 0:01:57Stephen Connolly and Manuela Moser.
0:01:57 > 0:01:59Why do something like this?
0:01:59 > 0:02:04I guess we just had a lot of very talented friends
0:02:04 > 0:02:09writing very good poems that weren't necessarily being given an outlet.
0:02:09 > 0:02:12We just thought that we needed to do something
0:02:12 > 0:02:13that was a little bit different.
0:02:13 > 0:02:17And also part of what you do is that you've taken the title
0:02:17 > 0:02:21of your poetry readings from a Michael Longley poem,
0:02:21 > 0:02:23The Lifeboat, why that?
0:02:25 > 0:02:27Who's the Longley fan?
0:02:27 > 0:02:29Well, we both are. We both are.
0:02:29 > 0:02:32But with that poem, Michael's inspiration,
0:02:32 > 0:02:36for want of a better word, was something about the redemptive
0:02:36 > 0:02:41quality of fraternity, or sorority or some sort of communal feeling.
0:02:41 > 0:02:44We wanted to do something similar.
0:02:44 > 0:02:47It wasn't just about having a main act and a support act.
0:02:47 > 0:02:50It was about some sort of balance between
0:02:50 > 0:02:54the person who hasn't published anything yet and the person who has.
0:02:54 > 0:02:57And, while these are all friends here in this bar tonight,
0:02:57 > 0:03:00how do you get the people who say, "I don't understand poetry"?
0:03:00 > 0:03:02How do you get them to come here?
0:03:02 > 0:03:04What we try to do is...
0:03:06 > 0:03:09..to undo some of the ideas that people might have of poetry -
0:03:09 > 0:03:13about what a poem means and what it does.
0:03:13 > 0:03:19But we're trying to suggest that if you allow the stuff itself
0:03:19 > 0:03:24to breathe, to give it a stage that's of its own making...
0:03:24 > 0:03:26We're not patronising anyone, you know?
0:03:26 > 0:03:29- We just want the stuff to stand for itself.- Thank you very much.
0:03:29 > 0:03:34Now, in January of this year, Sinead Morrissey won the TS Eliot Prize,
0:03:34 > 0:03:37possibly the biggest prize in British poetry.
0:03:37 > 0:03:40She joins Ciaran Carson, Michael Longley, Seamus Heaney
0:03:40 > 0:03:44and Paul Muldoon as the fifth Northern Irish poet
0:03:44 > 0:03:45to pick up the award.
0:03:51 > 0:03:56Having certain poems in my life - that feels like a gift.
0:03:56 > 0:04:01I think that's why I love learning poems by heart and having them,
0:04:01 > 0:04:04because I own them then.
0:04:04 > 0:04:07That their days were not like our days
0:04:07 > 0:04:11The different people who lived in sepia
0:04:11 > 0:04:16More buttoned, colder, with slower wheels
0:04:16 > 0:04:20Shut off, sunk back, in the unwakeable house
0:04:20 > 0:04:23For all we call and knock.
0:04:26 > 0:04:30Going back to primary school days, coming into contact with poetry
0:04:30 > 0:04:36was a visceral, uplifting, exhilarating experience.
0:04:36 > 0:04:42When I was 10, 11, I fell under the spell of Edgar Allen Poe.
0:04:42 > 0:04:47And my father started reciting The Raven one day at the dinner table.
0:04:47 > 0:04:51While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping
0:04:51 > 0:04:55As of someone gently rapping, rapping on my chamber door.
0:04:55 > 0:04:57It's designed to cast a spell.
0:04:57 > 0:05:01I'd never come across anything as exciting as that.
0:05:01 > 0:05:05Then I started to write and I took it very seriously.
0:05:07 > 0:05:11I took it very seriously. I was absolutely convinced.
0:05:16 > 0:05:20And even the man with the box and the flaming torch
0:05:20 > 0:05:26Who made his servants stand so still Their faces itched
0:05:26 > 0:05:32Can't offer us what it cost to watch the foreyard being lost
0:05:32 > 0:05:37To cream and shadow The pierced sky placed in a frame
0:05:39 > 0:05:46Irises under the windowsill were the colour of ancient Rome.
0:05:48 > 0:05:55I am Poet Laureate for Belfast for this year, and the biggest, central
0:05:55 > 0:06:01part of that role has been being involved in outreach activities.
