1 00:00:03,975 --> 00:00:10,750 In the second half of the 20th century English poetry went through an extraordinary transformation. 2 00:00:10,750 --> 00:00:14,400 In the aftermath of war new kinds of poets emerged, 3 00:00:14,400 --> 00:00:17,240 who took poetry from a scholarly elite 4 00:00:17,240 --> 00:00:19,600 and turned it into an art form for everyone. 5 00:00:20,840 --> 00:00:23,840 They found a powerful new language 6 00:00:23,840 --> 00:00:26,520 and laid bare the torments of the modern soul. 7 00:00:27,600 --> 00:00:30,560 Poets from America brought a direct style of performance 8 00:00:30,560 --> 00:00:32,840 to resonate with a new audience. 9 00:00:32,840 --> 00:00:38,320 Yes! I am that worm soul 10 00:00:38,320 --> 00:00:41,880 under the heel of the demon horses. 11 00:00:43,560 --> 00:00:47,600 And as poets caught the public eye, the cameras of the BBC 12 00:00:47,600 --> 00:00:50,080 brought their work into millions of living rooms. 13 00:00:52,680 --> 00:00:56,800 From Philip Larkin, who captured the spirit of '50s Britain... 14 00:00:56,800 --> 00:00:58,520 Hatless, I take off 15 00:00:58,520 --> 00:01:02,080 My cycle-clips in awkward reverence. 16 00:01:02,080 --> 00:01:05,120 ..to Sylvia Plath, who gate-crashed the all-male club 17 00:01:05,120 --> 00:01:06,600 of poetry in English... 18 00:01:08,240 --> 00:01:09,360 Dying 19 00:01:09,360 --> 00:01:11,200 Is an art, like everything else. 20 00:01:12,240 --> 00:01:14,480 I do it exceptionally well. 21 00:01:14,480 --> 00:01:17,000 ..to Seamus Heaney, the Irish farmer's son 22 00:01:17,000 --> 00:01:19,640 who found readers all over the world. 23 00:01:19,640 --> 00:01:22,680 There were new voices from outside the mainstream 24 00:01:22,680 --> 00:01:24,800 and prophets of the counterculture. 25 00:01:24,800 --> 00:01:26,480 I think everyone ought to take LSD 26 00:01:26,480 --> 00:01:29,000 and get rid of their violence and their colour 27 00:01:29,000 --> 00:01:31,480 and their identity and, like, get with it finally 28 00:01:31,480 --> 00:01:34,520 and stop making such a big, noisy scene. 29 00:01:34,520 --> 00:01:38,160 Together, they voiced what it was like to live in the modern age. 30 00:01:39,280 --> 00:01:42,240 This is how they did it in their own words. 31 00:01:43,960 --> 00:01:51,120 This programme contains some strong language. 32 00:01:53,760 --> 00:01:55,880 Britain in the 1950s. 33 00:01:58,720 --> 00:02:00,960 A country still recovering from war. 34 00:02:02,240 --> 00:02:04,680 A country rebuilding itself 35 00:02:04,680 --> 00:02:06,560 and ready for change. 36 00:02:08,880 --> 00:02:11,960 The ambitious elder statesmen of English poetry, 37 00:02:11,960 --> 00:02:14,760 such as TS Eliot and WH Auden, 38 00:02:14,760 --> 00:02:17,280 felt like giants from a previous age. 39 00:02:18,480 --> 00:02:21,120 I think poetry after the Second World War 40 00:02:21,120 --> 00:02:23,600 had lost a lot of its confidence. 41 00:02:23,600 --> 00:02:29,400 And I think that the sort of ground was open for voices to come in 42 00:02:29,400 --> 00:02:31,280 and be heard. 43 00:02:31,280 --> 00:02:33,960 There's been a great tradition in 20th-century poetry 44 00:02:33,960 --> 00:02:35,200 of issuing manifestos. 45 00:02:35,200 --> 00:02:38,760 Each generation comes along, issues a manifesto saying, 46 00:02:38,760 --> 00:02:41,640 "Those lot before us are rubbish. Now it's our turn." 47 00:02:43,280 --> 00:02:45,720 True to form, in 1956, 48 00:02:45,720 --> 00:02:48,760 a group of up-and-coming poets were all published together 49 00:02:48,760 --> 00:02:50,960 in a brand-new anthology, 50 00:02:50,960 --> 00:02:54,080 and became known, informally, as The Movement. 51 00:02:55,400 --> 00:02:59,240 Reacting against the obscure experiments of modernism, 52 00:02:59,240 --> 00:03:04,240 these writers used traditional verse forms and a wry everyday language. 53 00:03:04,240 --> 00:03:06,560 The early poetry of those writers 54 00:03:06,560 --> 00:03:08,720 was full of observation 55 00:03:08,720 --> 00:03:09,960 and anecdote, 56 00:03:09,960 --> 00:03:12,480 and often, observation and anecdote 57 00:03:12,480 --> 00:03:15,040 drawn from the daily lives 58 00:03:15,040 --> 00:03:17,600 of the poets, which meant the daily lives of the readers too. 59 00:03:19,280 --> 00:03:23,240 The Movement was made up of mostly male, white-collar workers, 60 00:03:23,240 --> 00:03:25,640 including librarian Philip Larkin, 61 00:03:25,640 --> 00:03:28,120 and university lecturer Kingsley Amis. 62 00:03:29,240 --> 00:03:32,280 When you have movements and generations and little collectives, 63 00:03:32,280 --> 00:03:34,600 there's always one person that stands out, really, 64 00:03:34,600 --> 00:03:36,520 and it's around them everything revolves. 65 00:03:36,520 --> 00:03:38,920 And in the case of those '50s poets, it's Larkin. 66 00:03:41,880 --> 00:03:46,200 Philip Larkin was affectionately known as the Hermit Of Hull. 67 00:03:46,200 --> 00:03:48,880 Though he won critical acclaim in his 30s, 68 00:03:48,880 --> 00:03:50,400 he shunned the limelight 69 00:03:50,400 --> 00:03:54,600 for a quiet career as a university librarian for over three decades. 70 00:03:56,400 --> 00:03:59,320 But, in 1964, he allowed himself to be filmed 71 00:03:59,320 --> 00:04:03,280 for the BBC's flagship arts programme, Monitor. 72 00:04:03,280 --> 00:04:06,560 Work and I get on fairly well, I think. 73 00:04:06,560 --> 00:04:09,400 Just these occasions when, um, 74 00:04:09,400 --> 00:04:12,480 one would like to prove it by not working for a bit. 75 00:04:12,480 --> 00:04:13,600 HE CHUCKLES 76 00:04:13,600 --> 00:04:15,280 When I bind up 77 00:04:15,280 --> 00:04:17,680 the library committee minutes at the end of five years, 78 00:04:17,680 --> 00:04:19,440 it makes a great fat volume, 79 00:04:19,440 --> 00:04:22,640 but it's not the same as a volume of poetry. 80 00:04:22,640 --> 00:04:25,600 Larkin was always described to me at school 81 00:04:25,600 --> 00:04:28,880 as "the voice of the man next door". 82 00:04:28,880 --> 00:04:31,920 He didn't sound like the man who lived next door to me, 83 00:04:31,920 --> 00:04:35,640 but I understand where that comment comes from. 84 00:04:35,640 --> 00:04:40,160 Uh, there's a sense of him describing the daily, 85 00:04:40,160 --> 00:04:43,440 the ordinary, the domestic. 86 00:04:43,440 --> 00:04:47,200 It was a language that came out of the bus stop 87 00:04:47,200 --> 00:04:50,400 and the newspaper, 88 00:04:50,400 --> 00:04:52,640 transformed through his poetic powers. 89 00:04:53,880 --> 00:04:59,520 When getting my nose in a book Cured most things short of school 90 00:04:59,520 --> 00:05:01,800 It was worth ruining my eyes 91 00:05:01,800 --> 00:05:04,480 To know I could still keep cool 92 00:05:04,480 --> 00:05:06,920 And deal out the old right hook 93 00:05:06,920 --> 00:05:09,280 To dirty dogs twice my size 94 00:05:10,680 --> 00:05:13,120 Later, with inch-thick specs 95 00:05:13,120 --> 00:05:15,560 Evil was just my lark 96 00:05:15,560 --> 00:05:18,000 Me and my cloak and fangs 97 00:05:18,000 --> 00:05:20,640 Had ripping times in the dark 98 00:05:20,640 --> 00:05:22,800 The women I clubbed with sex! 99 00:05:23,840 --> 00:05:25,760 I broke them up like meringues 100 00:05:26,880 --> 00:05:28,880 Don't read much now 101 00:05:28,880 --> 00:05:30,000 The dude 102 00:05:30,000 --> 00:05:32,080 Who lets the girl down before 103 00:05:32,080 --> 00:05:33,640 The hero arrives 104 00:05:33,640 --> 00:05:34,760 The chap 105 00:05:34,760 --> 00:05:37,040 Who's yellow and keeps the store 106 00:05:37,040 --> 00:05:39,320 Seem far too familiar 107 00:05:39,320 --> 00:05:41,280 Get stewed 108 00:05:41,280 --> 00:05:43,040 Books are a load of crap. 109 00:05:44,640 --> 00:05:48,320 The striking thing about Larkin's poetry is, in a way, 110 00:05:48,320 --> 00:05:50,840 it's eloquent ordinariness. 111 00:05:50,840 --> 00:05:53,960 You can analyse as much as you want his poetry 112 00:05:53,960 --> 00:05:57,440 in terms of...sort of the nerves it touches 113 00:05:57,440 --> 00:06:02,400 and the experiences of sort of welfare state Britain, 114 00:06:02,400 --> 00:06:05,320 life in the post-war world, that it illuminates, 115 00:06:05,320 --> 00:06:07,600 and that's all true but, in the end, 116 00:06:07,600 --> 00:06:11,240 it's his gift for memorable phrases and lines. 117 00:06:12,920 --> 00:06:15,840 He had the tendency to send himself up rather, 118 00:06:15,840 --> 00:06:17,880 so, when appears on camera, 119 00:06:17,880 --> 00:06:18,960 he is, in a way, 120 00:06:18,960 --> 00:06:20,800 playing a...kind of a part. 121 00:06:20,800 --> 00:06:26,880 I read that, you know, I'm a miserable sort of fellow 122 00:06:26,880 --> 00:06:30,920 writing a kind of welfare state sub poetry, 123 00:06:30,920 --> 00:06:33,240 um, doing it well, perhaps, 124 00:06:33,240 --> 00:06:34,920 but it isn't really what poetry is 125 00:06:34,920 --> 00:06:37,160 and it isn't really the sort of poetry we want. 126 00:06:37,160 --> 00:06:41,480 But I wonder whether it ever occurs to the writer of criticism 127 00:06:41,480 --> 00:06:43,760 like that, that, really, one agrees with them, 128 00:06:43,760 --> 00:06:48,360 that what one writes is based so much on the kind of person one is 129 00:06:48,360 --> 00:06:51,840 and the kind of environment one's had and has now 130 00:06:51,840 --> 00:06:55,760 that one doesn't really choose the poetry one writes, 131 00:06:55,760 --> 00:06:58,880 one writes the kind of poetry one has to write, or can write. 