Letters to a Young Poet and Super-Infinite

Poet Daljit Nagra revisits the BBC's poetry archive and selects Letters to a Young Poet with Michael Symmons Roberts and Super Infinite - ep 1/5 of a biography of John Donne by Kate Rundell.

***And Daljit reads from his Poetry Extra Book of the Month: Night Boats & Other Poems by the Dutch poet Maria Barnas.

**Letters to a Young Poet
Taking Rilke's classic correspondence as inspiration, Michael Symmons Roberts writes a personal letter to a young poet.

The original Letters to a Young Poet is a compilation of letters by Rainer Maria Rilke, written between 1902 and 1908 to a 19-year-old officer cadet called Franz Kappus. Kappus was trying to choose between a literary career and entering the Austro-Hungarian army.

In this new letter by Symmons Roberts, he imagines a young poet protégé to whom he wants to pass on life experience and thoughts about poetry.

Producer - Emma Harding

First broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in January 2014.

**Super-Infinite
1/5
This prize-winning biography of John Donne reveals him as an “infinity merchant”, a man whose preaching could make his congregation weep, a poet whose “beauty deserved walk-on music”.

John Donne: pirate, soldier, scholar, priest, inventor of new words and author of some of most intensely and intimately passionate poetry in English. Donne was a Catholic who lost - or left - his faith, from a family of martyrs, whose career led him to become Dean of Saint Paul’s Cathedral.

Reader - Blake Ritson

Written by Katherine Rundell

Producer - Allegra McIlroy

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2023.