4 December 2004
Saturday 4 December 2004 21:05-21:50 (Radio 3)
Ian McMillan presents the weekly magazine about language.
Programme Details
A hundred years ago, in the winter of 1904, across south Wales there was one of the most remarkable demonstrations of the power of the spoken word there has ever been. Described by the then young Welsh politician Lloyd George as "rocking Welsh life like a great earthquake", Ian McMillan explores the phenomenon of what came to be known as the Welsh Revival with Deian Hopkins, historian and vice-chancellor of South Bank University, and the writer Gwyneth Lewis, whose poetry appears on the new Welsh Millenium Centre. Gwyneth writes in both Welsh and English, and her latest collection 'Keeping Mum' is available from Bloodaxe.
The poet Michael Horovitz has been glancing round the landscape of poetry and marketing and finding that the cohesion of the two sits strangely with the poetry greats of the past.
Topping the poetry lists at Christmas in 1974 was John Betjeman's 'A Nip in the Air'. Betjeman was poet laureate for many years and also one of the first celebrity poets. Michael Horovitz and Gwyneth Lewis join forces to forget the last thirty years of Betjemania and look at the poet behind the man.
Ian announces the winner of Roddy Lumsden's special Verb quiz, whose prizes will be winging their way to their new home.
And Marie Darrieussecq, the young French writer and author of 'Pig Tales: A Novel of Lust and Transformation' and her latest book 'Breathing Underwater' (both published by Faber in this country), whose writing has been described as recalling at times 'the nihilism of Beckett or Camus', continues The Verb's series of newly commissioned modern fairy tales with her beautiful and sinister short story called 'When I Feel Very Tired', or 'My Little Fairy' (which is not published).