132 00:07:03,040 --> 00:07:06,120 Living on the margins suited Larkin. 133 00:07:06,120 --> 00:07:08,520 His writing captured a remote awkwardness 134 00:07:08,520 --> 00:07:10,440 with the world around him. 135 00:07:10,440 --> 00:07:14,400 He's always very keen to make us understand 136 00:07:14,400 --> 00:07:19,320 that sense of separation, partly because we all feel it. 137 00:07:19,320 --> 00:07:21,880 It's particularly powerful, I think, in Church Going, 138 00:07:21,880 --> 00:07:24,680 where you get that self irony of him 139 00:07:24,680 --> 00:07:27,880 taking off his bicycle-clips, because he feels there's something... 140 00:07:27,880 --> 00:07:30,320 something about it that you just shouldn't be in a church 141 00:07:30,320 --> 00:07:33,600 with bicycle-clips on, it's somehow disrespectful. 142 00:07:35,440 --> 00:07:37,120 Hatless, I take off 143 00:07:37,120 --> 00:07:40,200 My cycle-clips in awkward reverence 144 00:07:40,200 --> 00:07:43,760 Move forward, run my hand around the font 145 00:07:43,760 --> 00:07:47,880 From where I stand, the roof looks almost new 146 00:07:47,880 --> 00:07:49,840 Cleaned, or restored? 147 00:07:49,840 --> 00:07:52,560 Someone would know: I don't 148 00:07:52,560 --> 00:07:55,400 Mounting the lectern I peruse a few 149 00:07:55,400 --> 00:07:58,840 Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce, 150 00:07:58,840 --> 00:08:02,440 "Here endeth" much more loudly than I'd meant 151 00:08:02,440 --> 00:08:04,680 The echoes snigger briefly 152 00:08:04,680 --> 00:08:08,040 Back at the door I sign the book 153 00:08:08,040 --> 00:08:10,280 Donate an Irish sixpence 154 00:08:10,280 --> 00:08:12,680 Reflect the place was not worth stopping for. 155 00:08:21,240 --> 00:08:22,800 When we want to go back 156 00:08:22,800 --> 00:08:27,360 and look at what it was like to live in those post-war years, 157 00:08:27,360 --> 00:08:30,200 Larkin's a very good place to go and find out, 158 00:08:30,200 --> 00:08:33,200 you know, the flavour and the vibe of that world. 159 00:08:33,200 --> 00:08:37,600 Although he wrote just four slim volumes of poems in his lifetime, 160 00:08:37,600 --> 00:08:39,640 Larkin remains one of the greatest 161 00:08:39,640 --> 00:08:42,160 and most popular poets of the 20th century. 162 00:08:47,240 --> 00:08:50,520 If Larkin was the eccentric loner of The Movement, 163 00:08:50,520 --> 00:08:53,320 writer and lifelong friend Kingsley Amis 164 00:08:53,320 --> 00:08:54,960 was its very public face. 165 00:08:57,760 --> 00:08:59,640 Frequently appearing on television, 166 00:08:59,640 --> 00:09:02,480 he would become the most outspoken member of the group. 167 00:09:04,640 --> 00:09:07,560 On the BBC, Amis voiced his disappointment 168 00:09:07,560 --> 00:09:09,840 with the conservatism of '50s Britain. 169 00:09:11,960 --> 00:09:16,040 I personally then was suffering from a good deal of depression 170 00:09:16,040 --> 00:09:18,240 over some...quite a long time, 171 00:09:18,240 --> 00:09:20,680 over the results of the 1951 election, 172 00:09:20,680 --> 00:09:25,000 which seemed to me to say that the modest bit of social revolution 173 00:09:25,000 --> 00:09:26,960 that the British might have been going in for 174 00:09:26,960 --> 00:09:30,520 between 1945 and 1951 had now come to an end, 175 00:09:30,520 --> 00:09:34,120 and the public had turned their back on that, and, um, 176 00:09:34,120 --> 00:09:36,200 we're trying to reverse the process 177 00:09:36,200 --> 00:09:37,560 which I found depressing. 178 00:09:37,560 --> 00:09:41,280 Kingsley Amis was kind of associated with the angry young men. 179 00:09:41,280 --> 00:09:43,960 He was never really angry I don't think, Kingsley Amis, 180 00:09:43,960 --> 00:09:46,320 but he did like to provoke saying, you know, 181 00:09:46,320 --> 00:09:49,960 Eliot and Picasso were rubbish 182 00:09:49,960 --> 00:09:52,680 but it's...it's an act, you know, it's a pose. 183 00:09:52,680 --> 00:09:55,480 Although Amis was most successful as a novelist, 184 00:09:55,480 --> 00:09:58,680 most famously for Lucky Jim in 1954, 185 00:09:58,680 --> 00:10:00,840 he actually began his career as a poet. 186 00:10:02,200 --> 00:10:05,080 I think Kingsley Amis would see himself as a light verse poet, 187 00:10:05,080 --> 00:10:07,560 he edited an anthology of light verse, 188 00:10:07,560 --> 00:10:10,040 he enjoyed making people laugh. 189 00:10:10,040 --> 00:10:12,160 Lucky Jim, how I envy him 190 00:10:12,160 --> 00:10:15,000 Author, poet, fellow of Peterhouse Cambridge 191 00:10:15,000 --> 00:10:17,240 Jazz critic, you ask what his name is 192 00:10:17,240 --> 00:10:19,640 I say Kingsley Amis! ALL LAUGH 193 00:10:24,360 --> 00:10:27,040 Well, the first poem is on an ever-interesting topic, 194 00:10:27,040 --> 00:10:29,040 though you might not think so to start with. 195 00:10:29,040 --> 00:10:32,400 There's a poem of his called A Bookshop Idyll, which sort of... 196 00:10:32,400 --> 00:10:36,400 looks at the differences between what men read and what women read, 197 00:10:36,400 --> 00:10:39,360 but, interestingly, the poem turns everything on its head at the end 198 00:10:39,360 --> 00:10:42,400 and admits that, actually, men have got a softer side too. 199 00:10:42,400 --> 00:10:45,400 Should poets bicycle-pump the human heart 200 00:10:45,400 --> 00:10:46,800 Or squash it flat? 201 00:10:47,880 --> 00:10:51,480 Man's love is of man's life a thing apart 202 00:10:51,480 --> 00:10:52,640 Girls aren't like that 203 00:10:54,400 --> 00:10:57,840 We men have got love well weighed up: our stuff 204 00:10:57,840 --> 00:10:59,040 Can get by without it 205 00:11:00,560 --> 00:11:03,120 Women don't seem to think that's good enough 206 00:11:03,120 --> 00:11:05,280 They write about it 207 00:11:05,280 --> 00:11:08,600 And the awful way their poems lay them open 208 00:11:08,600 --> 00:11:10,040 Just doesn't strike them 209 00:11:11,400 --> 00:11:14,040 Women are really much nicer than men 210 00:11:14,040 --> 00:11:15,160 No wonder we like them 211 00:11:17,200 --> 00:11:20,000 Deciding this, we can forget those times 212 00:11:20,000 --> 00:11:21,880 We sat up half the night 213 00:11:21,880 --> 00:11:24,040 Chock-full of love 214 00:11:24,040 --> 00:11:27,920 Crammed with bright thoughts, names, rhymes 215 00:11:27,920 --> 00:11:29,160 And couldn't write. 216 00:11:32,480 --> 00:11:35,240 Having criticised his elitist predecessors, 217 00:11:35,240 --> 00:11:38,800 Amis made a virtue of his lower middle class credentials, 218 00:11:38,800 --> 00:11:41,920 seeing himself as a voice for the ordinary man. 219 00:11:41,920 --> 00:11:44,360 But he and the other Movement poets 220 00:11:44,360 --> 00:11:46,840 soon settled into the establishment. 221 00:11:46,840 --> 00:11:50,480 If you look at the photos now, those poets from the '50s, you know, 222 00:11:50,480 --> 00:11:53,720 then I'm afraid there's a good degree of tweed jackets. 223 00:11:53,720 --> 00:11:57,600 They don't seem the sort of common men, um, 224 00:11:57,600 --> 00:12:00,400 the ordinary chaps that... 225 00:12:00,400 --> 00:12:04,440 At the time they did and as they saw themselves, um, 226 00:12:04,440 --> 00:12:07,360 but they were certainly...cared about their audience. 227 00:12:07,360 --> 00:12:09,240 It's just I think their audience, in the end, 228 00:12:09,240 --> 00:12:10,560 was other chaps like them. 229 00:12:15,760 --> 00:12:18,840 By the 1960s, Britain, to some, 230 00:12:18,840 --> 00:12:20,960 seemed in danger of being left behind 231 00:12:20,960 --> 00:12:23,680 by a new kind of poetry coming from America. 232 00:12:26,120 --> 00:12:30,520 In 1962, the influential British critic Al Alvarez 233 00:12:30,520 --> 00:12:33,560 published an anthology promoting American poets. 234 00:12:34,800 --> 00:12:37,760 In an anxious world coming to terms with the holocaust 235 00:12:37,760 --> 00:12:40,440 and potential atomic warfare, 236 00:12:40,440 --> 00:12:43,080 Alvarez' The New Poetry 237 00:12:43,080 --> 00:12:47,520 was a reaction against the safe, insular concerns of The Movement. 238 00:12:47,520 --> 00:12:51,800 Instead, he championed a group of pioneering writers in the US 239 00:12:51,800 --> 00:12:53,840 leading the way. 240 00:12:53,840 --> 00:12:57,400 These poets started to feel that the British tradition was suffocating. 241 00:12:57,400 --> 00:13:03,080 The kind of stylized and formalized language of the Victorians 242 00:13:03,080 --> 00:13:04,480 really needs to be left behind, 243 00:13:04,480 --> 00:13:07,560 and poetry needs to get to grips with everyday life, 244 00:13:07,560 --> 00:13:09,640 and it needs to find the music in everyday life, 245 00:13:09,640 --> 00:13:10,840 It needs to bring in 246 00:13:10,840 --> 00:13:12,720 colloquial and idiomatic language. 247 00:13:14,640 --> 00:13:18,240 John Berryman was part of this new set of American writers 248 00:13:18,240 --> 00:13:21,440 who, together, were often called the Confessional Poets. 