0:06:01 > 0:06:08It is intensified language, which has potentially more power than
0:06:08 > 0:06:15other kinds of language to say truths and to affect our lives directly.
0:06:15 > 0:06:20I think it is very vibrant and alive in Belfast, as a city.
0:06:20 > 0:06:22That's very exciting, it's a reason to be here.
0:06:27 > 0:06:30All of my last four books were shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize.
0:06:30 > 0:06:33That is amazing to have been shortlisted so many times,
0:06:33 > 0:06:36but on the other hand, I was getting really sick of being shortlisted.
0:06:36 > 0:06:40And my mother had said to me, I think after Through The Square Window didn't win, she said,
0:06:40 > 0:06:44"Sinead, you will never win the TS Eliot Prize. It's never going to happen for you."
0:06:44 > 0:06:48So then Parallax was shortlisted, and my mother was, like,
0:06:48 > 0:06:52"Oh, here we go again," which is kind of how I felt about it.
0:06:52 > 0:06:54Here we go again.
0:06:54 > 0:06:56And then...yeah...
0:06:56 > 0:06:58And then...I won.
0:06:58 > 0:07:05It was amazing to have finally won it, having been in the running
0:07:05 > 0:07:09so many times before. I feel very grateful towards the book.
0:07:09 > 0:07:15That sounds a bit strange, but I think poems are given to you.
0:07:15 > 0:07:20A lot of things happened around me that enabled me to write that book.
0:07:23 > 0:07:27I think when you are writing,
0:07:27 > 0:07:33self-consciousness about audience or consequence is really toxic.
0:07:33 > 0:07:36And each poem is its own challenge, it's its own puzzle,
0:07:36 > 0:07:44it's its own question that you need to resolve as best you can,
0:07:44 > 0:07:48so you still need to take it on a poem-by-poem basis.
0:07:52 > 0:07:55Where nothing was, then something
0:07:55 > 0:07:59Six months ago Most of this was sludge
0:07:59 > 0:08:05And a gangrenous slipway Dipping its ruined foot in the sea.
0:08:07 > 0:08:13The joy of having a big poem on your hands,
0:08:13 > 0:08:23and the level of absorption that it takes to bring it to completion
0:08:23 > 0:08:30is easily the most important thing in my life, that activity.
0:08:31 > 0:08:38A single rusted gantry, marking the spot where a small town's population
0:08:38 > 0:08:44of Protestant men built a ship the size of the Empire State Building
0:08:44 > 0:08:49Smashed cars and wreckers' yards flourished in between.
0:08:52 > 0:08:55Sinead Morrissey. And Sinead is here.
0:08:55 > 0:08:58- Sinead, there is a genuine energy in this room.- I know.
0:08:58 > 0:09:02I know! It's so buzzy and exciting, isn't it? It's fantastic.
0:09:02 > 0:09:06This is the community in Belfast that exists for poetry.
0:09:06 > 0:09:10And if you look around the room, it's not people of a certain age
0:09:10 > 0:09:13or a certain background, it's all kinds of people.
0:09:13 > 0:09:15Because you said in the film that Belfast
0:09:15 > 0:09:18and the poetry scene was the reason that you stayed rooted here.
0:09:18 > 0:09:22- So this is it.- This is it. Isn't this just so exciting?
0:09:22 > 0:09:24You're like a proud mammy with this fellow.
0:09:24 > 0:09:27I am a bit like a proud mother. I know I shouldn't be.
0:09:27 > 0:09:31Padraig, you are actually Sinead's student.
0:09:31 > 0:09:34Yes. I have been for two years now.
0:09:34 > 0:09:38And the fact of Sinead winning the TS Eliot Prize,
0:09:38 > 0:09:42how significant has that been for local poets?
0:09:42 > 0:09:46There's just been a general sense of excitement around Queen's
0:09:46 > 0:09:48and around the Heaney Centre since then.
0:09:48 > 0:09:51And a sense of reinforcing, as well,
0:09:51 > 0:09:55in the chasm that was left in Seamus Heaney's death,
0:09:55 > 0:09:58that something is still happening here,
0:09:58 > 0:10:01that there is an energy to Northern Irish poetry.
0:10:01 > 0:10:05There still is a terrific energy, and I think Padraig's amazing reading
0:10:05 > 0:10:07tonight of his wonderful, wonderful poems is evidence
0:10:07 > 0:10:11of this strength of talent among the younger generation coming up.
