1 00:00:08,350 --> 00:00:11,150 As Britain entered the 20th century, 2 00:00:11,150 --> 00:00:14,670 English poetry seemed stuck in a rut. 3 00:00:14,670 --> 00:00:17,350 Poets wrote about nature, or celebrated 4 00:00:17,350 --> 00:00:22,470 the glories of empire, in language that was formal and ornate. 5 00:00:28,550 --> 00:00:33,510 But as old certainties crumbled, new generations seized their chance 6 00:00:33,510 --> 00:00:38,550 to rewrite the world and build a new kind of poetry from the ruins. 7 00:00:39,990 --> 00:00:43,990 They found words for the complexity, the upheaval 8 00:00:43,990 --> 00:00:46,030 and the doubt of the modern age. 9 00:00:51,150 --> 00:00:54,030 And there was another revolution... 10 00:00:54,030 --> 00:00:55,630 In the 20th century, 11 00:00:55,630 --> 00:00:58,910 television brought poets into millions of living rooms. 12 00:01:01,550 --> 00:01:05,670 As the BBC cameras rolled, poets took the chance to explain 13 00:01:05,670 --> 00:01:08,710 themselves to a mass audience for the first time. 14 00:01:15,310 --> 00:01:17,030 In this first programme, 15 00:01:17,030 --> 00:01:22,150 we'll meet the giants who set out to write for the new century. 16 00:01:22,150 --> 00:01:23,750 April is the cruellest month 17 00:01:25,350 --> 00:01:27,390 Breeding lilacs out of the dead land 18 00:01:28,710 --> 00:01:32,150 Mixing memory and desire... 19 00:01:32,150 --> 00:01:36,710 From TS Eliot, who dragged poetry into the modern age... 20 00:01:36,710 --> 00:01:38,110 When he left, respectable... 21 00:01:38,110 --> 00:01:42,950 ..to WH Auden, witness to the chaos of the 1930s... 22 00:01:42,950 --> 00:01:45,310 The little children died in the streets. 23 00:01:47,430 --> 00:01:51,670 Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs... 24 00:01:51,670 --> 00:01:56,150 ..to Dylan Thomas, whose lyrical voice held audiences spellbound. 25 00:01:56,150 --> 00:02:00,510 The night above the dingle starry... 26 00:02:01,710 --> 00:02:04,270 There were eccentrics, too. 27 00:02:04,270 --> 00:02:07,470 In my poems, the dead often speak and the ghosts come back. 28 00:02:08,910 --> 00:02:10,790 National treasures... 29 00:02:12,150 --> 00:02:15,230 ..and political rebels. 30 00:02:15,230 --> 00:02:18,710 We must get rid of England, somehow or other. Completely. 31 00:02:19,950 --> 00:02:24,190 Between them, they rewrote the rules of poetry for a new age. 32 00:02:25,590 --> 00:02:28,070 This is how they did it, in their own words. 33 00:02:44,150 --> 00:02:47,590 London at the turn of the 20th century. 34 00:02:47,590 --> 00:02:50,590 While other European cities were in the grip of artistic 35 00:02:50,590 --> 00:02:55,550 revolutions, British culture remained reassuringly traditional. 36 00:02:58,150 --> 00:03:02,350 In 1908, a radical young American arrived in London on a mission 37 00:03:02,350 --> 00:03:06,270 to, in his words, make poetry new. 38 00:03:06,270 --> 00:03:10,110 Ezra Pound was born in Idaho in 1885. 39 00:03:10,110 --> 00:03:12,350 As a student, he had resolved to 40 00:03:12,350 --> 00:03:15,270 "know more about poetry than any man living." 41 00:03:17,110 --> 00:03:20,710 In London, he planned to start a poetic revolution. 42 00:03:22,710 --> 00:03:27,350 The poetry of the 1890s, in England in particular, was dominated 43 00:03:27,350 --> 00:03:33,550 by a rather mournful, nostalgic, kind of pastiche poetry, really. 44 00:03:33,550 --> 00:03:36,270 A poetry that sort of imitated earlier Victorians, 45 00:03:36,270 --> 00:03:40,990 imitated the Romantics, and had a sort of decadent feel about it. 46 00:03:40,990 --> 00:03:44,030 Pound absolutely loathed this. 47 00:03:44,030 --> 00:03:47,110 He thought British poetry was flabby, it was dull, 48 00:03:47,110 --> 00:03:49,830 it was repetitive and he kind of put it on a diet. 49 00:03:49,830 --> 00:03:52,990 Everything had to be spare, every word had to count. 50 00:03:52,990 --> 00:03:55,390 Sent it to the gym, gave it a face-lift. 51 00:03:57,110 --> 00:04:00,350 And, you know, he was a great pioneer of modernism. 52 00:04:03,710 --> 00:04:08,310 In 1913, he wrote a modernist manifesto stating that poets 53 00:04:08,310 --> 00:04:10,870 should aim for precision with words, 54 00:04:10,870 --> 00:04:15,150 clear imagery and break free from familiar, traditional rhyme. 55 00:04:16,790 --> 00:04:19,710 His poems were pared down and precise, 56 00:04:19,710 --> 00:04:21,990 sometimes only a line or two long. 57 00:04:23,270 --> 00:04:26,550 But Pound wasn't starting from scratch, 58 00:04:26,550 --> 00:04:30,310 he was harking back to ancient sources. 59 00:04:30,310 --> 00:04:33,350 It was Chinese text that perfectly captured 60 00:04:33,350 --> 00:04:37,670 the precision of language and image that inspired his radicalism. 61 00:04:37,670 --> 00:04:42,350 Ezra Pound rarely appeared on camera, but in 1959 he was filmed 62 00:04:42,350 --> 00:04:46,670 for the BBC in Italy, demonstrating the qualities of Chinese writing. 63 00:04:48,470 --> 00:04:50,070 You have the primitive sun, 64 00:04:50,070 --> 00:04:54,310 then when they want to make it pretty, they square it up... 65 00:04:54,310 --> 00:04:56,750 and that's the sun. 66 00:04:56,750 --> 00:05:02,430 Then for the dawn, you've got the sun over the horizon. 67 00:05:02,430 --> 00:05:06,990 What was exciting for Pound about Chinese poetry, 68 00:05:06,990 --> 00:05:11,590 and the Chinese pictograms themselves, was that it seems as 69 00:05:11,590 --> 00:05:17,430 if the image is just there in just a few beautiful strokes of a brush. 70 00:05:17,430 --> 00:05:19,950 That's all compressed into one space. 71 00:05:19,950 --> 00:05:22,390 That is like a reply 72 00:05:22,390 --> 00:05:25,910 to the great frothing of what they saw as 73 00:05:25,910 --> 00:05:28,470 the decadent writers of the 1890s. 74 00:05:31,030 --> 00:05:35,750 Pound's life's work was an epic called The Cantos, a collection of 75 00:05:35,750 --> 00:05:38,070 poems that ranged through history 76 00:05:38,070 --> 00:05:40,870 and ancient cultures to the modern day. 77 00:05:40,870 --> 00:05:43,550 The Cantos remain among the most complex 78 00:05:43,550 --> 00:05:45,630 and challenging poems of the century. 79 00:05:49,510 --> 00:05:51,870 The Cantos were a sprawling, 80 00:05:51,870 --> 00:05:56,550 epic attempt to incorporate nothing less than virtually everything 81 00:05:56,550 --> 00:06:00,310 that had ever been written in any poetic tradition in the world. 82 00:06:00,310 --> 00:06:06,190 It was unbelievably ambitious and it was also, as a consequence, 83 00:06:06,190 --> 00:06:09,870 it was fragmentary, it was elliptical, it was collage. 84 00:06:09,870 --> 00:06:13,790 It was bits and pieces of a great many traditions, 85 00:06:13,790 --> 00:06:16,990 in a great many languages and even a great many alphabets. 86 00:06:20,550 --> 00:06:25,150 Pound read a controversial section of The Cantos for the BBC. 87 00:06:25,150 --> 00:06:26,550 In the poem, 88 00:06:26,550 --> 00:06:31,070 he attacks capitalist society for immoral money-lending or usury, 89 00:06:31,070 --> 00:06:36,190 which Pound calls "usura", an evil for which he blames Jewish bankers. 90 00:06:38,550 --> 00:06:43,150 With usura hath no man a house of good stone 91 00:06:43,150 --> 00:06:46,710 Each block cut smooth and well-fitting 92 00:06:46,710 --> 00:06:50,030 That design might cover their face, 93 00:06:50,030 --> 00:06:55,030 With usura hath no a man painted paradise on his church wall... 94 00:06:57,030 --> 00:07:02,270 Pound's ideas about global capitalism were bound up with 95 00:07:02,270 --> 00:07:05,750 anti-Semitic conspiracy theories in which he believed that 96 00:07:05,750 --> 00:07:09,830 it was Jewish people who were controlling capital and that it was 97 00:07:09,830 --> 00:07:13,030 Jewish greed, the stereotype of the Jewish usurer, 98 00:07:13,030 --> 00:07:14,630 who was the puppeteer. 99 00:07:16,950 --> 00:07:20,190 With usura the line grows thick 100 00:07:20,190 --> 00:07:23,350 With usura is no clear demarcation 101 00:07:23,350 --> 00:07:27,350 And no man can find site for his dwelling 102 00:07:27,350 --> 00:07:30,790 Stonecutter is kept from his stone 103 00:07:30,790 --> 00:07:33,390 Weaver is kept from his loom 104 00:07:33,390 --> 00:07:36,790 With usura wool comes not to market. 105 00:07:40,430 --> 00:07:43,550 CROWD CHEERS 106 00:07:43,550 --> 00:07:47,830 In his 30s, Pound's politics grew increasingly extreme. 107 00:07:47,830 --> 00:07:50,230 He believed fascism was the answer to what 108 00:07:50,230 --> 00:07:52,710 he saw as failing Western democracy. 109 00:07:55,710 --> 00:07:58,270 There's a strange idea that if you're modernist, 110 00:07:58,270 --> 00:08:00,870 you're somehow or other progressive politically, 111 00:08:00,870 --> 00:08:05,030 and that you're somehow part of a general liberal outlook. 