Episodes
| Episode | Title | First Broadcast | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Seamus Heaney's 'the Underground' | 20170925 | Don Paterson is an award-winning poet, editor and teacher, but for all his technical ability and the recognition that has been paid to his work Paterson is acutely aware of awe and sometimes envy when he looks at the work of other writers. Here he applies his wit and skills of technical analysis to discussing the five poems he wishes he had written. Tonight, Seamus Heaney's 'The Underground' . There we were in the vaulted tunnel running, You in your going-away coat speeding ahead And me, me then like a fleet god gaining Upon you before you turned to a reed Or some new white flower japped with crimson As the coat flapped wild and button after button Sprang off and fell in a trail Between the Underground and the Albert Hall. Honeymooning, moonlighting, late for the Proms, Our echoes die in that corridor and now I come as Hansel came on the moonlit stones Retracing the path back, lifting the buttons To end up in a draughty lamplit station After the trains have gone, the wet track Bared and tensed as I am, all attention For your step following and damned if I look back. from Station Island (Faber, 1984), copyright (c) Seamus Heaney 1984,. Poet Don Paterson reflects on Seamus Heaney's 'The Underground'. |
| 02 | Elizabeth Bishop's 'large Bad Picture' | 20170926 | Don Paterson is an award-winning poet, editor and teacher, but for all his technical ability and the recognition that has been paid to his work Paterson is acutely aware of awe and sometimes envy when he looks at the work of other writers. Here he applies his wit and skills of technical analysis to discussing the five poems he wishes he had written. Tonight, Elizabeth Bishop's 'Large Bad Picture'. Remembering the Strait of Belle Isle or some northerly harbor of Labrador, before he became a schoolteacher a great-uncle painted a big picture. Receding for miles on either side into a flushed, still sky are overhanging pale blue cliffs hundreds of feet high, their bases fretted by little arches, the entrances to caves running in along the level of a bay masked by perfect waves. On the middle of that quiet floor sits a fleet of small black ships, square-rigged, sails furled, motionless, their spars like burnt match-sticks. And high above them, over the tall cliffs semi-translucent ranks, are scribbled hundreds of fine black birds hanging in n's in banks. One can hear their crying, crying, the only sound there is except for occasional sighing as a large aquatic animal breathes. In the pink light the small red sun goes rolling, rolling, round and round and round at the same height in perpetual sunset, comprehensive, consoling, while the ships consider it. Apparently they have reached their destination. It would be hard to say what brought them there, commerce or contemplation. Poet Don Paterson reflects on Elizabeth Bishop's 'Large Bad Picture'. |
| 03 | Michael Donaghy's 'the Hunter's Purse' | 20170927 | Don Paterson is an award-winning poet, editor and teacher, but for all his technical ability and the recognition that has been paid to his work Paterson is acutely aware of awe and sometimes envy when he looks at the work of other writers. Here he applies his wit and skills of technical analysis to discussing the five poems he wishes he had written. Tonight, Michael Donaghy 'The Hunter's Purse'. is the last unshattered 78 by 'Patrolman Jack O'Ryan, violin', a Sligo fiddler in dry America. A legend, he played Manhattan's ceilidhs, fell asleep drunk one snowy Christmas on a Central Park bench and froze solid. They shipped his corpse home, like his records. This record's record is its lunar surface. I wouldn't risk my stylus to this gouge, or this crater left by a flick of ash - When Anne Quinn got hold of it back in Kilrush, she took her fiddle to her shoulder and cranked the new Horn of Plenty Victrola over and over and over, and scratched along until she had it right or until her father shouted We'll have no more Of that tune In this house tonight'. She slipped out back and strapped the contraption to the parcel rack and rode her bike to a far field, by moonlight. It skips. The penny I used for ballast slips. O'Ryan's fiddle pops, and hiccoughs back to this, back to this, back to this: a napping snowman with a fiddlecase; a flask of bootleg under his belt; three stars; a gramophone on a pushbike; a cigarette's glow from a far field; over and over, three bars in common time. Poet Don Paterson reflects on Michael Donaghy's 'The Hunter's Purse'. |
| 04 | Sylvia Plath's 'cut' | 20170928 | Don Paterson is an award-winning poet, editor and teacher, but for all his technical ability and the recognition that has been paid to his work Paterson is acutely aware of awe and sometimes envy when he looks at the work of other writers. Here he applies his wit and skills of technical analysis to discussing the five poems he wishes he had written. Tonight, Sylvia Plath's poem 'Cut'. For Susan O'Neill Roe What a thrill - My thumb instead of an onion. The top quite gone Except for a sort of a hinge Of skin, A flap like a hat, Dead white. Then that red plush. Little pilgrim, The Indian's axed your scalp. Your turkey wattle Carpet rolls Straight from the heart. I step on it, Clutching my bottle Of pink fizz. A celebration, this is. Out of a gap A million soldiers run, Redcoats, every one. Whose side are they on? 0 my Homunculus, I am ill. I have taken a pill to kill The thin Papery feeling. Saboteur, Kamikaze man The stain on your Gauze Ku Klux Klan Babushka Darkens and tarnishes and when The balled Pulp of your heart Confronts its small Mill of silence How you jump - Trepanned veteran, Dirty girl, Thumb stump. Poet Don Paterson reflects on Sylvia Plath's poem 'Cut'. |
| 05 LAST | Robert Frost's 'design' | 20170929 | Don Paterson is an award-winning poet, editor and teacher, but for all his technical ability and the recognition that has been paid to his work Paterson is acutely aware of awe and sometimes envy when he looks at the work of other writers. Here he applies his wit and skills of technical analysis to discussing five poems he wishes he had written. Tonight, Robert Frost's poem 'Design'. I found a dimpled spider, fat and white, On a white heal-all, holding up a moth Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth-- Assorted characters of death and blight Mixed ready to begin the morning right, Like the ingredients of a witches' broth-- A snow-drop spider, a flower like froth, And dead wings carried like a paper kite. What had that flower to do with being white, The wayside blue and innocent heal-all? What brought the kindred spider to that height, Then steered the white moth thither in the night? What but design of darkness to appall?-- If design govern in a thing so small. Poet Don Paterson reflects on Robert Frost's 'Design'. |