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Episode details

Radio 3,05 Mar 2021,44 mins

Gratitude - Experiments in Living

The Verb

Available for over a year

In a world of daily pleases and thank yous, obligatory thank-you notes, and polite appreciation how can we express authentic gratitude with sincerity? Has lockdown made us more grateful? Can the expectation of gratitude be a burden? Poet Kate Fox assesses the etiquette of writers’ acknowledgements – who to thank? How much is too much? Is there such a thing as oversharing? Comedy writer Jack Bernhardt imagines how grateful you’d have to be – forever - if Superman saved your life. Sound artist Leafcutter John makes gratitude reverberate through a sheet of steel, and poet Michael Symmons Roberts reflects on the complexity of expressing gratitude in praise poetry, in a post-secular world. Producer: Ruth Thomson

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