112 00:08:05,030 --> 00:08:06,150 This isn't the case. 113 00:08:06,150 --> 00:08:08,670 Plenty of the modernists were quite keen on fascism 114 00:08:08,670 --> 00:08:11,590 and you can see a relationship, 115 00:08:11,590 --> 00:08:15,950 if you like, between the language that Pound uses about poetry, 116 00:08:15,950 --> 00:08:19,470 wanting it to be spare and hard and dry, 117 00:08:19,470 --> 00:08:24,030 and he wants the images to be powerful and working in themselves, 118 00:08:24,030 --> 00:08:28,870 and the way in which he and others worshipped Mussolini. 119 00:08:32,550 --> 00:08:36,390 After the Second World War, Pound was imprisoned for his fascist 120 00:08:36,390 --> 00:08:39,190 views, deemed anti-American. 121 00:08:39,190 --> 00:08:42,030 On his release, he returned to Italy. 122 00:08:43,190 --> 00:08:47,790 I can remember that it was pretty controversial that the BBC went 123 00:08:47,790 --> 00:08:51,150 and found him, and dug him out and interviewed him. 124 00:08:51,150 --> 00:08:55,470 Society had cast him out, the poetry world had cast him out, 125 00:08:55,470 --> 00:08:58,750 and he was this slightly prophet-like 126 00:08:58,750 --> 00:09:02,710 figure, raging in the wilderness. 127 00:09:02,710 --> 00:09:06,430 Pound's main importance and his accepted reputation 128 00:09:06,430 --> 00:09:09,510 is as sort of the midwife of modernism, really. 129 00:09:09,510 --> 00:09:13,070 And so he's a kind of high priest of early 20th century literature, 130 00:09:13,070 --> 00:09:15,870 but his own poetry is, 131 00:09:15,870 --> 00:09:18,710 I think, studied rather than read. 132 00:09:20,710 --> 00:09:24,790 Ezra Pound had set out to reshape poetry for the 20th century. 133 00:09:25,910 --> 00:09:27,990 But he had an important ally, 134 00:09:27,990 --> 00:09:31,190 a protege who would, in time, come to eclipse him. 135 00:09:33,510 --> 00:09:36,830 In 1914, TS Eliot, another American, 136 00:09:36,830 --> 00:09:38,510 was drawn to London 137 00:09:38,510 --> 00:09:41,710 and into Pound's modernist literary circle. 138 00:09:43,630 --> 00:09:46,070 It's an interesting fact that in the English tradition, 139 00:09:46,070 --> 00:09:49,990 modernist poetry emerges with two American poets working together, 140 00:09:49,990 --> 00:09:53,950 Ezra Pound and TS Eliot, both of whom had left America 141 00:09:53,950 --> 00:09:58,550 and come to Britain and were working together to create something 142 00:09:58,550 --> 00:10:02,350 that would be innovative and fresh in poetry. 143 00:10:03,670 --> 00:10:07,870 For Pound and Eliot, the idea of escaping America was something that 144 00:10:07,870 --> 00:10:12,030 they had to do in order to write in the way that they wanted to. 145 00:10:12,030 --> 00:10:14,950 Partly because the idea of exile, I think, 146 00:10:14,950 --> 00:10:17,710 appealed to both of them enormously. 147 00:10:17,710 --> 00:10:21,190 I don't think they really felt attached to the 148 00:10:21,190 --> 00:10:23,190 mass culture of America. 149 00:10:23,190 --> 00:10:27,310 In fact, both of them felt rather ambivalent towards it. 150 00:10:29,630 --> 00:10:33,350 Thomas Stearns Eliot was born in St Louis in 1888. 151 00:10:35,310 --> 00:10:38,710 He studied philosophy at Harvard, Paris and then Oxford, 152 00:10:38,710 --> 00:10:42,270 where his towering intellect set him apart from his peers. 153 00:10:46,550 --> 00:10:50,510 In London, Eliot spent his days working on foreign accounts for 154 00:10:50,510 --> 00:10:55,070 Lloyds Bank in the city, and then at publishing house Faber and Faber. 155 00:10:56,430 --> 00:10:59,910 There, he cultivated a studiedly unpoetic image. 156 00:11:03,030 --> 00:11:06,670 I think there has always been an idea that poets must be anarchic 157 00:11:06,670 --> 00:11:08,710 and dress in a flamboyant fashion, 158 00:11:08,710 --> 00:11:11,270 as, for instance, Ezra Pound did. 159 00:11:11,270 --> 00:11:13,710 Along comes TS Eliot. He wears a suit, 160 00:11:13,710 --> 00:11:16,390 he has an umbrella and a bowler hat. He is a city gent. 161 00:11:16,390 --> 00:11:18,670 And this is a huge breakthrough, 162 00:11:18,670 --> 00:11:21,310 you know, poets can look like anybody else. 163 00:11:21,310 --> 00:11:24,990 And yet, they are also writing the great poetry of the 20th century. 164 00:11:26,390 --> 00:11:30,310 Together, Pound and Eliot formed the most important partnership 165 00:11:30,310 --> 00:11:35,630 of 20th-century poetry, editing and promoting each other's work. 166 00:11:35,630 --> 00:11:37,910 Eliot's poetry reflected the turmoil 167 00:11:37,910 --> 00:11:41,350 and fragmentary state of the modern world. 168 00:11:41,350 --> 00:11:44,550 He appeared tantalisingly rarely on television, 169 00:11:44,550 --> 00:11:49,790 but he was filmed recording his poem, Four Quartets, for the BBC. 170 00:11:49,790 --> 00:11:53,350 The dove descending breaks the air 171 00:11:53,350 --> 00:11:56,150 With flame of incandescent terror 172 00:11:56,150 --> 00:11:58,830 Of which the tongues declare 173 00:11:58,830 --> 00:12:02,750 The one discharge from sin and error 174 00:12:03,950 --> 00:12:07,350 The only hope, or else despair 175 00:12:07,350 --> 00:12:11,710 Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre 176 00:12:11,710 --> 00:12:15,710 To be redeemed from fire by fire. 177 00:12:16,990 --> 00:12:20,870 POWERFUL EXPLOSIONS 178 00:12:22,070 --> 00:12:25,710 The First World War gave Eliot the impetus to write his most 179 00:12:25,710 --> 00:12:29,430 celebrated and revolutionary work, The Waste Land. 180 00:12:32,150 --> 00:12:35,630 Drawing on Pound's collage method of composition, 181 00:12:35,630 --> 00:12:38,270 the poem would come to define the emptiness 182 00:12:38,270 --> 00:12:40,750 and disillusionment of the post-war world. 183 00:12:41,950 --> 00:12:45,150 The Waste Land was modernist poetry's masterpiece. 184 00:12:50,710 --> 00:12:52,350 The Burial Of The Dead 185 00:12:54,790 --> 00:12:57,350 April is the cruellest month 186 00:12:57,350 --> 00:13:00,830 Breeding lilacs out of the dead land 187 00:13:00,830 --> 00:13:04,310 Mixing memory and desire 188 00:13:04,310 --> 00:13:07,710 Stirring dull roots with spring rain. 189 00:13:08,830 --> 00:13:10,790 Winter kept us warm 190 00:13:10,790 --> 00:13:13,830 Covering Earth in forgetful snow 191 00:13:13,830 --> 00:13:17,150 Feeding a little life with dried tubers. 192 00:13:19,230 --> 00:13:22,630 The Waste Land is probably our most famous 193 00:13:22,630 --> 00:13:25,830 artistic response to the First World War. 194 00:13:25,830 --> 00:13:29,870 It's very clearly a reaction to the 195 00:13:29,870 --> 00:13:34,950 sense of moral and spiritual and artistic breakdown. 196 00:13:34,950 --> 00:13:37,670 What is that sound high in the air 197 00:13:37,670 --> 00:13:40,510 Murmur of maternal lamentation 198 00:13:40,510 --> 00:13:44,310 Who are those hooded hordes swarming Over endless plains 199 00:13:44,310 --> 00:13:46,590 Stumbling in cracked earth 200 00:13:46,590 --> 00:13:49,630 Ringed by the flat horizon only 201 00:13:49,630 --> 00:13:52,550 What is the city over the mountains 202 00:13:52,550 --> 00:13:57,110 Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air 203 00:13:57,110 --> 00:13:59,310 Falling towers 204 00:13:59,310 --> 00:14:03,350 Jerusalem Athens Alexandria 205 00:14:03,350 --> 00:14:06,190 Vienna London 206 00:14:06,190 --> 00:14:07,870 Unreal. 207 00:14:10,110 --> 00:14:13,430 It is a poem that's radically de-centred. 208 00:14:13,430 --> 00:14:16,590 There's no perspective that unites it all. 209 00:14:16,590 --> 00:14:19,590 It is a poem about incoherence. 210 00:14:19,590 --> 00:14:22,910 It is a poem about looking for origins, 211 00:14:22,910 --> 00:14:25,710 for meanings, for trying 212 00:14:25,710 --> 00:14:29,390 to find a way to start over and finding that unbelievably painful. 213 00:14:31,150 --> 00:14:35,950 It's modernist in that the fragments of memory, bits of books, 214 00:14:35,950 --> 00:14:39,750 bits of culture, bits of overheard conversations. 215 00:14:39,750 --> 00:14:42,190 He puts them all in one poem 216 00:14:42,190 --> 00:14:46,230 and somehow manages to write 217 00:14:46,230 --> 00:14:48,470 and create the 20th century. 218 00:14:48,470 --> 00:14:50,790 It was written quite early in the century, 219 00:14:50,790 --> 00:14:53,910 but it absolutely looks forward. 220 00:14:55,710 --> 00:15:00,030 Alongside references to ancient myth and popular culture, 221 00:15:00,030 --> 00:15:03,870 the poem captures glimpses of contemporary life. 222 00:15:03,870 --> 00:15:06,150 Sometimes they're just conversations, you know, 223 00:15:06,150 --> 00:15:08,870 he talks about a woman talking about her husband, going, 224 00:15:08,870 --> 00:15:11,750 "When Lil's husband got demobbed, I said - I didn't mince my words, 225 00:15:11,750 --> 00:15:14,270 "I said to her myself, 'Hurry up, please, it's time.'" 226 00:15:14,270 --> 00:15:16,710 So you've got this bar, you can hear the barman, you can 227 00:15:16,710 --> 00:15:20,190 hear the ladies talking about a soldier, about the war. 228 00:15:20,190 --> 00:15:23,430 Now Albert's coming back, Make yourself a bit smart. 