Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Poet and glass engraver, pioneer of diamond-point engraving, and first winner of the King's Gold Medal for Poetry.
On the island
Eight records
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:00When did you start writing poetry?
I think I was fourteen. I was set a subject by a full master at school and um after that I got bitten with the idea.
Presenter asks
0:42What did you read at Oxford?
I read English at Oxford.
Presenter asks
0:58What did you do when you came down from Oxford?
I took a job, which an office job in Church Assembly which I was very bad at and I I hated an office job anyway.
Presenter asks
2:18What induced you to take up glass engraving?
Well, this was really quite accidental. I'd written a sonnet about a house in uh Northumberland called Blagdon. … And I thought it would be amusing to write this poem on a window.
The keepsakes
The luxury
Presenter asks
5:44With pieces that take so long to complete, it must be difficult to assemble enough for a full-scale exhibition.
Yes, it is a problem. And of course an exhibition is not going to bulk very large, because the glasses themselves are only about ten inches high. But I did have an exhibition two years ago, and I'm going to have another one in America next year.
“I think I was fourteen. I was set a subject by a full master at school and um after that I got bitten with the idea.”
“Well, this was really quite accidental. I'd written a sonnet about a house in uh Northumberland called Blagdon. … And I thought it would be amusing to write this poem on a window.”
“Glass engraving is always imagined as seen against a shadowy background, so that you're always drawing things by the light on them.”
“It is a slow kind of work. There's no doubt it takes weeks to do. Mostly. … You can't paint out, you can't rub out, of course not.”