Poetry for the Autumn equinox

Radio 4 celebrates the Autumn equinox (when night and day are pretty much exactly the same length – 12 hours – all over the world) with a day of poetry. Here's how we marked the turning of the season...

The day began at 5.45am with a reading of Edward Thomas’s poem in Farming Today. Thomas started writing poetry shortly before he became a soldier in the First World War. He wrote Digging on 4th April 1915 – in the spring – and yet it is unmistakeably an autumnal poem.

In Today, we were treated to a live performance of Keats' famous poem, which is said to have been inspired by a walk in the water meadows behind Winchester College – a walk he only took to escape the racket of his landlady’s daughter practising her violin.

In Woman's Hour, Helen Mort read a new poem live: "I was by Linacre Reservoirs in Derbyshire and suddenly the light in the trees seemed to change, and so I composed this in my head when I was on the run, quite literally."

Next up, some beautiful Victorian poetry. In a letter from 1878 Hopkins wrote: "The Hurrahing sonnet was the outcome of half an hour of extreme enthusiasm as I walked home alone one day from fishing in the Elwy."

Best known for writing Wuthering Heights, Brontë was also a talented poet - demonstrated by this reading. Talking of Wuthering Heights, have you tried our Kate Bush or John Keats quiz?

Written between 1916 and early 1917 at a time when the Irish poet was thought to have been searching for lasting beauty in a changing world.

Robin Robertson reads Fall, translated from a poem written by Rainer Maria Rilke on 11 September 1902.

Zaffar Kunial's poem Prayer recalls his father's very first words to him as a new born baby and reminds him of the last words he whispered into his dying mother's ear.

Writing in the Irish Times, Heaney revealed the poem was inspired by a visit to the south coast of Galway Bay: "I had this quick sidelong glimpse of something flying past; before I knew where I was, I went after it."

The day closed with a collection of poems, old and new, to mark the beginning of the season. Liz Berry reads her poem The Way Home, Bill Patterson reads George Ellis' The Twelve Months and Simon Russell Beale sings Shakespeare's The Rain it Raineth Every Day (Feste’s last song from Twelfth Night).