0:10:11 > 0:10:14I mean, it is really something to be inspired by.
0:10:14 > 0:10:16I know you've won the TS Eliot prize,
0:10:16 > 0:10:21and that's great and all, but can I possibly ask you to sign my copy?
0:10:21 > 0:10:23Because this is probably...
0:10:23 > 0:10:25this could be like Heaney's Eleven Poems in years to come.
0:10:25 > 0:10:28And people like this, does this make your job worthwhile, Sinead?
0:10:28 > 0:10:30It makes my job a complete privilege.
0:10:30 > 0:10:32Padraig comes to me for supervisions and all I say is,
0:10:32 > 0:10:36- "I can teach you nothing." - Thank you so much.
0:10:36 > 0:10:40Sinead Morrissey, Padraig Regan, thank you both.
0:10:40 > 0:10:44Now, another young poet to watch is Nathaniel Joseph McAuley.
0:10:44 > 0:10:46His work is full of strong colours,
0:10:46 > 0:10:49inspired by life in other parts of the world.
0:10:49 > 0:10:51The Art Show caught up with him.
0:10:56 > 0:11:00The voice is such a powerful tool, you know, and when I write,
0:11:00 > 0:11:05I read everything out loud first and I write out loud, to be written down.
0:11:05 > 0:11:11Milk snakes (those banded black and white on oranging red)
0:11:11 > 0:11:16Enter the nests of cardinals in hatching season
0:11:16 > 0:11:20Be on the watch for the mother's ochre feathers
0:11:20 > 0:11:22Cast on the floor of the maple groves
0:11:22 > 0:11:24And the upwards whoop
0:11:24 > 0:11:29And vermillion smear of the orbiting father when hunting orphaned eggs.
0:11:31 > 0:11:34I'd started off with the title poem, which is The Dyer's Notes On Indigo.
0:11:34 > 0:11:37The dyer is going to have a more sensitive or a more heightened
0:11:37 > 0:11:39notion of colour.
0:11:39 > 0:11:40To take one character,
0:11:40 > 0:11:45to take one voice that isn't necessarily my own and work
0:11:45 > 0:11:48with that for four, five, six months,
0:11:48 > 0:11:50it puts you in this wonderful place.
0:11:52 > 0:11:55You're able to search yourself but once removed
0:11:55 > 0:12:00Remembering your mother at times of relative stillness
0:12:00 > 0:12:05Take the egg from a cruet of water Kept lukewarm on the mantle
0:12:05 > 0:12:09And wrapped in cotton Cradle it in your breast pocket.
0:12:11 > 0:12:13A lot of my research was in the Caribbean
0:12:13 > 0:12:16and in Irish slavery in the Caribbean.
0:12:16 > 0:12:18The Dyer's Notes kind of went everywhere, then.
0:12:18 > 0:12:22I suppose displacing yourself as a poet is quite a...
0:12:22 > 0:12:24quite an exciting thing.
0:12:25 > 0:12:29You will make-believe the shell is vellum-thin
0:12:29 > 0:12:34Feeling shifts like pupils on fingers through eyelids
0:12:34 > 0:12:37Knowing your smell when hatched
0:12:37 > 0:12:41The bird will seldom leave your shoulder.
0:12:41 > 0:12:45Cinnabar is a reddy-orange colour
0:12:45 > 0:12:49and it has been applied the world round as a really significant colour.
0:12:49 > 0:12:51It is the colour of the cardinal bird
0:12:51 > 0:12:53in the southern states of America.
0:12:53 > 0:12:57It's the colour of the Cardinals' vestments in the church.
0:12:57 > 0:13:02And it is just the most vibrant life-affirming colour I know.
0:13:02 > 0:13:08Fill your cage instead with seeds for kumquat and tomato
0:13:09 > 0:13:13Vines which will not yield before clearing the wire work
0:13:13 > 0:13:19Its tiny slats implying the fruit impossibly big
0:13:19 > 0:13:24The orange making scarlet of the red The red peach of the orange
0:13:24 > 0:13:30Children pull at sari hems to stop and consider them.
0:13:32 > 0:13:34Poetry is like any art.
0:13:36 > 0:13:41It is somebody trying their best to make sense of something,
0:13:41 > 0:13:44and when you read it, I think you do the same. You know?