229 00:15:23,430 --> 00:15:26,150 He'll want to know what you've done with that money he gave you 230 00:15:26,150 --> 00:15:29,470 To get yourself some teeth. He did, I was there. 231 00:15:29,470 --> 00:15:32,310 You have them all out, Lil, And get a nice set, 232 00:15:32,310 --> 00:15:34,670 He said, I swear I can't bear to look at you. 233 00:15:34,670 --> 00:15:39,070 He's got this ability to make us hear what he heard, 234 00:15:39,070 --> 00:15:41,310 so he's making your ears get pricked up 235 00:15:41,310 --> 00:15:44,270 so that you are hearing more heightenedly and, actually, 236 00:15:44,270 --> 00:15:49,390 that is what poetry is, is us hearing ourselves better. 237 00:15:49,390 --> 00:15:50,950 It throws light on things. 238 00:15:50,950 --> 00:15:57,470 All art does that, it just sandblasts reality with light. 239 00:15:57,470 --> 00:16:00,790 High modernist poetry, particularly, is represented by The Waste Land, 240 00:16:00,790 --> 00:16:04,990 which is by far the most influential single poem of the 20th century, 241 00:16:04,990 --> 00:16:08,190 I think. It sort of cleared everything away, I mean, 242 00:16:08,190 --> 00:16:13,310 it liberated the next generation of poets from the past. 243 00:16:13,310 --> 00:16:15,230 It was as if after The Waste Land, 244 00:16:15,230 --> 00:16:17,630 all sorts of new things could become possible. 245 00:16:19,190 --> 00:16:22,430 The desolation of the First World War had led Eliot to 246 00:16:22,430 --> 00:16:24,590 write his masterpiece. 247 00:16:24,590 --> 00:16:27,470 But out of the horrors of the front lines 248 00:16:27,470 --> 00:16:30,870 would come a new, more direct kind of poetry. 249 00:16:30,870 --> 00:16:34,950 Faced with the unrelenting trauma of trench warfare, a group of 250 00:16:34,950 --> 00:16:40,190 soldier poets created some of the most moving poetry of the century. 251 00:16:40,190 --> 00:16:43,110 First World War poetry is just an outstanding 252 00:16:43,110 --> 00:16:45,990 movement in British verse. 253 00:16:45,990 --> 00:16:48,830 I think it's to do with this idea of, 254 00:16:48,830 --> 00:16:53,390 you know, trained literary minds on the front line. 255 00:16:53,390 --> 00:16:56,350 You know, you got these highly articulate, 256 00:16:56,350 --> 00:17:00,150 highly intelligent people who could work wonders with words, 257 00:17:00,150 --> 00:17:03,310 and suddenly they were there holding rifles 258 00:17:03,310 --> 00:17:09,030 and witnessing colossal, seemingly endless waste of human life. 259 00:17:09,030 --> 00:17:11,510 That's what got reported back to us in verse. 260 00:17:13,070 --> 00:17:14,710 The poetry of Wilfred Owen 261 00:17:14,710 --> 00:17:18,310 and Siegfried Sassoon broke new ground with its raw 262 00:17:18,310 --> 00:17:21,470 and shocking description of the horrors they witnessed. 263 00:17:24,590 --> 00:17:28,830 "All a poet can do today is warn", said Wilfred Owen, and, 264 00:17:28,830 --> 00:17:31,390 if you like, Owen and Sassoon are protest poets. 265 00:17:31,390 --> 00:17:34,430 They are telling people what it's like at the front 266 00:17:34,430 --> 00:17:38,910 and that nobody should have to put up with these conditions. 267 00:17:38,910 --> 00:17:42,310 SHELLING AND SHOUTING 268 00:17:44,870 --> 00:17:49,150 Fighting alongside Sassoon in France was Robert Graves, 269 00:17:49,150 --> 00:17:53,550 captain in the Royal Welch Fusiliers and budding poet. 270 00:17:53,550 --> 00:17:56,990 The war had a profound effect on Graves' poetry, 271 00:17:56,990 --> 00:17:58,350 and in 1916 his first 272 00:17:58,350 --> 00:18:00,470 volume of verse was published. 273 00:18:02,470 --> 00:18:05,510 That same year, his name appeared in print again, 274 00:18:05,510 --> 00:18:09,150 this time in a national newspaper, listed among the dead. 275 00:18:12,550 --> 00:18:17,070 Many years later, Graves reflected on his own death for the BBC. 276 00:18:19,790 --> 00:18:21,950 I was 22 hours dead. 277 00:18:21,950 --> 00:18:24,670 It was on my 21st birthday and that's where I started again, 278 00:18:24,670 --> 00:18:28,230 you see, I'm now only 53 instead of 74. 279 00:18:28,230 --> 00:18:30,710 You were reported dead? 280 00:18:30,710 --> 00:18:34,230 They closed my bank account, they wrote to my parents 281 00:18:34,230 --> 00:18:37,350 and said how heroic I was, they did everything. 282 00:18:37,350 --> 00:18:42,870 They stole all my kit and I appealed for it but I never got it back. 283 00:18:47,190 --> 00:18:48,710 As the war ended, 284 00:18:48,710 --> 00:18:52,470 Graves wrote a poem recalling the jubilation of Armistice Day. 285 00:18:54,310 --> 00:18:55,870 Armistice Day, 1918. 286 00:18:57,710 --> 00:19:01,670 What's all this hubbub and yelling, Commotion and scamper of feet 287 00:19:01,670 --> 00:19:04,590 With ear-splitting clatter of kettles and cans 288 00:19:04,590 --> 00:19:07,270 Wild laughter down Mafeking Street? 289 00:19:07,270 --> 00:19:09,390 O, those are the kids whom we fought for 290 00:19:09,390 --> 00:19:11,870 You might think they'd been scoffing our rum 291 00:19:11,870 --> 00:19:14,750 With flags that they waved When we marched off to war 292 00:19:14,750 --> 00:19:16,710 In the rapture of bugle and drum. 293 00:19:18,150 --> 00:19:21,830 But his anger at the futility of the war meant that celebrations 294 00:19:21,830 --> 00:19:23,350 were of little comfort. 295 00:19:24,750 --> 00:19:26,950 When the days of rejoicing are over 296 00:19:26,950 --> 00:19:29,390 And the flags are stowed safely away 297 00:19:29,390 --> 00:19:32,790 They will dream of another wild "War To End Wars" 298 00:19:32,790 --> 00:19:35,270 And another wild Armistice Day 299 00:19:35,270 --> 00:19:37,430 But the boys who were killed in the trenches 300 00:19:37,430 --> 00:19:40,270 Who fought with no rage and no rant 301 00:19:40,270 --> 00:19:43,350 We left them stretched out on their pallets of mud 302 00:19:43,350 --> 00:19:45,510 Low down with the worm and the ant. 303 00:19:50,790 --> 00:19:54,150 1920S SWING MUSIC 304 00:19:59,030 --> 00:20:02,950 In the 1920s, a weary post-war Britain was keen to put 305 00:20:02,950 --> 00:20:06,150 the misery of the trenches behind it. 306 00:20:06,150 --> 00:20:08,710 But perhaps it wasn't quite ready for a poet 307 00:20:08,710 --> 00:20:10,910 who was about to make a dramatic entrance. 308 00:20:13,150 --> 00:20:16,350 The eccentric, aristocratic Edith Sitwell. 309 00:20:18,350 --> 00:20:20,910 On the 12th June, 1923, 310 00:20:20,910 --> 00:20:23,190 Sitwell performed her poem, Facade, 311 00:20:23,190 --> 00:20:25,030 in London's Aeolian Hall. 312 00:20:26,150 --> 00:20:28,070 Sit and sleep 313 00:20:28,070 --> 00:20:30,870 Periwigged as William and Mary... 314 00:20:30,870 --> 00:20:33,910 She read her poems from behind a painted curtain. 315 00:20:33,910 --> 00:20:36,830 This version was designed by artist John Piper. 316 00:20:36,830 --> 00:20:39,150 ..the reynard-coloured sun and I sigh 317 00:20:39,150 --> 00:20:41,390 Oh, the nursery-maid Meg 318 00:20:41,390 --> 00:20:43,190 With a leg like a peg 319 00:20:43,190 --> 00:20:45,110 Chased the feathered dreams like hens, 320 00:20:45,110 --> 00:20:46,870 And when they laid an egg... 321 00:20:46,870 --> 00:20:50,630 Music by composer William Walton accompanied her words. 322 00:20:50,630 --> 00:20:53,310 ..the serene King James would steer. 323 00:20:53,310 --> 00:20:57,310 Her experimental blend of words and music took poetic convention 324 00:20:57,310 --> 00:20:58,950 and gave it a good shake. 325 00:20:58,950 --> 00:21:02,150 ..picked it up as spoil to boil for nursery tea, said the mourners. 326 00:21:02,150 --> 00:21:06,230 The poems are rich in quickfire wordplay, free association 327 00:21:06,230 --> 00:21:08,510 and modernist jazz rhythms. 328 00:21:08,510 --> 00:21:11,590 And whistling down the feathered rain Old Noah goes again. 329 00:21:11,590 --> 00:21:14,230 Facade was quite an extraordinary undertaking. 330 00:21:15,870 --> 00:21:21,030 It had this great kind of wheezing, arrhythmic poetry, 331 00:21:21,030 --> 00:21:25,230 and then the performance element, with Sitwell behind a screen 332 00:21:25,230 --> 00:21:28,150 and declaiming these words through a megaphone, 333 00:21:28,150 --> 00:21:32,510 so her voice ringing around the performance space. 334 00:21:32,510 --> 00:21:36,350 It was, I think, quite alienating for members of the audience. 335 00:21:37,790 --> 00:21:39,710 Puzzled theatre-goers thought they were 336 00:21:39,710 --> 00:21:42,990 the victims of an elaborate hoax and, overnight, 337 00:21:42,990 --> 00:21:46,070 Sitwell became the most talked about poet in England. 338 00:21:49,990 --> 00:21:52,630 But Sitwell was serious about revitalising 339 00:21:52,630 --> 00:21:57,030 poetry for the modern age, as she explained later on BBC radio. 