249 00:13:22,880 --> 00:13:25,680 Haunted for life by his father's suicide, 250 00:13:25,680 --> 00:13:27,560 John Berryman was a classically-trained 251 00:13:27,560 --> 00:13:28,920 but troubled talent. 252 00:13:30,000 --> 00:13:33,840 Alvarez went to meet him in 1967 for the BBC, 253 00:13:33,840 --> 00:13:36,080 where he was writing his poems in a Dublin pub... 254 00:13:37,200 --> 00:13:40,560 ..which was apparently where he did most of his writing 255 00:13:40,560 --> 00:13:43,000 and a lot of his drinking. 256 00:13:43,000 --> 00:13:47,000 My feelings about Yeats were quite queer. 257 00:13:47,000 --> 00:13:48,880 I didn't want to be like Yeats... 258 00:13:49,880 --> 00:13:51,720 ..I wanted to BE Yeats! 259 00:13:53,280 --> 00:13:55,400 But that failed. 260 00:13:55,400 --> 00:13:58,000 You can see why that failed. MAN LAUGHS 261 00:13:58,000 --> 00:14:00,560 Berryman was talking about a nervous breakdown 262 00:14:00,560 --> 00:14:02,680 and suicide attempts, 263 00:14:02,680 --> 00:14:04,280 um, madness, 264 00:14:04,280 --> 00:14:06,760 despair, alcoholism and so forth. 265 00:14:06,760 --> 00:14:11,240 Sometimes it's exhilarating and exciting to read, 266 00:14:11,240 --> 00:14:13,520 sometimes you don't know where to look. 267 00:14:13,520 --> 00:14:16,880 And a lot of people were really turned off, 268 00:14:16,880 --> 00:14:20,600 and horrif... They thought it was sort of vulgar. 269 00:14:20,600 --> 00:14:23,200 I don't get very much fan mail... 270 00:14:25,080 --> 00:14:27,920 ..but I had a lot of mail after I published this song 271 00:14:27,920 --> 00:14:29,640 in the United States. 272 00:14:29,640 --> 00:14:32,680 I may say that the mail was entirely hostile. 273 00:14:36,560 --> 00:14:40,440 Life, friends, is boring 274 00:14:42,080 --> 00:14:43,520 We must not say so 275 00:14:45,440 --> 00:14:46,440 After all... 276 00:14:47,720 --> 00:14:51,440 ..the sky flashes, the great sea yearns, 277 00:14:51,440 --> 00:14:54,160 we ourselves flash and yearn 278 00:14:55,280 --> 00:14:59,480 And moreover, my mother told me as a boy... 279 00:15:00,760 --> 00:15:01,880 ..repeatingly... 280 00:15:03,560 --> 00:15:05,440 "Ever to confess you're bored... 281 00:15:06,760 --> 00:15:08,680 "..means you have no 282 00:15:10,160 --> 00:15:11,560 "Inner resources." 283 00:15:13,760 --> 00:15:16,240 I conclude now 284 00:15:16,240 --> 00:15:17,640 I have no 285 00:15:17,640 --> 00:15:19,040 Inner resources. 286 00:15:21,400 --> 00:15:24,480 Berryman grew up in an age which saw a rise in the culture 287 00:15:24,480 --> 00:15:27,360 of psychoanalysis in the US after the war. 288 00:15:29,640 --> 00:15:33,440 Inspired by Freud, and often in therapy themselves, 289 00:15:33,440 --> 00:15:36,640 he and his peers were reassessing the world around them, 290 00:15:36,640 --> 00:15:38,360 but also the world within. 291 00:15:40,000 --> 00:15:42,200 I think especially of two books, 292 00:15:42,200 --> 00:15:44,200 The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life... 293 00:15:45,560 --> 00:15:49,120 ..and The interpretation Of Dreams, in 1900. 294 00:15:49,120 --> 00:15:52,400 Uh, and nobody... 295 00:15:52,400 --> 00:15:56,880 In the first place, everybody has to have read those books, 296 00:15:56,880 --> 00:15:59,840 and in the second place, 297 00:15:59,840 --> 00:16:04,280 nobody's feelings about human experience 298 00:16:04,280 --> 00:16:07,280 are quite the same after reading those books. 299 00:16:10,280 --> 00:16:14,000 The Dream Songs was Berryman's Pulitzer prize-winning collection 300 00:16:14,000 --> 00:16:17,800 of poems, where an extreme alter ego called Henry 301 00:16:17,800 --> 00:16:21,880 lives out one nightmare of guilt and self-loathing after another. 302 00:16:23,840 --> 00:16:25,280 When he started out as a poet, 303 00:16:25,280 --> 00:16:28,600 he was kind of rather stiff and repressed in that '50s way. 304 00:16:28,600 --> 00:16:30,440 Then he discovers in The Dream Songs 305 00:16:30,440 --> 00:16:33,280 and through the creation of this character, Henry, 306 00:16:33,280 --> 00:16:34,680 a new way of writing, 307 00:16:34,680 --> 00:16:37,960 a new way of exploring himself, while wearing a mask. 308 00:16:37,960 --> 00:16:43,360 He takes one step back from his mania, 309 00:16:43,360 --> 00:16:45,400 his alcoholism, 310 00:16:45,400 --> 00:16:50,280 his suicidal tendencies, his impossible-to-live-with-ness, 311 00:16:50,280 --> 00:16:54,320 but just one step and sees himself, 312 00:16:54,320 --> 00:16:57,240 and so it's sort of objectified, 313 00:16:57,240 --> 00:17:01,840 but, at the same time, as a reader, we absolutely know that it's him. 314 00:17:02,960 --> 00:17:04,000 But... 315 00:17:06,440 --> 00:17:10,160 ..never did Henry As he thought he did 316 00:17:10,160 --> 00:17:12,000 End anyone 317 00:17:12,000 --> 00:17:14,200 And hacks her body up 318 00:17:15,680 --> 00:17:18,160 And hide the pieces where they may be found 319 00:17:20,360 --> 00:17:21,400 He knows 320 00:17:23,800 --> 00:17:25,880 He went over everyone 321 00:17:25,880 --> 00:17:27,160 And nobody's missing. 322 00:17:28,760 --> 00:17:31,120 It was deeply appealing because 323 00:17:31,120 --> 00:17:35,360 it was so frank and honest and slightly scary. 324 00:17:35,360 --> 00:17:38,360 There's something wonderful about somebody saying 325 00:17:38,360 --> 00:17:41,280 something that you wouldn't dare to say yourself. 326 00:17:41,280 --> 00:17:43,840 Berryman had a pretty chaotic lifestyle. 327 00:17:43,840 --> 00:17:46,800 You know, there was heavy drinking, 328 00:17:46,800 --> 00:17:48,960 a lot of despair, a lot of unhappy relationships 329 00:17:48,960 --> 00:17:50,800 and it all ended in suicide. 330 00:17:52,040 --> 00:17:56,200 Something about writing in an orderly '50s way 331 00:17:56,200 --> 00:17:59,920 did not allow him to address that realm of experience. 332 00:18:04,440 --> 00:18:10,080 In 1972, after writing a total of 385 Dream Songs, 333 00:18:10,080 --> 00:18:14,000 Berryman killed himself by jumping off a bridge in Minneapolis 334 00:18:14,000 --> 00:18:15,400 during the middle of winter. 335 00:18:21,120 --> 00:18:23,640 The "confessional" generation of writers 336 00:18:23,640 --> 00:18:26,200 redefined a modern voice in poetry 337 00:18:26,200 --> 00:18:30,120 which could discuss any topic, no matter how personal or painful. 338 00:18:32,000 --> 00:18:35,320 Poetry has always drawn on autobiography 339 00:18:35,320 --> 00:18:37,840 but the notion of confessional poetry 340 00:18:37,840 --> 00:18:40,160 is the idea that these poets 341 00:18:40,160 --> 00:18:44,560 have shameful secrets that they're going to reveal, 342 00:18:44,560 --> 00:18:47,760 and that crosses a line for some people 343 00:18:47,760 --> 00:18:51,160 into the lurid, the tabloid, 344 00:18:51,160 --> 00:18:54,880 and revealing things that, really, it would be better to keep private. 345 00:18:56,360 --> 00:19:01,080 One Bostonian who took this frank form of poetry to its extremes 346 00:19:01,080 --> 00:19:04,200 was former model-turned-writer Anne Sexton. 347 00:19:07,160 --> 00:19:10,040 Sexton took up writing in the pre-feminist culture 348 00:19:10,040 --> 00:19:12,040 of America in the 1950s. 349 00:19:15,440 --> 00:19:17,560 Her work was shockingly honest 350 00:19:17,560 --> 00:19:20,160 and informed by her battles with mental illness. 351 00:19:21,720 --> 00:19:24,000 You know, though, I did get very manic once, 352 00:19:24,000 --> 00:19:26,560 and they told me I was psychotic, in the hospital, 353 00:19:26,560 --> 00:19:28,600 and I thought that was a riot cos I was still me. 354 00:19:29,680 --> 00:19:32,440 You know, I thought psychotic was some place else but I was still me. 355 00:19:34,000 --> 00:19:35,880 Sexton, more than everybody else, 356 00:19:35,880 --> 00:19:39,280 wrote about previously-taboo subjects in her poetry. 357 00:19:39,280 --> 00:19:42,160 She wrote about menstruation, she wrote about masturbation, 358 00:19:42,160 --> 00:19:44,560 she wrote about incest, she wrote about adultery. 359 00:19:44,560 --> 00:19:46,000 And she wrote about them in ways 360 00:19:46,000 --> 00:19:49,880 that suggested that she was not imagining them, 361 00:19:49,880 --> 00:19:54,080 that these were things she had intimate personal experience. 362 00:19:54,080 --> 00:19:55,920 Menstruation At Forty. 363 00:19:57,800 --> 00:19:59,840 I was thinking of a son 364 00:20:01,280 --> 00:20:05,320 The womb is not a clock nor a bell tolling 365 00:20:05,320 --> 00:20:08,000 But in the eleventh month of its life 366 00:20:08,000 --> 00:20:12,520 I feel the November of the body as well as of the calendar 367 00:20:13,600 --> 00:20:15,680 In two days it will be my birthday 368 00:20:15,680 --> 00:20:18,680 And as always the earth is done with its harvest 369 00:20:19,680 --> 00:20:21,800 This time I hunt for death. 370 00:20:23,560 --> 00:20:25,760 Poetry had always been pretty. 