0:13:52 > 0:13:54I'm delighted to be introducing
0:13:54 > 0:13:57Paula Cunningham to read for us this evening. Thank you.
0:13:57 > 0:13:59APPLAUSE AND CHEERING
0:14:02 > 0:14:03Hats.
0:14:03 > 0:14:06My father wore a hat when I was little
0:14:06 > 0:14:08We lived in Omagh O-M-A-G-Haitch
0:14:08 > 0:14:11Or aitch as tribally decreed
0:14:11 > 0:14:14He was a travelling salesman for ice cream, a Dublin firm
0:14:14 > 0:14:16Hughes Brothers or HB
0:14:16 > 0:14:19He was their Northern Ireland diplomat
0:14:19 > 0:14:21He knew his clients well A studied discipline
0:14:21 > 0:14:25Some would not buy Haitch-B ice cream on principle
0:14:25 > 0:14:27My father had done his homework
0:14:27 > 0:14:29To some he'd sell Aitch-B
0:14:29 > 0:14:31To others HaitchB
0:14:31 > 0:14:34One day in Derry/Londonderry
0:14:34 > 0:14:36My father's car was hijacked
0:14:36 > 0:14:39The men wore hats pulled down with holes for eyes and mouth
0:14:39 > 0:14:42They held a gun They nudged his hat
0:14:42 > 0:14:47They asked my father where we lived And ordered him to spell it
0:14:47 > 0:14:49This year, I tried on voices just like hats.
0:14:49 > 0:14:50Thank you.
0:14:55 > 0:14:59Well, it is testimony to the pulling power of an event like this
0:14:59 > 0:15:04that with me is Paula Meehan, the current Ireland Chair of Poetry,
0:15:04 > 0:15:07and an established award-winning poet in your own right.
0:15:07 > 0:15:10Do poets get a night off? Or were you dragged,
0:15:10 > 0:15:14kicking and screaming to an event like this?
0:15:14 > 0:15:16No, I think something like this
0:15:16 > 0:15:20is a great intersection between the students and other writing groups,
0:15:20 > 0:15:24without the walls, because there is a kind of joyous energy
0:15:24 > 0:15:27coming from the poetry and the sense of dedication.
0:15:27 > 0:15:33They are part of a very, very strong lineage of Northern Irish poets.
0:15:33 > 0:15:37Do you see them fitting into the previous generations?
0:15:37 > 0:15:40Well, you see the influences writ large,
0:15:40 > 0:15:46but you also see this new energy, new voice that hasn't been mapped
0:15:46 > 0:15:51and what they have to articulate
0:15:51 > 0:15:56and the kind of work they have to do in language is new work,
0:15:56 > 0:16:02because everything has changed in a place where language is so dangerous
0:16:02 > 0:16:08and important and full of potential for healing, I would think.
0:16:08 > 0:16:13So you see the young voices just pushing through all the confusions
0:16:13 > 0:16:19and all the different persuasions and really singing their lyric out.
0:16:19 > 0:16:24And they're not held back or tied down by the troubles or the weight
0:16:24 > 0:16:28of expectation of being a troubles poet. It's history to them.
0:16:28 > 0:16:33Its history, but I think they're still dealing with the aftermath
0:16:33 > 0:16:40and with the underlying traumas and rifts, if you like.
0:16:40 > 0:16:44And I think they're doing just extraordinary work in pushing out,
0:16:44 > 0:16:51pushing ahead, and just the sense of potential here is marvellous.
0:16:51 > 0:16:54Are poets always as rowdy as this?
0:16:54 > 0:16:59- Oh, yeah! No, they're only warming up. Yeah.- Thank you so much.
0:16:59 > 0:17:03Well, once Northern Ireland's leading literary journal,
0:17:03 > 0:17:05The Honest Ulsterman is being revived
0:17:05 > 0:17:09after being dormant for nearly ten years.
0:17:09 > 0:17:11Its new editor is Darran Anderson.
0:17:16 > 0:17:19There has been a kind of tendency for poetry
0:17:19 > 0:17:23to be regarded along the lines of gardening or, you know, therapy.
0:17:25 > 0:17:27Poetry offers a view of life
0:17:27 > 0:17:30that has complexity and ambiguity
0:17:30 > 0:17:33and contradictions and mystery
0:17:33 > 0:17:36and all the things that puritans and politicians are quite afraid of.