340 00:22:01,750 --> 00:22:04,230 'At that time, a change in the direction, 341 00:22:04,230 --> 00:22:07,750 'imagery and rhythms in poetry was taking place, 342 00:22:07,750 --> 00:22:12,390 'owing to the rhythmical flaccidity the verbal deadness, the dead 343 00:22:12,390 --> 00:22:17,830 'and expected patterns of some of the poetry immediately preceding us. 344 00:22:17,830 --> 00:22:21,070 'It was therefore necessary to find rhythmical expression 345 00:22:21,070 --> 00:22:23,510 'for the heightened speed of our time.' 346 00:22:25,150 --> 00:22:27,470 Sitwell was a poetic innovator, 347 00:22:27,470 --> 00:22:31,910 but it was her strikingly eccentric looks that drew the most attention. 348 00:22:31,910 --> 00:22:34,990 At six foot tall and draped in Tudor gowns 349 00:22:34,990 --> 00:22:37,310 and jewels, she cut quite a dash. 350 00:22:38,430 --> 00:22:43,310 Everything about Sitwell was a performance - the clothes... 351 00:22:43,310 --> 00:22:45,190 and she knew she looked weird, 352 00:22:45,190 --> 00:22:49,030 and so her decision was to look even weirder and to make 353 00:22:49,030 --> 00:22:52,150 no allowances, people had to know 354 00:22:52,150 --> 00:22:55,030 that she has to be a poet - look at her! 355 00:22:57,590 --> 00:23:02,070 In 1959, she was interviewed by John Freeman for the celebrated 356 00:23:02,070 --> 00:23:04,230 BBC series, Face to Face. 357 00:23:07,590 --> 00:23:11,670 Dame Edith, the world outside your own circle of friends 358 00:23:11,670 --> 00:23:14,470 tends to think of you as remote, eccentric, 359 00:23:14,470 --> 00:23:17,110 forbidding and rather dangerous. 360 00:23:17,110 --> 00:23:19,590 Now, perhaps that's a false impression, and I want you 361 00:23:19,590 --> 00:23:23,190 to tell me, face to face, what sort of person you really are. 362 00:23:23,190 --> 00:23:28,310 Now, first, your appearance, why did you devise your personal 363 00:23:28,310 --> 00:23:30,710 style of clothes that you wear so often? 364 00:23:30,710 --> 00:23:35,030 Well, because I can't wear fashionable clothes. 365 00:23:35,030 --> 00:23:40,590 You see, I'm a throwback to remote ancestors of mine and I really 366 00:23:40,590 --> 00:23:43,590 would look so extraordinary if I wore coats and skirts. 367 00:23:43,590 --> 00:23:45,270 I would be followed for miles 368 00:23:45,270 --> 00:23:48,470 and people would doubt the existence of the Almighty, 369 00:23:48,470 --> 00:23:50,590 if they saw me looking like that. 370 00:23:50,590 --> 00:23:52,630 There was the dressing-up aspect, 371 00:23:52,630 --> 00:23:57,390 but there was also the idea that she is, as we think of her, 372 00:23:57,390 --> 00:24:01,590 a series of modernist lines and angles, 373 00:24:01,590 --> 00:24:03,750 she somehow transcends the flesh, 374 00:24:03,750 --> 00:24:06,230 which she didn't really have much of, 375 00:24:06,230 --> 00:24:09,910 and becomes lines and bones 376 00:24:09,910 --> 00:24:13,390 and costume jewellery and turbans and rings. 377 00:24:13,390 --> 00:24:15,990 She is a confection, a construction. 378 00:24:15,990 --> 00:24:17,990 She's like something that's been built, 379 00:24:17,990 --> 00:24:19,830 rather than something that was lived. 380 00:24:19,830 --> 00:24:23,390 You asked me just now, you said that people's idea of me 381 00:24:23,390 --> 00:24:28,070 was that I was eccentric and savage? 382 00:24:28,070 --> 00:24:30,470 Forbidding and dangerous. 383 00:24:30,470 --> 00:24:34,590 Well, I don't think I'm forbidding, excepting when I absolutely refuse 384 00:24:34,590 --> 00:24:37,350 to be taught my job by people who know nothing about it. 385 00:24:37,350 --> 00:24:39,950 I have devoted my whole life to writing poetry, 386 00:24:39,950 --> 00:24:41,950 which is to me a form of religion. 387 00:24:41,950 --> 00:24:45,310 And I'm not going to be taught by people who know nothing about it. 388 00:24:45,310 --> 00:24:47,070 I think it's very impertinent. 389 00:24:47,070 --> 00:24:49,590 I mean, I don't teach plumbers how to plumb. 390 00:24:50,750 --> 00:24:53,590 Despite dressing like a historical relic, 391 00:24:53,590 --> 00:24:56,390 with her poetry, Sitwell was ahead of her time. 392 00:25:14,310 --> 00:25:19,390 There is a genealogical relationship between Sitwell and rap, 393 00:25:19,390 --> 00:25:23,190 because her poetry was popular in recorded form, 394 00:25:23,190 --> 00:25:25,470 you bought a Sitwell LP. 395 00:25:25,470 --> 00:25:27,790 Her work should always be listened to - 396 00:25:27,790 --> 00:25:31,150 don't read it if you don't have to. Hear her perform it, 397 00:25:31,150 --> 00:25:34,590 because the music of it is in there in her voice. 398 00:25:55,070 --> 00:25:58,830 The 1930s took Britain into an age of political tension, 399 00:25:58,830 --> 00:26:02,830 economic crisis and high unemployment. 400 00:26:05,270 --> 00:26:08,350 In Europe, political leaders were squaring up 401 00:26:08,350 --> 00:26:11,150 for another devastating war. 402 00:26:13,110 --> 00:26:17,230 From this uncertainty, a young writer emerged, convinced that 403 00:26:17,230 --> 00:26:20,550 poetry should have an engaged, political voice. 404 00:26:23,910 --> 00:26:27,910 Wystan Hugh Auden was born in York, the son of a doctor. 405 00:26:29,670 --> 00:26:33,510 He won a scholarship to Oxford University, where he held sway 406 00:26:33,510 --> 00:26:38,430 over a group of idealistic young writers with strong left-wing views. 407 00:26:38,430 --> 00:26:42,830 They believed their duty as poets was to inspire political change. 408 00:26:45,510 --> 00:26:48,670 In his 20s, Auden travelled to Berlin, 409 00:26:48,670 --> 00:26:50,950 to bear witness and report back. 410 00:26:52,670 --> 00:26:54,550 There, he discovered and wrote about 411 00:26:54,550 --> 00:26:56,830 a Europe on the brink of catastrophe. 412 00:27:01,270 --> 00:27:03,350 If you read Auden's poetry of the '30s, 413 00:27:03,350 --> 00:27:05,270 there is a kind of urgency to it. 414 00:27:05,270 --> 00:27:08,230 He wrote about demagogues, dangerous leaders, 415 00:27:08,230 --> 00:27:10,670 such as you were seeing in Hitler and Mussolini. 416 00:27:10,670 --> 00:27:15,910 He is engaged and politicised and at the same time he's a very individual 417 00:27:15,910 --> 00:27:20,670 voice, fantastically mature and precocious from the start. 418 00:27:22,190 --> 00:27:25,310 Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after, 419 00:27:25,310 --> 00:27:29,830 And the poetry he invented was easy to understand. 420 00:27:29,830 --> 00:27:33,150 He knew human folly like the back of his hand, 421 00:27:33,150 --> 00:27:36,990 Was greatly interested in armies and fleets. 422 00:27:36,990 --> 00:27:41,550 When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter 423 00:27:41,550 --> 00:27:46,030 And when he cried, the little children died in the streets. 424 00:27:49,750 --> 00:27:54,270 Hungry to experience conflict, in 1937, Auden volunteered 425 00:27:54,270 --> 00:27:59,270 for the Republican forces fighting Fascism in the Spanish Civil War. 426 00:28:01,110 --> 00:28:03,310 My first guest, WH Auden. 427 00:28:03,310 --> 00:28:05,710 APPLAUSE 428 00:28:05,710 --> 00:28:09,470 But in later life, Auden would come to reject his youthful belief 429 00:28:09,470 --> 00:28:12,630 in the power of poetry to inspire change. 430 00:28:12,630 --> 00:28:16,630 He was interviewed by Michael Parkinson in 1972. 431 00:28:16,630 --> 00:28:22,790 You seemed to deny the thing that a lot of people suspect a poet hopes 432 00:28:22,790 --> 00:28:26,630 he could be, which is a kind of social, political reformer. 433 00:28:26,630 --> 00:28:31,750 No, that they can't be. At least, not in the West. 434 00:28:31,750 --> 00:28:35,990 By all means, let a writer or poet, 435 00:28:35,990 --> 00:28:41,070 if he feels like it, write what we now call an "engage" poem. 436 00:28:41,070 --> 00:28:44,630 But he must not imagine that by doing so 437 00:28:44,630 --> 00:28:48,390 he will change the course of history. 438 00:28:48,390 --> 00:28:51,390 Nothing I wrote postponed the war for five seconds, 439 00:28:51,390 --> 00:28:53,550 or prevented one Jew being gassed. 440 00:28:53,550 --> 00:28:58,910 Yes. Now, of course one can do them, but one mustn't imagine that 441 00:28:58,910 --> 00:29:01,550 one can change the course of history by doing it. 442 00:29:01,550 --> 00:29:07,070 I mean, if one asks what the function of not just literature 443 00:29:07,070 --> 00:29:12,710 but of all the arts is, first of all I'd say what Dr Johnson said. 444 00:29:12,710 --> 00:29:17,070 The aim of writing is to enable readers a little better 445 00:29:17,070 --> 00:29:20,950 to enjoy life, or a little better to endure it. 446 00:29:23,110 --> 00:29:27,230 Auden's verse became less urgent and more reflective. 447 00:29:28,630 --> 00:29:31,630 The BBC visited him at his summer home in Austria. 