Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
2 appearances
A contemporary British poet known for her wit, love poems, and parodies of Heaney, Wordsworth, and Eliot.
On the island
Eight records
Glory to Thee, my God, this Night
I love hymns, and I think hymns have influenced me quite a lot. And this is a hymn I've known since I was at junior school.
My father loved Gilbert and Sullivan, and so I used to get taken to it rather reluctantly actually when I was a little girl.
Duet from The Magic Flute (Act I)
I just thought it is absolutely wonderful. I just love this.
Robin Hall, Jimmy McGregor and The Galliards
I loved singing with the children. So I've chosen a song that we used to sing.
When I started writing, as I was emerging from quite a severe depression, I really did identify with the bird in this song.
Double Violin Concerto in D minor, BWV 1043: II. Largo ma non tantoFavourite
Takako Nishizaki and Alexander Yablokov
This particular piece of Bach is what we had at our wedding.
Over the opening titles there's this song and this song gradually grew on me.
Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme
Yo-Yo Ma, Chris Thile and Edgar Meyer
This is Bach again, but it's an arrangement that I only discovered recently.
In conversation
Presenter asks
2:11How would you characterize your work, given that you dislike being referred to as a comic poet?
I don't mind being referred to as a poet who's sometimes funny. I don't like the expression light verse, because it seems to imply that if something is humorous then it's sort of lightweight and unimportant. So I just like to be referred to as a good poet.
Presenter asks
2:48As a child growing up in the fifties, you described the poetry you encountered as like cabbage. What do you look for in a poem today?
Gosh. I … look for a poem that has some effect on me, that moves me in some way. It might be it makes me laugh, it might be it makes me feel tearful, it might be that it makes me think.
Presenter asks
5:56There is sometimes quite a long break between your collections. How much of what you write makes it into the books?
It doesn't actually. Sometimes because it's a poem that might upset somebody. … I've actually got quite a lot of uncollected poems that I now think I wasn't sure about them, but I now think they're not too bad. … I've put aside for 10 years or more in a file called Failures and Unfinished. … so I say don't throw anything away. You might change your mind about it.
The keepsakes
The book
Geoffrey Willans
I think I'll take The Complete Molesworth, which is a book that's been making me laugh since I was 11 years old, and he feels like an old friend, so it'd be nice to have him there.
The luxury
I have to have writing materials, really. It's boring because this is what all writers say, but at least, you know, if I could write, that would help.
Presenter asks
7:58The critical perspective is often described in gendered terms – a woman artist reacting to the male canon. Is that how you see it?
Yes, I mean I did … Women poets being published at the time were very, very much in the minority, and I felt that there wasn't much encouragement for women to tell it how it is about what happens between men and women. But I started doing that anyway.
Presenter asks
22:08You decided to enter psychoanalysis around 1973. I think you've been quoted as saying 'I was afraid I'd become a bag lady.' How serious were you?
Well, I think I'd been depressed for a long time, but my father died in 1971 and then it got worse and I was, you know, finding earning my living quite a strain. So, yes, there was a fear I'd become a bag lady because, you know, I was always quite anxious about earning a living. … I found a way to have psychoanalysis. … I was in analysis for about ten years, and it's a slow process, but gradually I became less depressed.
Presenter asks
32:41Having been a poet for so many years, has it changed you, do you think?
Well, it's changed my life. I mean, you know, I've earned a living without having to have a job. Has it changed me? … when that first book came out and suddenly I felt successful, you then you go back and the whole story of your life changes as your life changes because you say, Oh, it was leading up to this, but I didn't know that.
“I don't mind being referred to as a poet who's sometimes funny. I don't like the expression light verse, because it seems to imply that if something is humorous then it's sort of lightweight and unimportant.”
“When I'm working myself, I just preoccupied with saying what I want to say, what I think to be true, as accurately as possible.”
“Success is a bit empty if you haven't got anyone to share it with.”
“I still sometimes can only get the courage to write by saying to myself, Well, they'll all hate this, but I'm going to write it anyway.”