Gillian Clarke - A Poet's Year: The Turning of the Year & Deaths of the Poets

The poet Daljit Nagra revisits the BBC's poetry archive, and with Autumn in mind, selects Gillian Clarke - A Poet's Year: The Turning of the Year and Deaths of the Poets: Stevie Smith and Louis MacNeice.

Gillian Clarke - A Poet's Year (episode 3): The Turning of the Year
Potatoes, beetroot and apples are gathered in, and the honey is harvested. The National Poet of Wales reads from her journal about life on her small-holding. The Welsh landscape and the healing power of nature are both driving forces in Gillian Clarke's poetry and prose. These readings are adapted from At the Source: Prose Writings by Gillian Clarke, published by Carcanet. The music is Clowns by Goldfrapp.

Producer: Willa King

BBC Cymru Wales.

First broadcast on Radio 4 in 2011.

Deaths of the Poets (episode 3): Stevie Smith and Louis MacNeice
Award winning poets Michael Symmons Roberts and Paul Farley interrogate the myth of the doomed poet. What is the cost of poetry? Must poets be melancholic, doomed and self-destructive? Or is this just a myth? In this episode they explore the lives - and deaths - of Stevie Smith and Louis MacNeice.

Written and read by the authors.

Abridged for radio by Lauris Morgan Griffiths.

Producer: Simon Richardson

First broadcast on Radio 4 in 2017.