448 00:29:34,270 --> 00:29:36,550 As I walked out one evening, 449 00:29:36,550 --> 00:29:38,710 Walking down Bristol Street, 450 00:29:38,710 --> 00:29:40,630 The crowds upon the pavement 451 00:29:40,630 --> 00:29:43,430 Were fields of harvest wheat. 452 00:29:43,430 --> 00:29:45,270 And down by the brimming river, 453 00:29:45,270 --> 00:29:46,910 I heard a lover sing 454 00:29:46,910 --> 00:29:49,190 Under the arch of a railway, 455 00:29:49,190 --> 00:29:51,710 "Love has no ending. 456 00:29:51,710 --> 00:29:53,310 "I'll love you till the ocean 457 00:29:53,310 --> 00:29:55,030 "Is folded and hung up to dry 458 00:29:55,030 --> 00:29:58,070 "And the seven stars go squawking 459 00:29:58,070 --> 00:29:59,830 "Like geese about the sky." 460 00:30:01,470 --> 00:30:05,110 The reason that he's so important 461 00:30:05,110 --> 00:30:09,190 is to do with the incredible technical versatility 462 00:30:09,190 --> 00:30:11,630 and freedom of his poetry. 463 00:30:11,630 --> 00:30:16,590 It was often said that WH Auden had this peculiar gift of making 464 00:30:16,590 --> 00:30:19,670 ordinary words sound terribly poetic 465 00:30:19,670 --> 00:30:23,590 by putting them into echoing patterns of sounds. 466 00:30:23,590 --> 00:30:27,710 It's as if the experiments of people like Pound and Eliot 467 00:30:27,710 --> 00:30:32,110 have freed him to go back to the roots of what English poetry can do. 468 00:30:33,670 --> 00:30:36,110 "Stand, stand at the window 469 00:30:36,110 --> 00:30:38,630 "As the tears scald and start, 470 00:30:38,630 --> 00:30:40,710 "You must love your crooked neighbour 471 00:30:40,710 --> 00:30:43,110 "With your crooked heart." 472 00:30:43,110 --> 00:30:45,230 It was late, late in the evening, 473 00:30:45,230 --> 00:30:47,670 The lovers, they were gone, 474 00:30:47,670 --> 00:30:50,630 The clocks had ceased their chiming 475 00:30:50,630 --> 00:30:52,830 And the deep river ran on. 476 00:30:55,910 --> 00:31:02,270 On the whole, I think one's rather proud to serve a medium which, 477 00:31:02,270 --> 00:31:06,670 in our time, when the public has learnt to consume 478 00:31:06,670 --> 00:31:10,150 almost everything like cans of soup, 479 00:31:10,150 --> 00:31:13,190 poetry is somehow or other remained something you either have 480 00:31:13,190 --> 00:31:14,870 to read it or leave it alone. 481 00:31:14,870 --> 00:31:18,710 It's rather nice, I think, that one has this medium. 482 00:31:18,710 --> 00:31:21,670 At any rate, as few as one's readers may be, 483 00:31:21,670 --> 00:31:24,150 at any rate, one knows they can read. 484 00:31:32,510 --> 00:31:35,990 If Auden came to distance himself from politics, 485 00:31:35,990 --> 00:31:40,030 one fellow poet never wavered in his political commitment. 486 00:31:42,750 --> 00:31:45,110 Hugh MacDiarmid was born Christopher Grieve 487 00:31:45,110 --> 00:31:49,190 in the Scottish Borders in 1892. 488 00:31:49,190 --> 00:31:52,070 Fiercely patriotic, MacDiarmid was a member of both 489 00:31:52,070 --> 00:31:55,750 the Communist Party and the Scottish National Party. 490 00:31:55,750 --> 00:31:59,510 He also listed Anglophobia as one of his hobbies. 491 00:32:02,230 --> 00:32:04,390 I am a Scotsman, as you can hear. 492 00:32:04,390 --> 00:32:09,830 In the Declaration of Arbroath, way back in 1320, 493 00:32:09,830 --> 00:32:12,910 perhaps the greatest democratic pledge of all time, 494 00:32:12,910 --> 00:32:15,790 my people, the Scottish people, swore 495 00:32:15,790 --> 00:32:18,030 that as long as a hundred of them remained alive, 496 00:32:18,030 --> 00:32:22,430 they would never allow themselves to be dominated by the English. 497 00:32:22,430 --> 00:32:24,390 APPLAUSE 498 00:32:27,670 --> 00:32:31,990 My people have done little but betray that oath ever since. 499 00:32:33,470 --> 00:32:38,750 Some poets get their engine out of a kind of rebellion against the world. 500 00:32:38,750 --> 00:32:41,030 He was deliberately very provocative, 501 00:32:41,030 --> 00:32:44,630 he thought that was part of his duty, to be provocative. 502 00:32:44,630 --> 00:32:48,590 MacDiarmid felt that Scotland had lost itself, 503 00:32:48,590 --> 00:32:52,310 and that its identity could be reclaimed through poetry. 504 00:32:52,310 --> 00:32:54,990 But for him, the experience of being Scottish 505 00:32:54,990 --> 00:32:58,030 could not be properly expressed in English. 506 00:32:58,030 --> 00:33:03,390 He formulated an ambitious plan to create a new Scots language. 507 00:33:03,390 --> 00:33:08,310 I myself was convinced that there was nothing that the Scottish mind 508 00:33:08,310 --> 00:33:12,670 could conceive that couldn't be better expressed in Scots 509 00:33:12,670 --> 00:33:15,310 than in English, or any other language. 510 00:33:15,310 --> 00:33:21,310 There's a whole range of feelings, of combinations of ideas, 511 00:33:21,310 --> 00:33:25,910 all related to the specific character of Scottish landscape 512 00:33:25,910 --> 00:33:28,870 and to the history of the Scottish race 513 00:33:28,870 --> 00:33:32,830 in relation to their landscape, which is embodied in the vocabulary of 514 00:33:32,830 --> 00:33:38,510 Scots and which is very little used in the last couple of hundred years. 515 00:33:38,510 --> 00:33:41,070 He passionately wanted to write Scots 516 00:33:41,070 --> 00:33:43,670 and he wanted that not to be a backward-looking thing. 517 00:33:43,670 --> 00:33:49,630 He wanted to fuse modernism and language that was often antique. 518 00:33:49,630 --> 00:33:55,510 He didn't write dialect, he made a new, plastic language. 519 00:33:55,510 --> 00:33:57,350 He was actually before his time, 520 00:33:57,350 --> 00:34:01,910 he was before his time while using this old language 521 00:34:01,910 --> 00:34:04,190 in this amazing way. 522 00:34:04,190 --> 00:34:08,510 In 1978, MacDiarmid read his most famous work, 523 00:34:08,510 --> 00:34:10,750 A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle, 524 00:34:10,750 --> 00:34:11,790 for the BBC. 525 00:34:13,110 --> 00:34:14,870 O, Scotland is 526 00:34:14,870 --> 00:34:15,910 THE barren fig. 527 00:34:15,910 --> 00:34:17,190 Up, carles, up 528 00:34:17,190 --> 00:34:18,830 And roond it jig. 529 00:34:18,830 --> 00:34:20,070 Auld Moses took 530 00:34:20,070 --> 00:34:21,190 A dry stick and 531 00:34:21,190 --> 00:34:22,270 Instantly it 532 00:34:22,270 --> 00:34:23,670 Floo'ered in his hand. 533 00:34:23,670 --> 00:34:25,190 Pu' Scotland up, 534 00:34:25,190 --> 00:34:26,270 And wha can say 535 00:34:26,270 --> 00:34:27,350 It winna bud 536 00:34:27,350 --> 00:34:28,750 And blossom tae. 537 00:34:28,750 --> 00:34:29,790 A miracle's 538 00:34:29,790 --> 00:34:30,870 Oor only chance, 539 00:34:30,870 --> 00:34:32,190 Up, carles, up 540 00:34:32,190 --> 00:34:33,110 And let us dance! 541 00:34:36,470 --> 00:34:39,790 The poem is a long monologue in which a drunk man lying on 542 00:34:39,790 --> 00:34:43,470 a hillside contemplates Scotland's position in the world, 543 00:34:43,470 --> 00:34:45,950 and rages against its seeming passivity 544 00:34:45,950 --> 00:34:48,310 in the face of English domination. 545 00:34:50,150 --> 00:34:54,470 Inside this flimsy story of somebody lying drunk in a ditch, 546 00:34:54,470 --> 00:34:57,350 all this stuff goes through his head, 547 00:34:57,350 --> 00:34:59,870 and it's ancient, it's modern 548 00:34:59,870 --> 00:35:06,390 and it's very angry and it's very anti British Empire. 549 00:35:06,390 --> 00:35:09,230 It's one of the most brilliant and game-changing poems 550 00:35:09,230 --> 00:35:11,270 that have ever existed. 551 00:35:13,950 --> 00:35:18,030 MacDiarmid helped spark a renaissance in Scottish literature. 552 00:35:18,030 --> 00:35:21,230 But in later life, he felt the battle was far from over. 553 00:35:22,510 --> 00:35:24,030 It's very questionable, 554 00:35:24,030 --> 00:35:29,790 whether the whole business that I started wasn't too late. 555 00:35:33,030 --> 00:35:37,110 I was hopeful when England lost its Empire. 556 00:35:38,550 --> 00:35:43,190 It might not be, but England's fighting back, of course, 557 00:35:43,190 --> 00:35:46,430 and still thinks it is a world influence 558 00:35:46,430 --> 00:35:48,470 and a world mission and so on. 559 00:35:48,470 --> 00:35:51,870 Let's get rid of England, somehow or another. Completely. 560 00:35:51,870 --> 00:35:53,670 JOAN BAKEWELL: You're still hopeful? 561 00:35:53,670 --> 00:35:55,390 Hmm? You're still hopeful? 562 00:35:55,390 --> 00:35:56,830 I'm still hopeful, yes. 563 00:36:01,630 --> 00:36:03,830 In the suburbs of North London, 564 00:36:03,830 --> 00:36:07,310 another poet was planning her own quiet rebellion. 565 00:36:09,070 --> 00:36:13,590 Stevie Smith lived with her spinster aunt and worked as a secretary. 566 00:36:16,470 --> 00:36:19,190 But behind the curtains of her suburban home, 567 00:36:19,190 --> 00:36:22,470 she created poetry that defied all expectation. 568 00:36:25,590 --> 00:36:29,710 Stevie Smith is a rebel, complete. 