0:17:36 > 0:17:41Poetry and poets in general, they offer something else, they offer the
0:17:41 > 0:17:46ability to think outside these black and white conceptions of the world.
0:17:48 > 0:17:51The Honest Ulsterman, in its original incarnation,
0:17:51 > 0:17:55was very much an irreverent, challenging, innovative voice,
0:17:55 > 0:18:00and it was also a platform for a generation of poets,
0:18:00 > 0:18:03particularly from Ulster, who were just starting out.
0:18:04 > 0:18:08Although it existed long before I was around,
0:18:08 > 0:18:12I became aware of the presence of it and also the absence of it,
0:18:12 > 0:18:17through interest in Seamus Heaney and Ciaran Carson and poets like that.
0:18:17 > 0:18:22And I always felt that perhaps there was a vacuum there.
0:18:23 > 0:18:27We want to hopefully bring back that outlet for other people.
0:18:27 > 0:18:29We are starting it off as a website.
0:18:29 > 0:18:33We're going to have interactive features with social media.
0:18:33 > 0:18:37The original copies of The Honest Ulsterman are very pulpy,
0:18:37 > 0:18:40as if they were passed along on street corners.
0:18:40 > 0:18:43And I love that feel, seeing the newsprint,
0:18:43 > 0:18:45seeing the old advertisements.
0:18:45 > 0:18:47And if we can include something that has that feel,
0:18:47 > 0:18:51that's very timely, then we're very keen to do that.
0:18:55 > 0:18:57I think that the greatest poets for me,
0:18:57 > 0:19:00and there's a lot of them in Northern Ireland at the moment,
0:19:00 > 0:19:03are people who are really producing heavyweight art.
0:19:03 > 0:19:05They can rank up there
0:19:05 > 0:19:07with the greatest films and the greatest albums.
0:19:07 > 0:19:11It has been proved recently by Sinead Morrissey's success,
0:19:11 > 0:19:13that she's a major voice.
0:19:13 > 0:19:17But there's a lot of poets are coming through with her -
0:19:17 > 0:19:19Deirdre Cartmill, Stephanie Conn...
0:19:19 > 0:19:23And also there's a few men thrown in there to make up the numbers!
0:19:24 > 0:19:28In this first edition, we are very keen to provide a platform
0:19:28 > 0:19:34for writers from here, and really put this generation coming through
0:19:34 > 0:19:39on a world stage, in any way we can.
0:19:44 > 0:19:47Michael Longley is one of our best-known poets
0:19:47 > 0:19:50and a leading figure in Irish contemporary poetry.
0:19:50 > 0:19:53He has written nine volumes of poetry
0:19:53 > 0:19:57and later this year, a much-anticipated new collection comes out.
0:19:57 > 0:20:00The Art Show filmed him in Belfast Castle,
0:20:00 > 0:20:02overlooking the city he loves.
0:20:18 > 0:20:21I have imagined an ideal death
0:20:21 > 0:20:25in Charlie Gaffney's pub in Louisburgh;
0:20:25 > 0:20:29He pulls me the pluperfect pint
0:20:29 > 0:20:34As I, at the end of the bar next the charity boxes,
0:20:34 > 0:20:40expire on my stool, head in hand, without a murmur.
0:20:41 > 0:20:44This new group, The Lifeboat...
0:20:44 > 0:20:46They've taken that from your poem.
0:20:46 > 0:20:48That's in the last book - my A Hundred Doors.
0:20:50 > 0:20:53Which is a poem about your death.
0:20:53 > 0:20:55It is, in a way.
0:20:55 > 0:20:57It is funny, though, about my death.
0:20:58 > 0:21:03I've just helped him to solve his crossword puzzle,
0:21:03 > 0:21:09And we commune with ancestral photos in the alcove
0:21:09 > 0:21:14He doesn't notice that I am dead until closing time,
0:21:14 > 0:21:16And he sweeps around my feet.
0:21:18 > 0:21:22Michael achieved recognition as a poet in the 1960s
0:21:22 > 0:21:27along with his contemporaries, Derek Mahon and Seamus Heaney.
0:21:27 > 0:21:30They were guided by older poets like John Hewitt.
0:21:30 > 0:21:33Have things now come full circle?