371 00:20:25,760 --> 00:20:28,040 It was supposed to be beautiful, 372 00:20:28,040 --> 00:20:33,040 and she was forcing in subject matter that was definitionally ugly. 373 00:20:33,040 --> 00:20:35,680 It was in the womb all along 374 00:20:37,200 --> 00:20:39,400 I was thinking of a son... 375 00:20:39,400 --> 00:20:40,600 You! 376 00:20:40,600 --> 00:20:42,320 The never acquired 377 00:20:42,320 --> 00:20:44,800 The never seeded or unfastened 378 00:20:44,800 --> 00:20:47,160 You of the genitals I feared 379 00:20:47,160 --> 00:20:49,160 The stalk and the puppy's breath. 380 00:20:51,160 --> 00:20:53,360 It was at the suggestion of Sexton's therapists 381 00:20:53,360 --> 00:20:55,880 that she began writing poetry. 382 00:20:55,880 --> 00:20:58,480 She was what we would now call bipolar, 383 00:20:58,480 --> 00:21:00,760 at the time called manic depressive, 384 00:21:00,760 --> 00:21:04,200 and it was suggested to her that poetry might help her 385 00:21:04,200 --> 00:21:06,000 in a therapeutic way. 386 00:21:06,000 --> 00:21:10,120 Um, many people have tried to write poetry in therapy, 387 00:21:10,120 --> 00:21:12,000 and Sexton wrote very great poetry. 388 00:21:12,000 --> 00:21:14,080 My psychiatrist suggested 389 00:21:14,080 --> 00:21:16,520 that I watch Channel 2. 390 00:21:18,200 --> 00:21:21,680 "You have an educational television there, why don't you look at it?" 391 00:21:21,680 --> 00:21:24,920 So, I did, and IA Richards was explaining the form of a sonnet, 392 00:21:24,920 --> 00:21:27,600 and I thought, oh, so that's a sonnet. 393 00:21:27,600 --> 00:21:30,560 So I sat down, tried to write one. It was a pretty bad thing. 394 00:21:30,560 --> 00:21:32,000 And that just turned me on 395 00:21:32,000 --> 00:21:34,440 and then I, you know...turned on! 396 00:21:35,720 --> 00:21:38,840 Eventually, it became impossible to separate Sexton 397 00:21:38,840 --> 00:21:40,960 from her intensely autobiographical work. 398 00:21:42,160 --> 00:21:45,800 She has a role she sees for herself 399 00:21:45,800 --> 00:21:47,960 and she insists on playing it, 400 00:21:47,960 --> 00:21:49,520 and I just got sick of it, 401 00:21:49,520 --> 00:21:52,880 the endless posturing, and just thinking, 402 00:21:52,880 --> 00:21:56,400 I don't want to go on any more about female stuff, 403 00:21:56,400 --> 00:21:59,240 I don't want to be wombing and entrailing all over the place 404 00:21:59,240 --> 00:22:00,800 and all that stuff. 405 00:22:00,800 --> 00:22:03,480 I just wanted her to go for a walk. 406 00:22:07,080 --> 00:22:10,080 I myself will die without baptism 407 00:22:10,080 --> 00:22:13,000 A third daughter they didn't bother 408 00:22:13,000 --> 00:22:16,240 My death will come on my name day 409 00:22:16,240 --> 00:22:18,440 What's wrong with the name day? 410 00:22:18,440 --> 00:22:21,360 It's only an angel of the sun 411 00:22:21,360 --> 00:22:24,640 Woman, weaving a web over your own 412 00:22:24,640 --> 00:22:27,160 A thin and tangled poison 413 00:22:27,160 --> 00:22:28,760 Scorpio 414 00:22:28,760 --> 00:22:31,520 Bad spider - die! 415 00:22:34,800 --> 00:22:37,720 The raw immediacy of Anne Sexton's writing 416 00:22:37,720 --> 00:22:41,920 won her continued attention until her suicide in 1974. 417 00:22:43,040 --> 00:22:46,840 It may seem remarkable that so many of the important poets 418 00:22:46,840 --> 00:22:50,320 of the 20th century also had very troubled personal lives. 419 00:22:50,320 --> 00:22:52,880 Many of them, in fact, committed suicide. 420 00:22:52,880 --> 00:22:55,480 There's a sense that being a great poet in the 20th century 421 00:22:55,480 --> 00:22:57,080 is pretty hard to survive. 422 00:22:58,960 --> 00:23:02,600 But the most famous of the American poets from this movement 423 00:23:02,600 --> 00:23:05,520 would only be celebrated after her untimely death. 424 00:23:07,640 --> 00:23:12,280 And she would secure her lasting place in poetry back in Britain. 425 00:23:13,720 --> 00:23:17,560 What an extraordinary breakthrough Sylvia Plath was 426 00:23:17,560 --> 00:23:21,840 to all of us who'd never read any women poets really 427 00:23:21,840 --> 00:23:24,840 that shook us to bits. 428 00:23:24,840 --> 00:23:27,760 Along came Plath and, God... 429 00:23:29,040 --> 00:23:32,200 ..who is this powerful, blazing woman? 430 00:23:33,560 --> 00:23:36,760 Sylvia Plath remains one of the most remarkable female poets 431 00:23:36,760 --> 00:23:38,320 of the last 100 years. 432 00:23:38,320 --> 00:23:42,920 She gave women permission to express certain kinds of 433 00:23:42,920 --> 00:23:47,560 emotions and experiences that had never been put into poetry before. 434 00:23:47,560 --> 00:23:52,360 In the autumn of 1962, at her home in North London, 435 00:23:52,360 --> 00:23:55,040 Sylvia Plath began to write Ariel, 436 00:23:55,040 --> 00:23:57,640 the collection of poems that would make her name. 437 00:24:00,120 --> 00:24:02,400 Stasis in darkness 438 00:24:02,400 --> 00:24:04,920 Then the substanceless blue 439 00:24:04,920 --> 00:24:07,680 Pour of tor and distances 440 00:24:07,680 --> 00:24:09,160 God's lioness 441 00:24:09,160 --> 00:24:11,120 How one we grow 442 00:24:11,120 --> 00:24:13,680 Pivot of heels and knees! 443 00:24:13,680 --> 00:24:16,760 The furrow Splits and passes, sister to 444 00:24:16,760 --> 00:24:17,840 The brown arc 445 00:24:17,840 --> 00:24:19,360 Of the neck I cannot catch. 446 00:24:24,440 --> 00:24:28,320 Those last poems in Ariel are just spat out, 447 00:24:28,320 --> 00:24:31,600 they come out at such a rate, 448 00:24:31,600 --> 00:24:34,400 and they're so intense and concentrated. 449 00:24:34,400 --> 00:24:35,800 This is really special. 450 00:24:37,600 --> 00:24:39,680 Plath never appeared on television. 451 00:24:40,800 --> 00:24:43,680 In this radio recording in her final months 452 00:24:43,680 --> 00:24:46,400 she stressed her preference for intellectual rigour 453 00:24:46,400 --> 00:24:48,360 over a poetry of self-pity. 454 00:24:50,040 --> 00:24:52,840 I think my poems come immediately out of the sensuous 455 00:24:52,840 --> 00:24:55,640 and emotional experiences I have, 456 00:24:55,640 --> 00:25:01,240 but I must say, I cannot sympathise with these cries from the heart 457 00:25:01,240 --> 00:25:05,400 that are informed by nothing except, you know, a needle or a knife 458 00:25:05,400 --> 00:25:06,520 or whatever it is. 459 00:25:06,520 --> 00:25:11,400 I believe that one should be able to control and manipulate experiences, 460 00:25:11,400 --> 00:25:15,120 even the most terrifying, like madness, being tortured, 461 00:25:15,120 --> 00:25:16,880 this sort of experience. 462 00:25:16,880 --> 00:25:20,160 And one should be able to manipulate these experiences 463 00:25:20,160 --> 00:25:22,960 with an informed and intelligent mind. 464 00:25:24,600 --> 00:25:28,480 Despite the dark and tormented subject matter of her writing, 465 00:25:28,480 --> 00:25:30,760 Plath led an outwardly traditional life, 466 00:25:30,760 --> 00:25:32,200 as a wife and mother, 467 00:25:32,200 --> 00:25:34,520 married to fellow poet Ted Hughes. 468 00:25:34,520 --> 00:25:36,600 A rare interview of them together 469 00:25:36,600 --> 00:25:38,520 captured a moment of domestic harmony. 470 00:25:40,000 --> 00:25:41,920 SYLVIA PLATH: I think our domestic life 471 00:25:41,920 --> 00:25:43,520 is practically indistinguishable 472 00:25:43,520 --> 00:25:45,360 from all the people who live around us. 473 00:25:45,360 --> 00:25:46,560 The only main difference is 474 00:25:46,560 --> 00:25:49,960 that Ted doesn't go out to work at nine and come home at five, 475 00:25:49,960 --> 00:25:54,080 he retires about nine to his room and works, 476 00:25:54,080 --> 00:25:57,000 but I certainly have a life just like all the other housewives 477 00:25:57,000 --> 00:25:58,960 and mothers in our district. 478 00:25:58,960 --> 00:26:03,800 Shopping, dishes, and taking care of the baby and so forth and... 479 00:26:03,800 --> 00:26:07,240 I think very few people have an idea I do anything at all 480 00:26:07,240 --> 00:26:09,320 except household chores. 481 00:26:10,600 --> 00:26:14,840 INTERVIEWER: Would you say that your temperaments are parallel, 482 00:26:14,840 --> 00:26:16,880 or do you think they're in conflict? 483 00:26:16,880 --> 00:26:19,840 TED HUGHES: I think, superficially, we're very alike. 484 00:26:19,840 --> 00:26:22,360 We like the same things, we live at the same tempo, 485 00:26:22,360 --> 00:26:26,000 but, obviously, this is a very fortunate covering for temperaments 486 00:26:26,000 --> 00:26:28,160 that are extremely different. 487 00:26:31,440 --> 00:26:33,880 In spite of the appearance of a happy marriage, 488 00:26:33,880 --> 00:26:37,080 Plath had struggled with depression from her late teens. 489 00:26:38,720 --> 00:26:41,880 Her mother, Aurelia, was interviewed by the BBC. 490 00:26:43,280 --> 00:26:47,320 I was constantly asking her to make choices, 491 00:26:47,320 --> 00:26:51,680 not to accept every opportunity that came along. 492 00:26:51,680 --> 00:26:54,760 I felt she was pushing herself hard, 493 00:26:54,760 --> 00:26:59,200 and I was always fearful, especially after her first breakdown 494 00:26:59,200 --> 00:27:02,960 that she was pushing herself and too demanding of herself. 495 00:27:02,960 --> 00:27:05,160 She had to be the perfect American housewife, 496 00:27:05,160 --> 00:27:07,560 the perfect, beautifully-groomed wife, 497 00:27:07,560 --> 00:27:08,840 the perfect housewife. 