569 00:36:29,710 --> 00:36:32,070 She's going to write poetry 570 00:36:32,070 --> 00:36:34,230 and she's going to mock the way we write poetry. 571 00:36:35,550 --> 00:36:40,190 She was actually taking the kind of assumptions 572 00:36:40,190 --> 00:36:43,670 we make about poetry and what's important and how poetry works, 573 00:36:43,670 --> 00:36:48,550 and she was just refusing to even try. 574 00:36:50,910 --> 00:36:54,230 Her poetry was both jaunty and unsettling, 575 00:36:54,230 --> 00:36:58,310 apparently naive, yet preoccupied with death. 576 00:36:58,310 --> 00:37:02,510 She is seen here in rare BBC footage from 1965. 577 00:37:04,070 --> 00:37:05,630 In my poems, 578 00:37:05,630 --> 00:37:08,870 the dead often speak and the ghosts come back. 579 00:37:08,870 --> 00:37:11,230 Here is a poor man who got drowned. 580 00:37:11,230 --> 00:37:13,710 His friends thought he was waving to them from the sea, 581 00:37:13,710 --> 00:37:15,230 but really, he was drowning. 582 00:37:17,390 --> 00:37:19,110 Nobody heard him, the dead man, 583 00:37:19,110 --> 00:37:21,870 But still he lay moaning: 584 00:37:21,870 --> 00:37:24,550 "I was much further out than you thought 585 00:37:24,550 --> 00:37:26,750 "And not waving, but drowning." 586 00:37:28,350 --> 00:37:30,350 Poor chap, he always loved larking 587 00:37:30,350 --> 00:37:31,750 And now he's dead 588 00:37:31,750 --> 00:37:35,110 It must have been too cold for him, his heart gave way, 589 00:37:35,110 --> 00:37:36,950 They said. 590 00:37:36,950 --> 00:37:41,630 "Oh, no, no, no, it was too cold always", 591 00:37:41,630 --> 00:37:44,870 (Still the dead one lay moaning) 592 00:37:44,870 --> 00:37:48,310 "I was much too far out all my life 593 00:37:48,310 --> 00:37:51,150 "And not waving, but drowning." 594 00:37:54,590 --> 00:37:57,750 Beyond the apparent simplicity of her poetry 595 00:37:57,750 --> 00:38:00,270 lay a carefully crafted and innovative style. 596 00:38:03,230 --> 00:38:05,150 The poetry that was written by gentlemen, 597 00:38:05,150 --> 00:38:08,350 for gentlemen to read in the years when everybody learnt Latin 598 00:38:08,350 --> 00:38:11,670 and Greek at school is over, it's gone. 599 00:38:11,670 --> 00:38:15,230 You want rhyme - bugger you, you're not getting a rhyme. 600 00:38:15,230 --> 00:38:19,910 You want a story - I can't even be bothered telling you a story. 601 00:38:19,910 --> 00:38:24,710 She's going to write in chip-chop rhythm, she's going to use 602 00:38:24,710 --> 00:38:29,150 extraordinary, limited vocabulary, high level of repetition. 603 00:38:29,150 --> 00:38:32,950 And it works in a minimalist way. 604 00:38:34,310 --> 00:38:36,910 People in rather odd circumstances are what 605 00:38:36,910 --> 00:38:40,910 most of my poems are about, mixed up with arguments, 606 00:38:40,910 --> 00:38:43,950 religious difficulties, ghosts, deaths, 607 00:38:43,950 --> 00:38:49,550 fairy stories and a general feeling of guilt for not writing more. 608 00:38:49,550 --> 00:38:54,110 Stevie Smith cultivated a certain view of herself as 609 00:38:54,110 --> 00:38:59,110 the hare-eyed spinster of Palmer's Green, 610 00:38:59,110 --> 00:39:04,070 producing these, in a way, wilfully eccentric poems, 611 00:39:04,070 --> 00:39:08,710 oddly naive little works with these rather childlike drawings 612 00:39:08,710 --> 00:39:11,910 appended to them, and yet, I think, 613 00:39:11,910 --> 00:39:16,870 despite that sort of atmosphere of cultivated eccentricity, 614 00:39:16,870 --> 00:39:21,270 there is something very hard within her and something very dark too, 615 00:39:21,270 --> 00:39:25,670 that sort of destructive element there is inside her work, 616 00:39:25,670 --> 00:39:28,390 it's so raw and so powerful. 617 00:39:29,550 --> 00:39:33,350 The general feeling about love in the poems is nervous. 618 00:39:33,350 --> 00:39:35,990 Like this poor little child who has been turned 619 00:39:35,990 --> 00:39:40,430 to stone in his mother's lap. She clutches him and cries, 620 00:39:40,430 --> 00:39:46,270 "I'll have your heart, if not by gift, my knife shall carve it out. 621 00:39:46,270 --> 00:39:48,550 "I'll have your heart, your life." 622 00:39:50,910 --> 00:39:54,350 It's precisely the darkness that reminds you that actually, 623 00:39:54,350 --> 00:39:58,990 what you're mistaking for whimsy is this minimalism. 624 00:39:58,990 --> 00:40:02,590 It's asking you to back off and take another look. 625 00:40:07,910 --> 00:40:12,750 The onward march of the suburbs in the interwar years provided 626 00:40:12,750 --> 00:40:16,270 inspiration for a poet with an altogether more benign vision. 627 00:40:18,710 --> 00:40:22,710 Miss J Hunter Dunn, Miss J Hunter Dunn, 628 00:40:22,710 --> 00:40:26,430 Furnish'd and burnish'd by Aldershot sun, 629 00:40:26,430 --> 00:40:30,110 What strenuous singles we played after tea, 630 00:40:30,110 --> 00:40:33,590 We in the tournament - you against me! 631 00:40:33,590 --> 00:40:37,430 Love-thirty, love-forty, oh! Weakness of joy 632 00:40:37,430 --> 00:40:40,150 The speed of a swallow, the grace of a boy, 633 00:40:40,150 --> 00:40:43,390 With carefullest carelessness, gaily you won, 634 00:40:43,390 --> 00:40:47,030 I am weak from your loveliness, Joan Hunter Dunn. 635 00:40:48,150 --> 00:40:54,270 John Betjeman was born in 1906, the son of a luxury goods tradesman. 636 00:40:54,270 --> 00:40:56,950 As a child, Betjeman was painfully aware 637 00:40:56,950 --> 00:41:00,470 of his family's low status in Britain's class system, 638 00:41:00,470 --> 00:41:05,070 a preoccupation that would later come to define his poetry. 639 00:41:05,070 --> 00:41:08,510 Around us are Rovers and Austins afar, 640 00:41:08,510 --> 00:41:12,870 Above us the intimate roof of the car, 641 00:41:12,870 --> 00:41:16,270 And here on my right is the girl of my choice, 642 00:41:16,270 --> 00:41:19,550 With the tilt of her nose and the chime of her voice. 643 00:41:19,550 --> 00:41:23,390 And the scent of her wrap, and the words never said, 644 00:41:23,390 --> 00:41:27,270 And the ominous, ominous dancing ahead. 645 00:41:27,270 --> 00:41:30,670 We sat in the car park till twenty to one 646 00:41:30,670 --> 00:41:35,110 And now I'm engaged to Miss Joan Hunter Dunn. 647 00:41:37,950 --> 00:41:41,670 Betjeman's verse saw a return to elements of poetry 648 00:41:41,670 --> 00:41:44,070 discarded by the modernists - 649 00:41:44,070 --> 00:41:49,270 regular rhyme, familiar rhythm and a wry sense of humour. 650 00:41:50,910 --> 00:41:53,070 A passionate lover of buildings, 651 00:41:53,070 --> 00:41:56,910 he championed Victorian architecture at a time when historic towns 652 00:41:56,910 --> 00:42:00,630 and cities were being threatened by modern ideas of progress. 653 00:42:03,590 --> 00:42:06,870 He became a poet of a passing England, 654 00:42:06,870 --> 00:42:10,070 an England that was being subsumed 655 00:42:10,070 --> 00:42:13,270 under the concrete of new developments. 656 00:42:13,270 --> 00:42:16,270 And there is something in the work like that too, 657 00:42:16,270 --> 00:42:19,670 it's attached to rhyme and rhythm 658 00:42:19,670 --> 00:42:25,150 in an attractively conventional, consoling, comforting way. 659 00:42:25,150 --> 00:42:29,150 So just as he defended the Victorian architrave, 660 00:42:29,150 --> 00:42:33,070 he's there, defending certain kinds of end stopped rhyme 661 00:42:33,070 --> 00:42:36,110 when other people are rejecting it or seeing that 662 00:42:36,110 --> 00:42:40,550 as the equivalent having too many knick-knacks over your fireplace. 663 00:42:42,430 --> 00:42:45,070 He slightly strikes you as a fuddy-duddy, 664 00:42:45,070 --> 00:42:49,270 but actually, he embraced TV, modern media, 665 00:42:49,270 --> 00:42:51,390 newspaper, radio, 666 00:42:51,390 --> 00:42:54,030 he wanted to run with that, 667 00:42:54,030 --> 00:42:55,990 and I think he understood how 668 00:42:55,990 --> 00:43:01,110 poetry could work with the general reader and the general public. 669 00:43:01,110 --> 00:43:04,270 Well, if you mention the word "poet" to most people, 670 00:43:04,270 --> 00:43:06,630 they'll reach for the sleeping tablets. 671 00:43:06,630 --> 00:43:09,870 Well, there's one poet who manages to bridge that hitherto unbridgeable 672 00:43:09,870 --> 00:43:14,030 gap between the public and his art, he is Sir John Betjeman. 673 00:43:14,030 --> 00:43:15,990 APPLAUSE 674 00:43:17,750 --> 00:43:20,750 Betjeman found a natural home in front of the camera 675 00:43:20,750 --> 00:43:23,830 and was a regular guest on prime time chat shows. 676 00:43:31,070 --> 00:43:33,470 What is the function of a poet, Sir John? 677 00:43:33,470 --> 00:43:40,270 I think primarily, it's to say things simply, shortly, 678 00:43:40,270 --> 00:43:43,830 rhythmically, memorably. 679 00:43:43,830 --> 00:43:46,030 And it's luck, it's inspiration, 680 00:43:46,030 --> 00:43:47,830 there is such a thing as inspiration. 