0:21:33 > 0:21:36I like to think that Seamus and Derek and I
0:21:36 > 0:21:40were part of something that you might call inspiration.
0:21:40 > 0:21:44Do you think that you were touchstones for these generations?
0:21:44 > 0:21:46I wouldn't be so bold as to suggest that.
0:21:46 > 0:21:51Any good generation generates their own inner momentum.
0:21:51 > 0:21:59And...it's a mixture of brotherly, sisterly, love and competition.
0:22:01 > 0:22:04There's excitement in the room.
0:22:04 > 0:22:09The air warms up, and there's a convection current,
0:22:09 > 0:22:12and our souls rise on that.
0:22:18 > 0:22:22Because, in a way, I still feel I'm their age.
0:22:22 > 0:22:25I am still learning, I am still an aspiring poet.
0:22:27 > 0:22:33I hate the notion of being anything approaching an elder statesman.
0:22:33 > 0:22:36Do they remind you of yourself as a young writer?
0:22:36 > 0:22:38They are much better organised,
0:22:38 > 0:22:39but they do.
0:22:39 > 0:22:45That's the way I felt about poetry then. When I was in my 20s.
0:22:45 > 0:22:48The fact that you've got a new collection coming out,
0:22:48 > 0:22:52there's a sense of vitality and rigour still with you.
0:22:52 > 0:22:57Is it getting easier to write poetry or is it still...tough?
0:22:57 > 0:22:59Is it getting easier...?
0:22:59 > 0:23:01I...I don't really know.
0:23:01 > 0:23:05All I can say is that the most exciting thing in the world
0:23:05 > 0:23:08is when a poem comes along when you are working on it,
0:23:08 > 0:23:11and there comes a point...
0:23:11 > 0:23:14"I can't possibly screw this one up!"
0:23:14 > 0:23:18And it's reaching the crest of the hill and then freewheeling down.
0:23:18 > 0:23:21And... And that's just glorious!
0:23:22 > 0:23:24But it's Charlie Gaffney
0:23:24 > 0:23:32Who has died. Charlie, how do I buy a fishing licence?
0:23:32 > 0:23:35Shall I let the dog out?
0:23:35 > 0:23:38Would the fire take another sod?
0:23:38 > 0:23:45The pub might as well be empty forever now. I launch
0:23:45 > 0:23:50The toy lifeboat at my elbow with an old penny.
0:23:53 > 0:23:56And Michael Longley's new poetry collection
0:23:56 > 0:23:59The Stairwell is published on the 14th of August.
0:23:59 > 0:24:04It was ten years ago that Leontia Flynn burst onto the scene
0:24:04 > 0:24:07with her debut poetry collection These Days.
0:24:07 > 0:24:10Two volumes later, she is one of the UK's most respected poets.
0:24:17 > 0:24:21There's birds in my story
0:24:21 > 0:24:24On the orange and brown linoleum lining the playroom
0:24:24 > 0:24:29my infant self is playing with (that's right) dolls
0:24:29 > 0:24:32A wave of salt tenderness picks up my mum where she stands,
0:24:32 > 0:24:36carries her off with a lurch to some far, giddy shore,
0:24:36 > 0:24:40then sets her back on her feet when I ask, can she whistle?
0:24:40 > 0:24:43Poetry does choose you as a vocation.
0:24:43 > 0:24:47You might try to choose it, it'll probably de-select you.
0:24:47 > 0:24:53But it is a need that is real and urgent as any...
0:24:53 > 0:24:56you know, I can think of.
0:24:56 > 0:24:59She regards for a beat her fat second youngest child,
0:24:59 > 0:25:02then purses her lips: Whee-whee, whee-whee, whee-whee.
0:25:03 > 0:25:06I always did it, I was writing at 14.
0:25:06 > 0:25:09Erm, I knew, I think, at 15, 16
0:25:09 > 0:25:12I was fairly sure I wanted to write.
0:25:12 > 0:25:16I can't remember ever not wanting to...or not needing to do it,
0:25:16 > 0:25:21and it has been bubbling away at the back of my mind since I was 14.
0:25:23 > 0:25:25You have experiences,
0:25:25 > 0:25:27you have reactions and responses to things you live through
0:25:27 > 0:25:31and they just... They need to be made into poems.
0:25:31 > 0:25:34That's not to say it's something you express.
