Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Poet whose critically acclaimed work brings the natural world into sharp focus; comes from a long line of botanists and scientists, with Charles Darwin as great
On the island
Eight records
Joan Sutherland, Marilyn Horne, Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Sir Georg Solti
This is a piece that I've loved in lots of ways. I learned to sing in choirs at school, and I continued it in Oxford.
String Quartet No. 15 in A minor, Op. 132
This is my most favourite string quartet of all.
Kathleen Ferrier actually was the first the first record I ever had and I treasured it.
When I was at Oxford I was doing a lot of um singing and um playing chamber music, but of course um in life I was dancing.
Yesimi Horos Nero (Jasmine Without Water)
I loved all that. And I loved the song. And this singer, he was born in 1923, Calagridis. He's an old master of the Lyr and of the Mantinada.
Alla bella Despinetta (from Così fan tutte)Favourite
I had to have opera, and I've chosen Cosi not because it's necessarily the most sublime of Mozart's operas, but um because this little bit of it is all about relationship, and I think for me that's what music is about, is about relationship.
Concerto for Two Violins in D minor, BWV 1043
The next record is going to be the Bach double violin concerto, which he plays beautifully. And I remember one evening when I was rather sad and we were at home, we were on the stairs. She said, Oh, come on, mum, you know, let's let's just play the the bach double.
The Boys of Piraeus (from Never on Sunday)
Melina McCurry had the most wonderful, hoarse, whiskery, cigarette voice. And this is from the film Never on Sunday, and this is The Boys of Piraeus.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:08Tell me about some of the biggest journeys that you've made.
Yes, well I suppose the biggest one is the tiger journey. In two thousand and two I I started to go to India and Bhutan and Nepal and Sumatra and Laos to find what was happening to wild tigers. I I grew up with scientists, so I'm at ease with scientists and and I like the way they think. And so I went into the forests in the Far East of Russia or up volcanoes in Sumatra with brilliant field zoologists looking for what was happening
Presenter asks
5:59What do you remember of [your grandmother, Nora Barlow]?
Oh, she was wonderful. The house that she and my grandfather lived in, Boswell's, was a very was my sort of paradise. It was my image of... jungle, of wildness, of of excitement. And um it was in Buckinghamshire. The house itself was magical.
Presenter asks
14:42Were you ever in danger [from tigers]?
From tigers I don't think so. Once, maybe, in in Russia. There was a radio coloured tiger... They knew this tigress had young cubs and they wanted to find out where she was. So I was with a young Russian called Andrei... We were getting closer, and Andreai had this G P S, and he knew that this tigress was getting closer. And we didn't want to spook her or or upset her... and when the girl who was the daughter of a famous tiger'sologist said she'd like to go back, I thought I'd like to go back too.
The keepsakes
Presenter asks
22:13When did you decide I am a poet and not an academic?
In about 1984. You see, I never applied for a full-time job. I was always I was always too cagey about commitments to administration, as it were. And also a man called John Welsh who who runs a a small poetry press called the Many Press. He'd agreed to publish a pamphlet of my poems called Alibi. And alibi means elsewhere. And it was my alibi. It was my other place. You know, poetry was. So I gave up my job and I then went free home.
Presenter asks
25:59How much it matters to you to be not just a poet, to be a successful, a well regarded poet. Is that important?
I suppose it is now because you want people to think well of your work... I like it when people say what you wrote mattered to me. When somebody said that poem you wrote really spoke to me, that's the best thing, because then you know what you're doing works. I like giving people things.
“And here I was, tragically, in a way, a hundred and fifty years later, understanding, learning to understand how they were disappearing, because that's what I was seeing. There were no leopard cats or birds in that forest. The people who lived there had eaten them.”
“And versus means a turning. It's the turn at the end of the plow when the farmer comes back when he's ploughing. So that it's a a turning and a going forward at the same time, which is probably what life is anyway.”
“Because it's not a plaster, it's not a consolation. You know, poetry is quite a fierce thing. It it's got to be the the best words in the best order.”