681 00:43:47,830 --> 00:43:51,710 And when you tell me that thing, if it's true, 682 00:43:51,710 --> 00:43:55,750 that my poetry is read by people who don't ordinarily 683 00:43:55,750 --> 00:43:59,750 read poetry, that's all I could want to happen. 684 00:43:59,750 --> 00:44:04,270 Betjeman could speak to a couple of million people through 685 00:44:04,270 --> 00:44:10,510 one transmission, and I take my hat off to anybody who can take poetry 686 00:44:10,510 --> 00:44:14,950 out to the general public, cos the general public don't always want it. 687 00:44:14,950 --> 00:44:18,350 And he forged a link and a bond with them. 688 00:44:18,350 --> 00:44:20,750 Some of that was through his personality, 689 00:44:20,750 --> 00:44:23,350 but a lot of it was through his work. 690 00:44:23,350 --> 00:44:26,030 I am a young executive, 691 00:44:26,030 --> 00:44:28,230 No cuffs than mine are cleaner. 692 00:44:28,230 --> 00:44:29,990 I own an oblong briefcase 693 00:44:29,990 --> 00:44:32,510 And I use the firm's Cortina. 694 00:44:32,510 --> 00:44:36,070 In every roadside hostelry from here to Burgess Hill 695 00:44:36,070 --> 00:44:39,790 Les maitres d'hotel all know me well and let me sign the bill. 696 00:44:39,790 --> 00:44:41,830 You ask me what it is I do. 697 00:44:41,830 --> 00:44:43,910 Well, actually, you know, 698 00:44:43,910 --> 00:44:47,070 I'm partly a liaison man and partly PRO. 699 00:44:47,070 --> 00:44:50,390 Essentially, I integrate the current export drive 700 00:44:50,390 --> 00:44:54,270 And basically, I'm viable from ten o'clock till five. 701 00:44:54,270 --> 00:44:58,390 Those poems, they're not facile. They're not just party tricks. 702 00:44:58,390 --> 00:45:01,070 He's got a good eye for social conventions 703 00:45:01,070 --> 00:45:05,790 and a tongue for undermining things when he chooses. 704 00:45:05,790 --> 00:45:08,150 I do some mild developing. 705 00:45:08,150 --> 00:45:10,430 The sort of place I need 706 00:45:10,430 --> 00:45:14,310 Is a quiet country market town that's rather run to seed. 707 00:45:14,310 --> 00:45:17,830 A luncheon and a drink or two, a little savoir faire, 708 00:45:17,830 --> 00:45:21,790 I nobble half the council, the banks, the clerk, the Mayor. 709 00:45:21,790 --> 00:45:24,710 And if some preservationist attempts to interfere 710 00:45:24,710 --> 00:45:28,710 A 'dangerous structure' notice from the Borough Engineer 711 00:45:28,710 --> 00:45:32,790 Will settle any buildings that are standing in our way - 712 00:45:32,790 --> 00:45:36,670 The modern style, sir, with respect, has really come to stay. 713 00:45:36,670 --> 00:45:38,310 That's beautiful. 714 00:45:38,310 --> 00:45:40,270 APPLAUSE 715 00:45:50,630 --> 00:45:53,550 Far from the television studios of the capital, 716 00:45:53,550 --> 00:45:57,070 another, more solitary poet was waging his own war 717 00:45:57,070 --> 00:45:59,470 against the decline of a precious culture. 718 00:46:02,030 --> 00:46:07,070 RS Thomas was a Welsh Anglican priest and a staunch nationalist. 719 00:46:07,070 --> 00:46:10,390 Written in his parish in the remote hills of North Wales, 720 00:46:10,390 --> 00:46:14,110 his poems are deeply rooted in rural life. 721 00:46:14,110 --> 00:46:17,310 But far from romanticizing the countryside, 722 00:46:17,310 --> 00:46:21,790 Thomas's work evoked the harshness of the Welsh landscape and 723 00:46:21,790 --> 00:46:26,150 the struggles of isolated farming communities in the mid 20th century. 724 00:46:29,470 --> 00:46:31,550 Too far for you to see 725 00:46:31,550 --> 00:46:35,630 The fluke and the foot-rot and the fat maggot 726 00:46:35,630 --> 00:46:39,670 Gnawing the skin from the small bones, 727 00:46:39,670 --> 00:46:42,990 The sheep are grazing at Bwlch-y-Fedwen, 728 00:46:42,990 --> 00:46:46,390 Arranged romantically in the usual manner 729 00:46:46,390 --> 00:46:49,630 On a bleak background of bald stone. 730 00:46:52,630 --> 00:46:54,710 Too far for you to see 731 00:46:54,710 --> 00:46:58,670 The moss and the mould on the cold chimneys, 732 00:46:58,670 --> 00:47:03,190 The nettles growing through the cracked doors, 733 00:47:03,190 --> 00:47:06,110 The houses stand empty at Nant-yr-Eira, 734 00:47:07,510 --> 00:47:11,870 There are holes in the roofs that are thatched with sunlight 735 00:47:11,870 --> 00:47:14,790 And the fields are reverting to the bare moor. 736 00:47:17,670 --> 00:47:21,750 Though he shunned the media, Thomas agreed to make two films 737 00:47:21,750 --> 00:47:25,150 with the BBC about his life and work in the Welsh hills. 738 00:47:26,790 --> 00:47:31,070 I came out of a kind of bourgeois environment. 739 00:47:31,070 --> 00:47:36,950 And, er, this muck and blood and hardness 740 00:47:36,950 --> 00:47:43,270 and the rain and the spittle and phlegm of farm life 741 00:47:43,270 --> 00:47:46,830 was, of course, a shock to begin with, and one felt 742 00:47:46,830 --> 00:47:51,710 that this was something not quite part of the order of things, 743 00:47:51,710 --> 00:47:58,550 but as one experienced it and saw how definitely part of their lives 744 00:47:58,550 --> 00:48:03,270 this was, sympathy grew in oneself, 745 00:48:03,270 --> 00:48:06,870 and compassion and admiration. 746 00:48:08,630 --> 00:48:13,750 I did find that the strongly charactered hardness of these, 747 00:48:13,750 --> 00:48:17,830 er, border people really did make an impression on me, 748 00:48:17,830 --> 00:48:21,590 as far as poetic material was concerned. 749 00:48:21,590 --> 00:48:23,510 CHURCH BELL TOLLS 750 00:48:28,190 --> 00:48:31,910 For Thomas, language and imagery connected his work 751 00:48:31,910 --> 00:48:33,990 as priest and as poet. 752 00:48:35,950 --> 00:48:39,750 Poetry is religion, religion is poetry. 753 00:48:39,750 --> 00:48:43,790 The message of the New Testament is poetry. Christ was a poet. 754 00:48:45,070 --> 00:48:49,990 The New Testament is metaphor. The Resurrection is metaphor. 755 00:48:52,590 --> 00:48:56,590 When I preach poetry, I am preaching Christianity. 756 00:48:56,590 --> 00:48:59,990 And when one discusses Christianity, 757 00:48:59,990 --> 00:49:05,790 one is discussing poetry in its imaginative aspects. 758 00:49:05,790 --> 00:49:10,310 The core, the core of both are imagination, as far as I'm concerned. 759 00:49:10,310 --> 00:49:14,870 He couldn't bear literalism, he loved the fact that poetry 760 00:49:14,870 --> 00:49:21,750 and religion provided for each other very ready explanations. 761 00:49:21,750 --> 00:49:28,470 He could link in his imagination the idea of the story 762 00:49:28,470 --> 00:49:32,110 of the Resurrection with the word metaphor, 763 00:49:32,110 --> 00:49:37,110 that is how he wrote his sermons, how he thought about God, 764 00:49:37,110 --> 00:49:39,070 how he wrote his poems, 765 00:49:39,070 --> 00:49:43,550 and I believe it all to be one whole way of being. 766 00:49:43,550 --> 00:49:45,590 HE SPEAKS WELSH 767 00:49:45,590 --> 00:49:49,150 Despite his isolated existence, 768 00:49:49,150 --> 00:49:53,670 Thomas was passionately committed to contemporary causes. 769 00:49:53,670 --> 00:49:55,670 He was well-known for his campaigning - 770 00:49:55,670 --> 00:49:59,750 for nuclear disarmament and for wider use of the Welsh language. 771 00:50:01,870 --> 00:50:05,910 'As the arson campaign enters its 14th week, police in Wales 772 00:50:05,910 --> 00:50:10,150 'have warned that all homes owned by English people are now at risk.' 773 00:50:10,150 --> 00:50:11,270 Most controversially, 774 00:50:11,270 --> 00:50:15,430 when a militant Welsh nationalist group burnt down English-owned 775 00:50:15,430 --> 00:50:19,230 holiday homes in the 1970s, Thomas was moved to defend them. 776 00:50:36,990 --> 00:50:39,510 Where can I go, then, from the smell 777 00:50:39,510 --> 00:50:43,910 Of decay, from the putrefying of a dead nation? 778 00:50:46,790 --> 00:50:48,190 I have walked the shore 779 00:50:48,190 --> 00:50:49,910 For an hour and seen the English 780 00:50:49,910 --> 00:50:51,670 Scavenging among the remains 781 00:50:51,670 --> 00:50:55,430 Of our culture, covering the sand 782 00:50:55,430 --> 00:50:58,590 Like the tide and, with the roughness 783 00:50:58,590 --> 00:51:00,830 Of the tide, elbowing our language 784 00:51:00,830 --> 00:51:05,030 Into the grave that we have dug for it. 785 00:51:16,150 --> 00:51:20,630 Born only a year after the reclusive RS Thomas was another 786 00:51:20,630 --> 00:51:24,910 Welsh poet, but one who lived and died squarely in the limelight. 787 00:51:26,510 --> 00:51:29,350 Dylan Thomas, the son of an English teacher, 788 00:51:29,350 --> 00:51:32,630 was born in Swansea in 1914. 789 00:51:32,630 --> 00:51:35,750 He developed an early love for words and their sounds. 790 00:51:37,310 --> 00:51:40,910 He was a prodigal poet, writing much of his most famous work 791 00:51:40,910 --> 00:51:42,950 while still living with his parents. 