Imagiste

Poet Daljit Nagra revisits the BBC's poetry archive and selects Imagiste.

This features the rich legacy of female poets before the First World War.

Jean Sprackland explores the subversive beauty of the female Imagist poets, such as HD and Amy Lowell, whose work changed the direction of poetry in the years just before the war.

They sought crystalline precision - a pared down presentation of the thing itself and a desire to use the poem not to record a moment, but to be that moment.

Jean talks to fellow poets Fiona Benson, Nisha Ramayya and Mona Arshi, who've all been inspired by the original Imagistes.

She also meets researchers Richard Vytniorgu, Exeter University and Melissa Bradshaw, Loyola University in Chicago, and discovers an enduring and rich legacy.

Readings by Fenella Woolgar

Producer: Emma Harding

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2022.

*** Plus Daljit reads a poem from his Poetry Extra Book of the Month: No One Will Know Tomorrow by Najwan Darwish. Translated from Arabic by Kareem James Abu Zeid.