0:25:34 > 0:25:38It's... I mean the ideas I have arrive in forms.
0:25:38 > 0:25:43So I think, I could do this with that, that could...
0:25:43 > 0:25:45That'll work like that.
0:25:45 > 0:25:48And unless and until I've done it...
0:25:48 > 0:25:51everything is an inconvenience.
0:25:54 > 0:25:58At the mention of Gerard Manley Hopkins, my mild-mannered father -
0:25:58 > 0:26:03tender, abstracted - would exercise the right to revert to type
0:26:03 > 0:26:08That is to say: devout; that is, proscriptive. He would rather
0:26:08 > 0:26:11we did not so bandy the good Jesuit's name about,
0:26:11 > 0:26:15and talk of "gay this" and "gay that" - just as he would rather
0:26:15 > 0:26:18my sister did not, from the library, request "sick" Lolita.
0:26:20 > 0:26:23Poetry would hardly ever arrive as thoughts or a theme.
0:26:26 > 0:26:30There is usually one or two things and it accumulates around that,
0:26:30 > 0:26:33and you see the momentum and the overall thing
0:26:33 > 0:26:35without seeing the words, which is very strange.
0:26:35 > 0:26:37For instance, I might want to write a poem,
0:26:37 > 0:26:40and have tried to do it for years about something,
0:26:40 > 0:26:42but it doesn't work, because you're just trying to hammer away
0:26:42 > 0:26:44and write it the way you'd write anything.
0:26:44 > 0:26:47And then you just give up, and one day, six years later,
0:26:47 > 0:26:50you know, it kind of falls into place.
0:26:53 > 0:26:56As Hopkins was wont (his muse being bi(nsey) po(p)lar(s))
0:26:56 > 0:27:01to swing from joy's heights, alas, to the abyss,
0:27:01 > 0:27:04and for whom the mind had "mountains; cliffs of fall."
0:27:05 > 0:27:07I do write things down, but mostly it's in my head.
0:27:07 > 0:27:09I write on the page on a screen.
0:27:09 > 0:27:11I don't ever write on the page.
0:27:11 > 0:27:14I don't even think I know how to write longhand any more!
0:27:14 > 0:27:17But I write something on the computer at the very last minute,
0:27:17 > 0:27:20and lines and lines of it will probably be in my head before that.
0:27:20 > 0:27:22I usually do it walking about.
0:27:22 > 0:27:26I can't really sit down to do it because... errr...
0:27:26 > 0:27:28I don't know. You need to be moving around.
0:27:30 > 0:27:36Some parts of writing are to do deliberately trying not to write.
0:27:36 > 0:27:39You might have to say, right, it's just going to have to wait.
0:27:39 > 0:27:41Much as you don't want to.
0:27:42 > 0:27:45Once I've written several poems in the same form,
0:27:45 > 0:27:48I guess, then it becomes easier to write more.
0:27:48 > 0:27:49And sometimes if you're lucky,
0:27:49 > 0:27:52you can have a whole rake of poems together.
0:27:52 > 0:27:55And then it stops, goes away, and leaves you forlorn. Again.
0:27:56 > 0:27:59Since my mother stepped through the invisible looking glass
0:27:59 > 0:28:02into fulltime mum-dom, each day,
0:28:02 > 0:28:04some current frets
0:28:04 > 0:28:07at her sense of self - but, yes! she thinks, there are birds!
0:28:07 > 0:28:10Wheeling inland, all whoops and bright
0:28:10 > 0:28:14hungry eyes in the noon light, over the estuary,
0:28:14 > 0:28:16flying lighter than sparks.
0:28:23 > 0:28:28We were saddened to hear about the passing of James Ellis,
0:28:28 > 0:28:30born in Belfast in 1931,
0:28:30 > 0:28:32he had a long stage and screen career
0:28:32 > 0:28:35which saw him appear in everything from Boys From the Blackstuff
0:28:35 > 0:28:38to Dr Who, and Only Fools and Horses.
0:28:38 > 0:28:42He became a household name in the UK for his role in Z Cars,
0:28:42 > 0:28:44which he played for 16 years,
0:28:44 > 0:28:48but is most fondly remembered here for his seminal role
0:28:48 > 0:28:50as Norman Martin in the Billy plays.
0:28:50 > 0:28:53Well, she loved him! She despised you, but she loved him!