792 00:51:44,390 --> 00:51:48,790 His first collection was published in 1934, and soon after, 793 00:51:48,790 --> 00:51:50,710 he began broadcasting for the BBC. 794 00:51:52,150 --> 00:51:56,230 In 1949, he recorded a poem written to mark his 30th birthday. 795 00:51:58,870 --> 00:52:03,350 Here is a poem called Poem in October. 796 00:52:03,350 --> 00:52:06,510 It was my thirtieth year to heaven 797 00:52:06,510 --> 00:52:09,790 Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood 798 00:52:09,790 --> 00:52:11,750 And the mussel pooled and the heron 799 00:52:11,750 --> 00:52:13,510 Priested shore 800 00:52:13,510 --> 00:52:15,390 The morning beckon 801 00:52:15,390 --> 00:52:18,950 With water praying and call of seagull and rook 802 00:52:18,950 --> 00:52:22,630 And the knock of sailing boats on the net webbed wall 803 00:52:22,630 --> 00:52:24,550 Myself to set foot 804 00:52:24,550 --> 00:52:26,030 That second 805 00:52:26,030 --> 00:52:29,430 In the still sleeping town and set forth. 806 00:52:32,510 --> 00:52:35,710 I can remember the sound of Dylan Thomas's voice 807 00:52:35,710 --> 00:52:39,790 coming out of the radio, it was very deep and fruity, and also 808 00:52:39,790 --> 00:52:43,310 this accent that you could almost feel like you could 809 00:52:43,310 --> 00:52:48,750 touch it and get into it, so when he said things like "all shining", 810 00:52:48,750 --> 00:52:54,590 and if you had an old radio, it would rattle a bit as well. 811 00:52:54,590 --> 00:52:56,150 In a way, the BBC made him, 812 00:52:56,150 --> 00:52:59,390 they gave him his voice and he gave his voice to the radio. 813 00:53:02,350 --> 00:53:06,550 Thomas's writing was precocious and original, full of an exuberance 814 00:53:06,550 --> 00:53:10,030 for words, at odds with the sparse poetry of his contemporaries. 815 00:53:11,590 --> 00:53:13,950 Dylan Thomas is a poet who isn't trying 816 00:53:13,950 --> 00:53:16,030 to join the classical tradition, 817 00:53:16,030 --> 00:53:18,990 he just breaks it by bursting out, 818 00:53:18,990 --> 00:53:24,070 I suppose he's a pure talent, he's a kind of volcano of talent. 819 00:53:24,070 --> 00:53:28,350 He was the first star, a public star, 820 00:53:28,350 --> 00:53:32,230 as in on the BBC, he became a sort of rock star, but he was a poet. 821 00:53:32,230 --> 00:53:34,070 And that's unusual. 822 00:53:34,070 --> 00:53:37,910 With Dylan Thomas, you get a return to the old idea of the poet 823 00:53:37,910 --> 00:53:40,270 as a bard, an orator. 824 00:53:40,270 --> 00:53:42,350 I mean, he was a great performer of his own work, 825 00:53:42,350 --> 00:53:44,790 great reader of his own work. 826 00:53:44,790 --> 00:53:47,310 It's extravagant. 827 00:53:47,310 --> 00:53:50,950 It's word breeding another word, image breeding image. 828 00:53:50,950 --> 00:53:53,390 We have lushness and rhetoric. 829 00:53:53,390 --> 00:53:56,590 For him, poems had to be read aloud, he loved the sound of words 830 00:53:56,590 --> 00:53:59,230 and that was really crucial to the way he wrote. 831 00:54:00,390 --> 00:54:02,790 In London, as his career took off, 832 00:54:02,790 --> 00:54:08,550 Thomas's legendary hard-drinking reputation began to take root. 833 00:54:08,550 --> 00:54:12,830 Remarkably, no footage or filmed interviews with Thomas exist. 834 00:54:12,830 --> 00:54:16,470 But his widow, Caitlin Thomas, gave an interview to the BBC 835 00:54:16,470 --> 00:54:19,550 in 1977 about life with the poet. 836 00:54:21,510 --> 00:54:25,550 From the very start, he had just the one idea - 837 00:54:25,550 --> 00:54:27,830 the poems and the booze. 838 00:54:27,830 --> 00:54:29,950 In that order, was it, then? 839 00:54:29,950 --> 00:54:32,110 Yes. The poems, they were more important, 840 00:54:32,110 --> 00:54:38,230 but I think he used the booze to kind of wipe out the poems, 841 00:54:38,230 --> 00:54:40,990 not to think about them when he wasn't writing them. 842 00:54:40,990 --> 00:54:42,270 How did he write poetry, 843 00:54:42,270 --> 00:54:44,150 and was it easy for him, or difficult? 844 00:54:44,150 --> 00:54:46,870 No, no, no, it was terribly difficult for him. 845 00:54:48,230 --> 00:54:51,950 He used to go into his little shed and scrape and scratch and mutter 846 00:54:51,950 --> 00:54:55,710 and mumble and intone and change 847 00:54:55,710 --> 00:54:57,830 and he was frightfully slow, you know. 848 00:54:57,830 --> 00:55:00,350 In one whole long afternoon from about 2:00 to 7:00, 849 00:55:00,350 --> 00:55:02,630 he might have done just one line, 850 00:55:02,630 --> 00:55:05,430 or taken out one word, or put in one word. 851 00:55:07,670 --> 00:55:10,630 Much of Thomas's poetry paints a nostalgic picture 852 00:55:10,630 --> 00:55:12,230 of his childhood in Wales. 853 00:55:17,070 --> 00:55:21,190 Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs 854 00:55:21,190 --> 00:55:26,150 About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green, 855 00:55:26,150 --> 00:55:29,390 The night above the dingle starry, 856 00:55:29,390 --> 00:55:32,270 Time let me hail and climb 857 00:55:32,270 --> 00:55:35,710 Golden in the heydays of his eyes, 858 00:55:35,710 --> 00:55:40,030 And honoured among wagons, I was prince of the apple towns 859 00:55:40,030 --> 00:55:45,270 And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves 860 00:55:45,270 --> 00:55:48,670 Trail with daisies and barley 861 00:55:48,670 --> 00:55:52,150 Down the rivers of the windfall light. 862 00:55:55,230 --> 00:55:58,670 It is a nostalgia for his childhood, but not one that he was 863 00:55:58,670 --> 00:56:03,270 trying to repeat in his life, it's a nostalgia seeped in technicolour, 864 00:56:03,270 --> 00:56:09,670 his memory, and it's as if there's a sort of saturation in his memory. 865 00:56:09,670 --> 00:56:14,910 Thomas's image as the fast-living enfant terrible of poetry 866 00:56:14,910 --> 00:56:17,990 became fixed in the public imagination. 867 00:56:17,990 --> 00:56:21,310 It was a role he would adopt until his death in 1953. 868 00:56:22,630 --> 00:56:25,630 For his widow, his demise had seemed inevitable. 869 00:56:26,750 --> 00:56:29,350 He was always convinced that he was going to die 870 00:56:29,350 --> 00:56:31,030 before middle age, wasn't he? 871 00:56:31,030 --> 00:56:33,950 Yes, he was, he had a ridiculous, 872 00:56:33,950 --> 00:56:37,870 romantic idea, you know, of the poet starving in the garret, 873 00:56:37,870 --> 00:56:40,230 and all that helped the image he was trying to build up 874 00:56:40,230 --> 00:56:44,750 of the tubercular, consumptive, dying, pale poet, 875 00:56:44,750 --> 00:56:49,270 and he wanted to be long and sickly and green and all that. 876 00:56:49,270 --> 00:56:53,590 But in fact, of course, he was square and small and not like 877 00:56:53,590 --> 00:56:55,750 the conventional idea of a poet at all. 878 00:56:57,550 --> 00:57:02,430 Thomas undoubtedly cultivated the image of the Poet, capital P, 879 00:57:02,430 --> 00:57:04,590 which had almost been killed off. 880 00:57:04,590 --> 00:57:08,390 So it was the poet as the drinker - and my God, Thomas was a drinker - 881 00:57:08,390 --> 00:57:10,070 the poet as womanizer. 882 00:57:10,070 --> 00:57:12,750 There was something in the end rather infantile 883 00:57:12,750 --> 00:57:14,550 and innocent about Dylan Thomas, 884 00:57:14,550 --> 00:57:17,630 and suddenly this worldly success came to him, 885 00:57:17,630 --> 00:57:20,750 and he couldn't cope with it and of course, it killed him. 886 00:57:23,030 --> 00:57:28,470 Was he the same man in his own private life 887 00:57:28,470 --> 00:57:30,990 as he projected publicly? 888 00:57:30,990 --> 00:57:33,950 No, he was rather off-stage in the house. 889 00:57:33,950 --> 00:57:36,030 He liked his warm slippers, you know, 890 00:57:36,030 --> 00:57:39,830 and his dish of titbits and pickled onions and sardines, 891 00:57:39,830 --> 00:57:44,470 anything with a lot of vinegar, and cockles, all put on a plate which 892 00:57:44,470 --> 00:57:48,990 he'd stuff into his mouth when he was listening to the cricket scores. 893 00:57:48,990 --> 00:57:51,630 So, you know, I keep... He was just Mr Everyman 894 00:57:51,630 --> 00:57:55,670 until he put on the act of being the poet, or until he wrote his poetry. 895 00:57:58,230 --> 00:58:03,230 Oh, as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means, 896 00:58:03,230 --> 00:58:08,390 Time held me green and dying 897 00:58:08,390 --> 00:58:12,550 Though I sang in my chains like the sea. 898 00:58:18,230 --> 00:58:23,070 Next time - the aftermath of war breeds a new kind of poetry, 899 00:58:23,070 --> 00:58:26,350 keen to reflect the voice of the ordinary man and woman. 900 00:58:26,350 --> 00:58:31,270 A new kind of poet from outside the world of the educated white male. 901 00:58:31,270 --> 00:58:33,750 And a new kind of audience, 902 00:58:33,750 --> 00:58:36,990 many turned on to poetry for the first time.