498 00:27:08,840 --> 00:27:12,240 She also had to be the most brilliant poet of her generation. 499 00:27:12,240 --> 00:27:13,600 And I mean, that's... 500 00:27:13,600 --> 00:27:15,640 Something's got to give, hasn't it? 501 00:27:15,640 --> 00:27:16,920 I mean, it's just tragic. 502 00:27:22,720 --> 00:27:25,080 In her poem Lady Lazarus, 503 00:27:25,080 --> 00:27:28,920 Plath reflected on her several suicide attempts. 504 00:27:28,920 --> 00:27:30,920 I have done it again. 505 00:27:30,920 --> 00:27:33,720 One year in every ten I manage it... 506 00:27:36,000 --> 00:27:37,200 Dying 507 00:27:37,200 --> 00:27:40,080 Is an art, like everything else. 508 00:27:40,080 --> 00:27:42,280 I do it exceptionally well. 509 00:27:42,280 --> 00:27:45,480 I do it so it feels like hell. 510 00:27:45,480 --> 00:27:47,960 I do it so it feels real. 511 00:27:47,960 --> 00:27:50,400 I guess you could say I've a call. 512 00:27:51,720 --> 00:27:53,960 It's easy enough to do it in a cell. 513 00:27:53,960 --> 00:27:56,600 It's easy enough to do it and stay put. 514 00:27:56,600 --> 00:27:58,360 It's the theatrical 515 00:27:58,360 --> 00:28:00,240 Comeback in broad day 516 00:28:00,240 --> 00:28:04,440 To the same place, the same face, the same brute 517 00:28:04,440 --> 00:28:07,440 Amused shout, "A miracle!" 518 00:28:07,440 --> 00:28:08,640 That knocks me out. 519 00:28:11,360 --> 00:28:15,280 In the early hours of the 23rd February, 1963, 520 00:28:15,280 --> 00:28:18,040 during one of the coldest English winters ever, 521 00:28:18,040 --> 00:28:22,400 Plath committed suicide by placing her head in a gas oven. 522 00:28:22,400 --> 00:28:23,960 She was 30 years old. 523 00:28:27,440 --> 00:28:31,440 Lines that have haunted me that were taken from Ariel, 524 00:28:31,440 --> 00:28:33,240 um... 525 00:28:33,240 --> 00:28:35,720 from the poem called The Elm... 526 00:28:35,720 --> 00:28:37,560 Just Elm, I think. 527 00:28:40,840 --> 00:28:43,240 "I am inhabited by a cry 528 00:28:44,800 --> 00:28:46,480 "Nightly it flaps out 529 00:28:47,520 --> 00:28:49,920 "Looking with its hooks 530 00:28:49,920 --> 00:28:51,720 "For something to love." 531 00:28:52,800 --> 00:28:56,320 Plath mythologized her personal life in her writing, 532 00:28:56,320 --> 00:28:59,080 investing aspects of her emotional biography 533 00:28:59,080 --> 00:29:01,600 with profound dramatic significance. 534 00:29:02,840 --> 00:29:08,320 When her final poems were published posthumously in Ariel in 1965, 535 00:29:08,320 --> 00:29:10,640 Plath became one of the most significant voices 536 00:29:10,640 --> 00:29:12,160 of the 20th century, 537 00:29:12,160 --> 00:29:15,080 not simply for poetry, but also for women. 538 00:29:17,120 --> 00:29:19,000 She gets classed as a feminist poet 539 00:29:19,000 --> 00:29:20,600 whether she'd like it or not, 540 00:29:20,600 --> 00:29:23,200 so we keep treating her as a feminist martyr. 541 00:29:24,720 --> 00:29:28,520 That's to uncomplicate a very complicated person. 542 00:29:30,160 --> 00:29:32,840 No-one could get it right with Sylvia. 543 00:29:32,840 --> 00:29:35,720 And the feminists would have been in just as much trouble 544 00:29:35,720 --> 00:29:37,160 as everybody else. 545 00:29:37,160 --> 00:29:40,760 I kind of wish that Sylvia had written a poem 546 00:29:40,760 --> 00:29:44,440 about feminists, in which she got truly stuck into them, 547 00:29:44,440 --> 00:29:46,080 but, of course, she didn't. 548 00:29:48,720 --> 00:29:51,360 Although often remembered as the super couple 549 00:29:51,360 --> 00:29:53,320 of modern English poetry, 550 00:29:53,320 --> 00:29:54,840 Plath and Hughes' styles 551 00:29:54,840 --> 00:29:57,280 were completely different from each other. 552 00:29:57,280 --> 00:29:59,560 Unlike his urban contemporaries, 553 00:29:59,560 --> 00:30:03,800 Yorkshireman Ted Hughes was unfashionably obsessed with nature. 554 00:30:06,280 --> 00:30:12,600 He wanted to re-engage with the elemental forces, 555 00:30:12,600 --> 00:30:15,960 with some fairly, you know, primitive notions. 556 00:30:18,360 --> 00:30:20,520 Who is stronger than hope? 557 00:30:20,520 --> 00:30:21,880 Death. 558 00:30:21,880 --> 00:30:24,560 Who is stronger than the will? 559 00:30:24,560 --> 00:30:26,000 Death. 560 00:30:26,000 --> 00:30:27,720 Stronger than love? 561 00:30:27,720 --> 00:30:29,080 Death. 562 00:30:29,080 --> 00:30:30,360 Stronger than life? 563 00:30:31,520 --> 00:30:33,160 Death. 564 00:30:33,160 --> 00:30:36,960 But who is stronger than Death? 565 00:30:36,960 --> 00:30:39,200 Me, evidently. 566 00:30:39,200 --> 00:30:40,640 Pass, Crow. 567 00:30:44,480 --> 00:30:48,040 Most other poets at that time were urban, academic, 568 00:30:48,040 --> 00:30:52,320 erudite voices of professors and newspaper people. 569 00:30:52,320 --> 00:30:55,480 In that context he was a kind of back woodsman 570 00:30:55,480 --> 00:31:01,080 speaking a kind of agricultural version of the Bible. 571 00:31:01,080 --> 00:31:04,440 And his mood and manner 572 00:31:04,440 --> 00:31:10,000 were at variance with what was going in the poetic community at the time. 573 00:31:10,000 --> 00:31:12,880 And I think for that reason they stood out right from the beginning. 574 00:31:15,000 --> 00:31:18,680 Nature for him was violent and dark and brutal 575 00:31:18,680 --> 00:31:23,320 in a way that no nature poetry had previously acknowledged, 576 00:31:23,320 --> 00:31:26,160 so he created his own natural universe. 577 00:31:30,880 --> 00:31:33,400 Pike, three inches long, perfect. 578 00:31:33,400 --> 00:31:35,400 Pike in all parts, 579 00:31:35,400 --> 00:31:37,360 green tigering the gold. 580 00:31:38,560 --> 00:31:41,920 Killers from the egg: the malevolent aged grin. 581 00:31:45,000 --> 00:31:47,280 They dance on the surface among the flies. 582 00:31:48,920 --> 00:31:52,080 Or move, stunned by their own grandeur, 583 00:31:52,080 --> 00:31:57,160 Over a bed of emerald, silhouette of submarine delicacy and horror. 584 00:31:57,160 --> 00:31:59,480 A hundred feet long in their world. 585 00:32:03,280 --> 00:32:05,400 In comparison with a lot of other poets 586 00:32:05,400 --> 00:32:10,880 who were talking about bicycle clips and statues in churches, 587 00:32:10,880 --> 00:32:15,440 Hughes must have seemed rough and tough. 588 00:32:15,440 --> 00:32:18,680 Larkin, not to his face, described Hughes, 589 00:32:18,680 --> 00:32:20,800 as the Incredible Hulk. 590 00:32:20,800 --> 00:32:22,840 There was really no love lost 591 00:32:22,840 --> 00:32:25,400 between Philip Larkin and Ted Hughes. 592 00:32:25,400 --> 00:32:26,920 Larkin said in his letters 593 00:32:26,920 --> 00:32:29,480 that he thought Hughes' poems were embarrassing. 594 00:32:29,480 --> 00:32:33,440 And when Hughes turned up to give a talk at Hull University, 595 00:32:33,440 --> 00:32:37,880 Larkin says he was like a Christmas present from Easter Island 596 00:32:37,880 --> 00:32:41,160 because of this great hewn face of his. 597 00:32:42,840 --> 00:32:47,000 A charismatic presence, and eventual poet laureate, 598 00:32:47,000 --> 00:32:51,880 Hughes was a private person and very reluctant to appear on screen. 599 00:32:51,880 --> 00:32:54,880 But the relationship of poets to their audiences 600 00:32:54,880 --> 00:32:57,800 was about to undergo a dramatic change. 601 00:33:01,840 --> 00:33:06,160 The counterculture of the 1960s was transforming America. 602 00:33:06,160 --> 00:33:09,840 It was a time of free love, political activism, 603 00:33:09,840 --> 00:33:11,600 and experimentation. 604 00:33:18,240 --> 00:33:20,640 And poets were taking a leading role. 605 00:33:23,600 --> 00:33:27,480 There was a San Francisco explosion. 606 00:33:27,480 --> 00:33:30,200 It feels something new and exciting 607 00:33:30,200 --> 00:33:33,800 because they're prepared to write about taboo subjects. 608 00:33:35,440 --> 00:33:38,040 The poets of the Beat Generation 609 00:33:38,040 --> 00:33:40,520 whose leading light was Allen Ginsberg, 610 00:33:40,520 --> 00:33:44,800 enchanted and scandalized with their revolutionary approach to writing. 611 00:33:46,000 --> 00:33:47,880 The Beat poets made quite an impression 612 00:33:47,880 --> 00:33:50,160 on a lot of us at the time. 613 00:33:50,160 --> 00:33:54,280 I remember buying a book and there inside were all these photographs 614 00:33:54,280 --> 00:33:58,400 of all these different cafes in San Francisco and in New York. 615 00:33:58,400 --> 00:34:02,000 All these poets reading to enrapt audiences 616 00:34:02,000 --> 00:34:04,960 and I remember, cos the audience 617 00:34:04,960 --> 00:34:07,680 in the front row there were all these beautiful girls... 618 00:34:07,680 --> 00:34:09,760 like that, looking at the poet. 619 00:34:09,760 --> 00:34:12,400 I thought, "Ah, that's for me. I want to be a poet." 620 00:34:16,320 --> 00:34:18,480 When Ginsberg arrived in London, 621 00:34:18,480 --> 00:34:22,400 he was met with a storm of publicity never seen before for a poet. 622 00:34:25,280 --> 00:34:28,960 An openly gay intellectual and committed Buddhist, 623 00:34:28,960 --> 00:34:31,360 Allen Ginsberg was the most outspoken 624 00:34:31,360 --> 00:34:33,640 and political member of the Beats. 