Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Wales's national poet; winner of the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry, whose work ranges from nature to suicide and has been translated into ten languages.
On the island
Eight records
Song of the BlackbirdFavourite
The keepsakes
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:06When you got the call offering you the post of National Poet of Wales, how did you react? Were you daunted?
I said no. I was in Southampton doing poetry live and I said, No, no, no, no, I don't think it's a good idea. I don't want to sit around being famous. I've got work to do. And by the end of a few hours, my fellow poets who were all in the green room in Southampton said, Yes, you have to do it, you have to do it. And my son said, Mum, you must do it. Ma'am, that's what they call me. You must do it. But if I was going to do it at all, I was going to do it for Wales, I was going to do it for poetry, I was going to do it for all the kids that I know who that I know need poetry, and human beings need this language in their lives, and I was going to do it with a passion.
Presenter asks
5:56Explain to me how your mother tongue was English and your father tongue was Welsh.
Both of my parents were first language Welsh speakers. My father was passionately for the language and from south west Wales and loved the language very much and wanted me to speak it. And my mother was from one of ten children in a North Wales farm. And her parents had to pay rent to the landlord and my mother felt patronised by the man who came to the door. And she just thought, We are poor and speak Welsh, they are rich and speak English, I've got to get out. I mean, it's it's a generational thing, it's a very big tragedy,'cause it was it almost did for the language, because the mother is so important, mother tongue. In Welsh it's mammyaith. It's a very important phrase.
The book
A huge anthology of poetry (custom)
I want A huge anthology of poetry. It doesn't yet exist, but if you'll give me a little bit of time before sending me away, so that I can collect all the most beautiful poems in the English language, and some of them in the Welsh language too. Into The best anthology of wonderful language that has ever existed, then that will keep me happy for ever.
The luxury
A desk made by unemployed miners (Prynn Maur Furniture Makers)
I've got a very much loved desk. It's made by unemployed miners in the twenties, who were taught to use this wood by a Quaker family who decided that they wanted to help the the unemployed. They were called a Prynn Maur Furniture Makers. And I'm so proud to have it. ... I am proud to work at a desk which people made so lovingly because someone gave them the chance.
Presenter asks
12:53So just to be clear, was that [the note about Welsh personality being unsuitable for management] referring directly to your father, or was that a general principle?
For example, said John Davis, JP K. Williams, who I just I just realized that Lord Wreath had broken my mother's heart, because my mother was so ambitious and she never got the promotion that he did deserve, but she held that against him, whereas I now know it was racism. So I know what racism is like.
Presenter asks
14:54How did your young ears cope with all that iambic pentameter at Stratford? Did you enjoy it?
Changed my life. My Auntie Phyllis, my father's middle sister, never married. I mean, several of my old aunts and great-aunts never married because the war took their true loves away. Auntie Phyllis, I regard as one of the most important prompts in my life to become a poet. She was a railway clerk. She'd had no education. None of my family had had any education. Everybody was astonished when one of theirs went to university, me. She educated herself entirely through reading, and she began to love Shakespeare. So she decided when I was ten that I should go to Stratford-on-Aven. And I loved the red velvet seats. I loved the spittle of the actor on the spotlight.
Presenter asks
23:30You seem convinced that poems have the power to change things. Is that something you truly believe?
The whole language that we speak day in, day out, is cram-packed full of Shakespeare all sorts of other phrases used by poets all along the years have got into the speech of the language. Now, is it happening now? I suspect so. I'm sure the rappers are doing it. The other thing is, do you remember when Stop All the Clocks? Orton's poem was everybody's favourite poem in Britain. So if you give them, if you give people something that stays in the mind. Then it will stay.
Presenter asks
25:58When you begin writing, do you have a formed idea of what will end up on the page, or are you often surprised by what does?
No, I don't have a formed idea. What I have is a poem that hasn't got any words yet, and I feel if I put some magic poetry glasses on, I'll be able to read it in front of me. It seems to be behind my head somewhere. If I turn quickly I'll catch it. And you do start with a title, do you? I do. That's quite that's quite unfortunate. Nobody does that. It's just bizarre. It's just a funny little habit. I like to write the title neatly in the middle of the page and then proceed.
“But it's a heart that hurts because it loves the world, maybe. If you love the world, then you hurt more.”
“I came home with so many oranges in my sleeves, in my skirt, in my knickers. Bounced home because nobody had oranges. Oh, for the days of roomy knickers.”
“A poem that hasn't got any words yet, and I feel if I put some magic poetry glasses on, I'll be able to read it in front of me. It seems to be behind my head somewhere. If I turn quickly I'll catch it.”
“I never think about that. I never think about the future. But when other poets die, one is reminded of one's mortality.”
“The blackbird I will not be able to live without that sound the real bird singing his aria in a palm tree.”