New Christmas Shows and Olympic Poetry

Available for over a year

With Kirsty Lang. William Sieghart, the founder of National Poetry Day, explains his new project Winning Words, which will see lines of poetry inscribed on walls within the 2012 Olympic park. For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When The Rainbow Is Enuf is a series of 20 poems by Ntozake Shange, which was initially staged as a play in America in 1975. It's now been turned into a film starring Whoopi Goldberg, Janet Jackson, and Thandie Newton. Writer Bernadine Evaristo reviews. Amidst numerous Pantomimes and festive favourites, there are two new shows for Christmas in Bristol and Liverpool. The children's classic Swallows and Amazons has been adapted for television, cinema and radio and has now been turned into a stage musical. So does Arthur Ransome's tale of a summer of sailing and camping sink or float in its latest incarnation? The novelist Helen Dunmore gives us her view from the crows nest at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre. In Liverpool, a new play from the award-winning comic theatre company Peepolykus, No Wise Men, is story that sets out to capture the essence of Christmas in the 21st century. Christmas cracker or plum duff? The writer Nicholas Royle gives us his verdict. British film producer Jeremy Thomas, whose films include The Last Emperor, Sexy Beast and Crash, has just been given an Academy Tribute in celebration of his 3-decade career. He discusses achieving the tricky balance between artistic integrity and commercial success and what it was like working with great directors including Bernardo Bertulucci, Nicolas Roeg and David Cronenberg. Producer Claire Bartleet.