625 00:34:33,640 --> 00:34:36,200 Despite attacking America's conservatism, 626 00:34:36,200 --> 00:34:39,640 he believed in change through spiritual or peaceful means. 627 00:34:41,640 --> 00:34:44,880 During his visit, he took part in a discussion on violence 628 00:34:44,880 --> 00:34:47,680 for the BBC's Panorama programme. 629 00:34:47,680 --> 00:34:50,920 When you're in American and you see the negro problem 630 00:34:50,920 --> 00:34:55,600 in full spate with its non-violent and violent manifestations, 631 00:34:55,600 --> 00:34:58,360 how do you react? From your particular... 632 00:34:58,360 --> 00:35:00,480 I think everyone ought to take LSD 633 00:35:00,480 --> 00:35:04,120 and get rid of their violence and their colour and their identity 634 00:35:04,120 --> 00:35:08,400 and, like, get with it, finally, and stop making such a big, noisy scene. 635 00:35:08,400 --> 00:35:12,280 There comes a point in 20th century poetry where poets put themselves 636 00:35:12,280 --> 00:35:15,000 to the foreground, they reveal who they are, 637 00:35:15,000 --> 00:35:18,280 they do lots of interviews, they come on stage 638 00:35:18,280 --> 00:35:21,120 and do lots of stuff between the poems. 639 00:35:21,120 --> 00:35:24,600 The purists hate this because the poem is supposed to be sacred 640 00:35:24,600 --> 00:35:26,040 and stand on its own. 641 00:35:26,040 --> 00:35:30,120 But certainly for the last 30 or 40 years we've had poets 642 00:35:30,120 --> 00:35:33,400 who show all, and Ginsberg is somebody like that. 643 00:35:33,400 --> 00:35:37,920 Ginsberg's poems railed against the conformity of modern America, 644 00:35:37,920 --> 00:35:41,080 dealing frankly with taboo subjects like homosexuality 645 00:35:41,080 --> 00:35:42,960 and drug addiction. 646 00:35:42,960 --> 00:35:47,840 His most famous work, Howl, was a 30-minute outpouring of rage, 647 00:35:47,840 --> 00:35:52,560 which was put on trial after publication for obscenity. 648 00:35:52,560 --> 00:35:55,640 We all used to pass around Howl. 649 00:35:55,640 --> 00:35:59,760 A lot of people were influenced by it because it was a howl. 650 00:35:59,760 --> 00:36:05,520 It was a cry of pain, it was it was a cry of something or other about... 651 00:36:05,520 --> 00:36:10,880 It was seen to be drug-fuelled and daring, 652 00:36:10,880 --> 00:36:13,000 all these things that we weren't. 653 00:36:13,000 --> 00:36:17,520 I was never drug-fuelled and daring... If only. 654 00:36:17,520 --> 00:36:21,840 I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, 655 00:36:21,840 --> 00:36:24,480 starving, hysterical, naked. 656 00:36:26,360 --> 00:36:29,200 Who howled on their knees in the subway and were dragged off the roof 657 00:36:29,200 --> 00:36:32,000 waving genitals and manuscripts, 658 00:36:32,000 --> 00:36:35,520 who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly motorcyclists 659 00:36:35,520 --> 00:36:36,960 and screamed with joy. 660 00:36:38,360 --> 00:36:42,280 Interviewed on the BBC's Face To Face several decades later, 661 00:36:42,280 --> 00:36:45,760 Ginsberg looked back on his scandalous work. 662 00:36:45,760 --> 00:36:48,720 It wasn't long before, in your poems, 663 00:36:48,720 --> 00:36:53,240 you were willing to make explicit statements about your sexuality. 664 00:36:53,240 --> 00:36:54,640 Yes. 665 00:36:54,640 --> 00:36:58,360 Wasn't that very difficult in what was, after all, McCarthy's America? 666 00:36:58,360 --> 00:37:01,000 Well, it would have been if I had intended it to be public, 667 00:37:01,000 --> 00:37:04,160 but to tell you truth, and as I've said before, 668 00:37:04,160 --> 00:37:07,440 Howl was written sort of in despair of writing poetry. 669 00:37:07,440 --> 00:37:10,520 I figured I hadn't succeeded in writing anything interesting, 670 00:37:10,520 --> 00:37:13,360 and so I said, "Well, I'll just write writings for myself 671 00:37:13,360 --> 00:37:16,280 "and I'll forget any idea of publishing poetry." 672 00:37:16,280 --> 00:37:19,040 When it got to my own, 673 00:37:19,040 --> 00:37:22,800 "Got fucked in the ass by handsome sailors and screamed with joy", 674 00:37:22,800 --> 00:37:24,840 rather than screamed with pain or agony, 675 00:37:24,840 --> 00:37:26,440 I realised how funny it was 676 00:37:26,440 --> 00:37:29,040 but knew that my father would not want to read that. 677 00:37:29,040 --> 00:37:31,800 So from then on I knew I wouldn't be able to publish the poem, 678 00:37:31,800 --> 00:37:35,120 so I was completely free to write anything I wanted. 679 00:37:36,560 --> 00:37:38,320 Inspired by Ginsberg, 680 00:37:38,320 --> 00:37:43,360 live readings had become a key part of the newly energized poetry scene. 681 00:37:43,360 --> 00:37:47,920 In the summer of 1965, the BBC captured a unique moment 682 00:37:47,920 --> 00:37:52,040 when poetry readings outgrew the coffee houses and book shops 683 00:37:52,040 --> 00:37:54,800 for London's Royal Albert Hall. 684 00:37:54,800 --> 00:37:59,560 And Ginsberg was the headline act, performing to 7,000 fans. 685 00:38:01,800 --> 00:38:06,080 Going to watch Ginsberg in the Albert Hall was one thing, 686 00:38:06,080 --> 00:38:07,560 and that was exciting. 687 00:38:07,560 --> 00:38:10,400 And there was marijuana smoke going around, 688 00:38:10,400 --> 00:38:16,000 and it was like California and New York comes to London, you know? 689 00:38:17,720 --> 00:38:22,760 Yes! I'm that worm soul under the heel 690 00:38:22,760 --> 00:38:26,000 of the demon horses. 691 00:38:26,000 --> 00:38:31,640 I am that man trembling to die in vomit 692 00:38:31,640 --> 00:38:35,800 and trance in bamboo eternities, 693 00:38:35,800 --> 00:38:41,760 belly ripped open by red hand of courteous Chinamen kids. 694 00:38:41,760 --> 00:38:45,120 Come sweetly now, 695 00:38:45,120 --> 00:38:49,720 back to myself as I was. 696 00:38:50,960 --> 00:38:56,440 Poets began to discover the shamanistic tradition of performance. 697 00:38:56,440 --> 00:39:00,760 If he became possessed, the audience would become possessed, 698 00:39:00,760 --> 00:39:03,480 there would be a transformation of some kind. 699 00:39:03,480 --> 00:39:06,000 All poets are interested in transformation. 700 00:39:06,000 --> 00:39:08,320 Will I be transformed by writing it, 701 00:39:08,320 --> 00:39:10,640 will the audience be transformed by listening to it? 702 00:39:10,640 --> 00:39:15,080 No, I've been home for months but not all of me. 703 00:39:15,080 --> 00:39:21,000 Somewhere beyond the seas, the spies in their spinach tin suits 704 00:39:21,000 --> 00:39:25,520 are watching the movies unwind with owlish X-rays. 705 00:39:25,520 --> 00:39:28,800 They're there on the screen. 706 00:39:28,800 --> 00:39:34,680 Blue light on the couch you sit smiling at me 707 00:39:34,680 --> 00:39:39,360 and stretching your arms and he couldn't make it! 708 00:39:39,360 --> 00:39:42,240 Ginsberg seemed to feel very strongly 709 00:39:42,240 --> 00:39:46,320 that if he acted as the shaman, as the prophet, 710 00:39:46,320 --> 00:39:50,760 then people would listen, and that would deconstruct America 711 00:39:50,760 --> 00:39:54,360 as this great military industrial complex, 712 00:39:54,360 --> 00:39:57,360 pursuing minorities, 713 00:39:57,360 --> 00:40:02,320 being racist and sexist and pursuing people who want to smoke dope. 714 00:40:02,320 --> 00:40:04,680 And so he raged against it 715 00:40:04,680 --> 00:40:07,200 and hoped people would join him 716 00:40:07,200 --> 00:40:11,480 in what was really a kind of poetic, shamanistic campaign. 717 00:40:11,480 --> 00:40:17,840 One of them grunting, one of them groaning out, "What a chick." 718 00:40:19,400 --> 00:40:22,760 A lot of people have been concerned about the rise in poetry, 719 00:40:22,760 --> 00:40:24,920 particular amongst teenagers. 720 00:40:24,920 --> 00:40:28,920 Slim volumes can now be bought openly in certain parts of the country. 721 00:40:28,920 --> 00:40:32,240 It's become fashionable for people to gather together in groups 722 00:40:32,240 --> 00:40:34,680 and be turned on by verse. 723 00:40:37,440 --> 00:40:41,200 If San Francisco was the vibrant heart of the Beat scene, 724 00:40:41,200 --> 00:40:44,440 in Britain, Liverpool was where it was all happening. 725 00:40:51,240 --> 00:40:55,080 Inspired by California's brand of direct performance poetry, 726 00:40:55,080 --> 00:40:57,920 a group of young men were about to play their part 727 00:40:57,920 --> 00:41:01,000 in the city's cultural revolution. 728 00:41:01,000 --> 00:41:04,880 When the Liverpool poets came out in the mid '60s, 729 00:41:04,880 --> 00:41:06,440 it was a breath of fresh air. 730 00:41:07,800 --> 00:41:12,680 Liverpool was the place of the Beatles and this brand-new explosion 731 00:41:12,680 --> 00:41:16,960 of working class culture into British life. 732 00:41:16,960 --> 00:41:19,880 They seemed to have incorporated 733 00:41:19,880 --> 00:41:24,240 something of the Beatles sense of irreverence. 734 00:41:24,240 --> 00:41:26,600 The Liverpool poets were geography graduate 735 00:41:26,600 --> 00:41:28,720 turned pop star Roger McGough, 736 00:41:28,720 --> 00:41:33,160 music journalist Brian Patten, and artist Adrian Henri. 737 00:41:33,160 --> 00:41:36,400 Together they would bring poetry like art and music, 738 00:41:36,400 --> 00:41:39,520 into the heart of '60s pop culture. 