Sonnets for Albert

Daljit Nagra revisits the BBC's poetry archive and selects Sonnets for Albert with Anthony Joseph reflecting on fatherhood, in his own work and that of fellow artists.

The poet Anthony Joseph has been writing a new collection that addresses a key relationship in his life. His father was many things - a sharp dresser, an orator, a builder but he was only an intermittent figure in Anthony's childhood. And it is this absence which made him powerfully present in Joseph's imagination.

Anthony reveals some of his writing process and his form of 'calypso sonnet', a politically invested line length that, he says, "enforces a melodic rhythm which reminds me of my father" and favours a decidedly Afro-Caribbean approach.

Anthony explores ideas around fatherhood, masculinity, absence and loss, as he talks to other artists whose art has become a space for interrogating the memory of their father.

We hear from fellow poet Raymond Antrobus, the singer Gregory Porter and the Trinidadian film-maker Mariel Brown.

(Including audio material from 'Unfinished Sentences', 2019 - courtesy of Mariel Brown.)

Producer: Hannah Dean

Additional production by Zakia Sewell.

A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4, first broadcast in 2021.