739 00:41:39,520 --> 00:41:44,440 The BBC filmed the group of pop poets on location in 1966 740 00:41:44,440 --> 00:41:47,360 at Liverpool's Everyman Theatre. 741 00:41:47,360 --> 00:41:51,960 But it was McGough who would develop as the main voice of the movement. 742 00:41:51,960 --> 00:41:54,480 Monika, the tea things are taking over. 743 00:41:54,480 --> 00:41:58,120 The cups are as big as bubble cars, they throttle round the room. 744 00:41:58,120 --> 00:42:00,120 The tin-openers skate on the greasy plates 745 00:42:00,120 --> 00:42:02,200 by the light of the silvery moon. 746 00:42:02,200 --> 00:42:06,000 The biscuits are having a party. They're necking in our bread bin. 747 00:42:06,000 --> 00:42:08,040 That's jazz you hear in the salt cellars 748 00:42:08,040 --> 00:42:10,080 but they don't let non-members in. 749 00:42:10,080 --> 00:42:12,320 The egg spoons had our eggs for breakfast, 750 00:42:12,320 --> 00:42:14,480 the sauce bottle's asleep in our bed. 751 00:42:14,480 --> 00:42:18,360 I overheard the knives and forks - "It won't be long," they said. 752 00:42:18,360 --> 00:42:20,160 "It won't be long," they said. 753 00:42:20,160 --> 00:42:24,360 In 1967, the hugely influential Mersey Sound was published 754 00:42:24,360 --> 00:42:28,720 and became Britain's best selling poetry anthology of the time. 755 00:42:28,720 --> 00:42:31,360 I remember finding Roger McGough's, 756 00:42:31,360 --> 00:42:33,480 "Let me die a young man's death, 757 00:42:33,480 --> 00:42:36,920 "not a clean and in-between the sheets holy water death." 758 00:42:36,920 --> 00:42:40,560 I remember reading it in the Sunday Times one Sunday 759 00:42:40,560 --> 00:42:42,960 and thinking, "Wow, I want to do that." 760 00:42:44,200 --> 00:42:46,640 I think any poet or group of poets 761 00:42:46,640 --> 00:42:50,120 who do something new or newish in poetry, 762 00:42:50,120 --> 00:42:53,120 they give permission to others to think, 763 00:42:53,120 --> 00:42:54,720 "Well, I could write like that." 764 00:42:54,720 --> 00:42:56,080 I think that's wonderful. 765 00:42:56,080 --> 00:42:59,440 I think that's the democratic pulse that runs through poetry. 766 00:43:01,520 --> 00:43:07,080 They were part of the new revival of poetry and poetry reading. 767 00:43:07,080 --> 00:43:09,680 And doing it out loud and making it make sense. 768 00:43:09,680 --> 00:43:13,360 They really were just the game changers. 769 00:43:13,360 --> 00:43:16,800 The Queen came up to Liverpool to dine at our town hall. 770 00:43:16,800 --> 00:43:18,520 In the evening, wrote to her husband, 771 00:43:18,520 --> 00:43:20,440 "Dear Philip, I'm having a ball. 772 00:43:20,440 --> 00:43:23,680 "I'll think I'll hang about. I mean, everything's happening here. 773 00:43:23,680 --> 00:43:25,720 "I'm beginning to dig the poetry scene 774 00:43:25,720 --> 00:43:27,640 "and the ale is bloody gear." 775 00:43:27,640 --> 00:43:31,560 So while she was having a castle built down in Castle Street, 776 00:43:31,560 --> 00:43:36,040 She had a look round Liverpool 8, found a pad there, small, but neat. 777 00:43:36,040 --> 00:43:37,960 She moved in with a few belongings 778 00:43:37,960 --> 00:43:41,680 Corgis, crown, a throne, 779 00:43:41,680 --> 00:43:43,680 and the blue blood in the neighbourhood 780 00:43:43,680 --> 00:43:45,120 really raised the tone. 781 00:43:45,120 --> 00:43:50,200 It seemed very near and seemed very approachable 782 00:43:50,200 --> 00:43:52,000 and yet when you look at it now, 783 00:43:52,000 --> 00:43:55,120 in some respects, of course, it was very formal poetry. 784 00:43:55,120 --> 00:43:58,840 There they are in little four-line verses, rhyming perfectly. 785 00:43:58,840 --> 00:44:01,520 So it was magical. 786 00:44:01,520 --> 00:44:05,120 Out of work, divorced, usually pissed, 787 00:44:05,120 --> 00:44:07,440 he aimed low in life and missed. 788 00:44:12,640 --> 00:44:17,120 But McGough's popular approach met a critical backlash. 789 00:44:17,120 --> 00:44:19,840 If you write about ordinary stuff, 790 00:44:19,840 --> 00:44:22,600 and if you write about things that other poets have written about 791 00:44:22,600 --> 00:44:25,640 in quite highfalutin ways, and you write about it in very ordinary ways, 792 00:44:25,640 --> 00:44:28,160 people will be treat you with disdain. 793 00:44:28,160 --> 00:44:30,840 There was still a lot of hostility towards the Liverpool poets. 794 00:44:30,840 --> 00:44:32,800 Poets found it unbearable. 795 00:44:32,800 --> 00:44:36,240 They do, if somebody comes along who is popular. 796 00:44:36,240 --> 00:44:40,400 I once read a review that was outrageous. 797 00:44:40,400 --> 00:44:44,680 It was as if somehow or other he had profaned poetry. 798 00:44:44,680 --> 00:44:48,120 He hasn't at all, he's done the opposite. 799 00:44:48,120 --> 00:44:49,360 He's kept it alive. 800 00:44:49,360 --> 00:44:52,320 What do you think the role of the poet is or your poetry? 801 00:44:52,320 --> 00:44:54,880 Um... I don't quite know, really. 802 00:44:54,880 --> 00:44:57,880 I think two things, I think, um... there's two reasons for writing it. 803 00:44:57,880 --> 00:45:00,920 I'm not quite sure why one writes poetry, it's something very personal. 804 00:45:00,920 --> 00:45:04,040 But then when you actually stand and read it to people, 805 00:45:04,040 --> 00:45:06,200 then I think it possibly can be entertaining. 806 00:45:06,200 --> 00:45:08,160 The choice of poems should be entertaining. 807 00:45:08,160 --> 00:45:10,240 But do you see yourself as an entertainer? 808 00:45:10,240 --> 00:45:14,400 Not in the sense of a show business sort of thing. Not really. 809 00:45:14,400 --> 00:45:17,760 I think it's all sorts of things. 810 00:45:17,760 --> 00:45:20,600 It can be serious, it can be entertaining, it can be funny. 811 00:45:20,600 --> 00:45:24,720 Entertaining tends to mean funny, that's the problem in people's minds. 812 00:45:24,720 --> 00:45:27,240 "He's behind you!" 813 00:45:27,240 --> 00:45:29,880 Chorused the children but the warning came too late. 814 00:45:29,880 --> 00:45:31,600 The monster leaped forward 815 00:45:31,600 --> 00:45:34,360 and fastening its teeth into his neck tore off the head. 816 00:45:34,360 --> 00:45:36,280 The body fell to the floor. 817 00:45:36,280 --> 00:45:38,560 "More," cried the children. "More." 818 00:45:41,200 --> 00:45:44,520 Poetry had become a familiar part of popular entertainment, 819 00:45:44,520 --> 00:45:47,400 and was reaching a wider audience than ever before. 820 00:45:53,280 --> 00:45:57,800 But in the mid 1970s, at a time of deep social unrest in Britain, 821 00:45:57,800 --> 00:46:01,200 more urgent, marginalised voices started to be heard. 822 00:46:05,680 --> 00:46:09,160 Dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson was one of the first people 823 00:46:09,160 --> 00:46:11,760 to write about the situation for the disaffected 824 00:46:11,760 --> 00:46:15,160 Black British youth living in the inner cities. 825 00:46:15,160 --> 00:46:18,440 # Dem frame up George Lindo up in Bradford town, 826 00:46:18,440 --> 00:46:21,120 # But de Bradford blaks dem a rally round. # 827 00:46:21,120 --> 00:46:23,400 He was the only voice that was speaking to us, 828 00:46:23,400 --> 00:46:25,960 putting our situation under a microscope 829 00:46:25,960 --> 00:46:29,080 and not only just reporting and observing, 830 00:46:29,080 --> 00:46:32,360 but kind of offering direction and ideas. 831 00:46:32,360 --> 00:46:34,320 You know, you look at the body of his work, 832 00:46:34,320 --> 00:46:37,160 he sums up the '70s into the early '80s... 833 00:46:37,160 --> 00:46:40,560 What it was like to be Black in Britain like nobody else. 834 00:46:40,560 --> 00:46:45,320 # Madness, madness tight on the heads of the rebels 835 00:46:45,320 --> 00:46:48,960 # The bitterness erup's like a heart blas' 836 00:46:48,960 --> 00:46:50,440 # Broke glass 837 00:46:52,200 --> 00:46:55,280 # Ritual of blood an' a-burnin'... # 838 00:46:55,280 --> 00:46:58,160 Kwesi Johnson wrote in a Jamaican dialect 839 00:46:58,160 --> 00:47:00,520 and performed his poems over reggae beats. 840 00:47:02,360 --> 00:47:03,640 # Broke glass 841 00:47:03,640 --> 00:47:08,600 # Cold blades as sharp as the eyes of hate and the stabbin' 842 00:47:08,600 --> 00:47:12,000 # It's war amongs' the rebels. # 843 00:47:12,000 --> 00:47:14,360 One of the fibs about British poetry 844 00:47:14,360 --> 00:47:16,640 is that it's always been written in standard English. 845 00:47:16,640 --> 00:47:19,480 The point is many poets, both in Britain and America, 846 00:47:19,480 --> 00:47:22,680 have written in what you might call non-standard English or in dialect. 847 00:47:22,680 --> 00:47:24,520 So when Linton was writing in patois, 848 00:47:24,520 --> 00:47:27,160 people said, "Oh, well, I don't understand it." 849 00:47:27,160 --> 00:47:28,800 I think they were making a statement 850 00:47:28,800 --> 00:47:30,480 that they didn't want to understand it. 851 00:47:30,480 --> 00:47:34,680 Steel blade drinking blood in darkness 852 00:47:34,680 --> 00:47:39,040 It's war amongst the rebels, madness, madness war. 853 00:47:41,000 --> 00:47:44,720 Kwesi Johnson's unique style of performance attracted the curiosity 854 00:47:44,720 --> 00:47:47,920 of even the most traditional BBC programmes. 855 00:47:47,920 --> 00:47:49,960 You do use a Creole patois, don't you, 856 00:47:49,960 --> 00:47:52,400 which is very difficult for a White person to understand. 857 00:47:52,400 --> 00:47:54,040 I found while listening to some of them 858 00:47:54,040 --> 00:47:56,440 that I would have liked to have understood more than I did 859 00:47:56,440 --> 00:47:59,440 and you weren't actually reaching me as a White person. 860 00:47:59,440 --> 00:48:04,400 Well, perhaps it forces you, if you're really that interested, 861 00:48:04,400 --> 00:48:06,840 to try and penetrate the language and check it out 862 00:48:06,840 --> 00:48:08,400 and try to understand it. 863 00:48:08,400 --> 00:48:10,880 But would you not also like the White people to understand 864 00:48:10,880 --> 00:48:13,160 a little bit of what the Black people are going through? 865 00:48:13,160 --> 00:48:16,720 Sure. Um, and I think they... 866 00:48:16,720 --> 00:48:20,360 Some people do get some insights 867 00:48:20,360 --> 00:48:23,160 into our experiences from my poetry. 868 00:48:23,160 --> 00:48:28,560 We looked to our language as part of our rebelliousness. 869 00:48:28,560 --> 00:48:31,760 Our parents, when they came over in the mid '50s, 870 00:48:31,760 --> 00:48:35,080 the way the thought they'd succeed was by assimilating, 871 00:48:35,080 --> 00:48:39,120 which really meant trying to play the White man. 872 00:48:39,120 --> 00:48:42,040 I mean, Jamaican language, it's got a bass, man. You know what I mean? 873 00:48:42,040 --> 00:48:44,800 It's a certain power to it. 874 00:48:44,800 --> 00:48:49,400 # So slow, so smooth, So tight and ripe and smash! # 875 00:48:49,400 --> 00:48:51,480 You like, also, to perform your poems, don't you? 876 00:48:51,480 --> 00:48:53,480 Rather than to have people actually read them? 877 00:48:53,480 --> 00:48:55,960 Absolutely, because it's oral poetry. 878 00:48:55,960 --> 00:48:59,680 The emphasis is on the spoken word as opposed to the written word. 879 00:49:01,000 --> 00:49:04,840 And, of course, the spoken word has a greater immediacy 880 00:49:04,840 --> 00:49:07,040 and impact than the written word does. 881 00:49:09,920 --> 00:49:13,400 Published in the run up to the Brixton riots of the early '80s, 882 00:49:13,400 --> 00:49:17,960 Dread Beat An' Blood became Kwesi Johnson's politically charged anthem 883 00:49:17,960 --> 00:49:21,800 to his generation's struggle with police brutality and injustice. 884 00:49:23,640 --> 00:49:27,440 Dread Beat An' Blood is a really powerful piece of work, 885 00:49:27,440 --> 00:49:29,440 that's definitely informed by the times, 886 00:49:29,440 --> 00:49:33,120 and I don't think there's any better encapsulation 887 00:49:33,120 --> 00:49:37,840 of what the Black British experience was at that time. 888 00:49:37,840 --> 00:49:39,960 I mean, it certainly changed my life. 889 00:49:41,840 --> 00:49:45,000 The BBC Arts documentary strand, Omnibus, 890 00:49:45,000 --> 00:49:49,080 followed Kwesi Johnson's campaign for George Lindo, 891 00:49:49,080 --> 00:49:52,840 a Black British man who had been wrongfully imprisoned for robbery. 892 00:49:55,640 --> 00:49:58,080 The slogans that the demonstrators were chanting 893 00:49:58,080 --> 00:50:00,120 had a kind of a calypso tempo. 894 00:50:00,120 --> 00:50:04,920 Jail house in George house, jail house in George house. 895 00:50:04,920 --> 00:50:09,480 And that simple chant gave me the inspiration to write this poem. 896 00:50:09,480 --> 00:50:13,040 Dem frame up George Lindo up in Bradford town 897 00:50:13,040 --> 00:50:16,360 But de Bradford blaks dem a rally round 898 00:50:16,360 --> 00:50:19,520 Maggi Tatcha on di go wid a racist show 899 00:50:19,520 --> 00:50:21,680 but a she haffi go 900 00:50:21,680 --> 00:50:26,680 kaw, rite now, African, Asian, West Indian 901 00:50:26,680 --> 00:50:30,160 an' Black British stan firm inna Inglan 902 00:50:30,160 --> 00:50:32,040 inna disya time yah. 903 00:50:32,040 --> 00:50:34,760 # George Lindo - im nuh carri do dagger 904 00:50:34,760 --> 00:50:37,760 # George Lindo - im is not no robber 905 00:50:37,760 --> 00:50:40,760 # George Lindo - dem haffi let im goh 906 00:50:40,760 --> 00:50:43,560 # George Lindo - dem betta free im now ! # 907 00:50:56,680 --> 00:50:59,640 From the streets of Brixton to the libraries of Hull, 908 00:50:59,640 --> 00:51:02,320 to the living rooms of suburban America, 909 00:51:02,320 --> 00:51:05,800 poetry had sprung from some unfamiliar places. 910 00:51:05,800 --> 00:51:09,600 And, over the course of the century, poetry had been transformed, 911 00:51:09,600 --> 00:51:12,320 no longer the preserve of a privileged few, 912 00:51:12,320 --> 00:51:14,760 but a diverse community of voices. 913 00:51:17,720 --> 00:51:20,560 At the end of century there would be one writer 914 00:51:20,560 --> 00:51:22,560 who would enjoy universal appeal... 915 00:51:25,040 --> 00:51:28,560 ..and become one of modern poetry's household names. 916 00:51:28,560 --> 00:51:32,400 Like many of the poets of his generation, he was an outsider, 917 00:51:32,400 --> 00:51:35,760 growing up on a cattle farm in rural Northern Ireland. 918 00:51:37,440 --> 00:51:41,880 Seamus Heaney, or as he became known, Famous Seamus. 919 00:51:47,280 --> 00:51:50,200 There are two ways to look at Seamus Heaney's early poetry, 920 00:51:50,200 --> 00:51:53,320 and indeed English writers did look at him in these two ways. 921 00:51:53,320 --> 00:51:56,360 One, to think it's wonderful about nature. 922 00:51:56,360 --> 00:52:00,360 And two, to think it's rural, earthly. 923 00:52:00,360 --> 00:52:03,400 It's all about root vegetables and crops and so on. 924 00:52:03,400 --> 00:52:06,200 Both, actually, reactions are actually rather condescending 925 00:52:06,200 --> 00:52:07,920 to what Heaney was actually doing. 926 00:52:07,920 --> 00:52:10,040 Heaney's so-called nature poetry 927 00:52:10,040 --> 00:52:12,320 is actually dealing with a lot of other things. 928 00:52:12,320 --> 00:52:14,840 To do with identity, his own, 929 00:52:14,840 --> 00:52:20,480 to do with family, and tribe, and home, and belonging. 930 00:52:20,480 --> 00:52:24,120 It's not about just describing blackberries or potatoes. 931 00:52:26,480 --> 00:52:28,800 The coarse boot nestled on the lug, 932 00:52:28,800 --> 00:52:32,320 the shaft against the inside knee was levered firmly. 933 00:52:32,320 --> 00:52:36,560 He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep 934 00:52:36,560 --> 00:52:39,160 to scatter new potatoes that we picked, 935 00:52:39,160 --> 00:52:42,760 loving their cool hardness in our hands. 936 00:52:42,760 --> 00:52:45,440 By God, the old man could handle a spade. 937 00:52:45,440 --> 00:52:46,720 Just like his old man. 938 00:52:48,080 --> 00:52:50,440 The cold smell of potato mould, 939 00:52:50,440 --> 00:52:53,480 the squelch and slap of soggy peat, 940 00:52:53,480 --> 00:52:57,400 the curt cuts of an edge through living roots awaken in my head. 941 00:52:59,160 --> 00:53:01,480 But I've no spade to follow men like them. 942 00:53:02,800 --> 00:53:07,360 Between my finger and my thumb the squat pen rests. 943 00:53:07,360 --> 00:53:09,800 I'll dig with it. 944 00:53:09,800 --> 00:53:13,120 Heaney began his 45-year-long career 945 00:53:13,120 --> 00:53:15,880 writing about his modest farming background. 946 00:53:17,600 --> 00:53:20,800 His first collection, Death of a Naturalist, 947 00:53:20,800 --> 00:53:23,840 published in 1966, was an instant success. 948 00:53:31,800 --> 00:53:35,280 As a child, they couldn't keep me from wells 949 00:53:35,280 --> 00:53:38,800 And old pumps with buckets and windlasses 950 00:53:38,800 --> 00:53:44,120 I loved the dark drop, the trapped sky, the smells of waterweed, 951 00:53:44,120 --> 00:53:46,240 fungus and dank moss. 952 00:53:47,440 --> 00:53:51,320 One in a brick yard with a rotted board top 953 00:53:51,320 --> 00:53:52,760 I savoured the rich crash 954 00:53:52,760 --> 00:53:56,320 when a bucked plummeted down at the end of a rope. 955 00:53:56,320 --> 00:54:00,000 So deep you saw no reflection in it. 956 00:54:00,000 --> 00:54:04,080 The magic of poetry is that the individual can take an experience, 957 00:54:04,080 --> 00:54:08,480 paint in words and other people can see themselves in it. 958 00:54:08,480 --> 00:54:13,760 He's not about anything. There's no polemic in his poetry. 959 00:54:13,760 --> 00:54:18,520 Now, to pry into roots, to finger slime, 960 00:54:18,520 --> 00:54:21,480 To stare big-eyed Narcissus 961 00:54:21,480 --> 00:54:24,720 into some spring is beneath all adult dignity. 962 00:54:26,000 --> 00:54:28,640 I rhyme to see myself, 963 00:54:28,640 --> 00:54:30,640 to set the darkness echoing. 964 00:54:32,720 --> 00:54:35,880 He came from nowhere and nothing. 965 00:54:35,880 --> 00:54:42,040 There was no literary pedigree in Heaney's background, 966 00:54:42,040 --> 00:54:47,360 from a farming family in rural Ireland. 967 00:54:47,360 --> 00:54:53,000 I think it coincided with a more general movement in poetry 968 00:54:53,000 --> 00:54:58,600 through the late 20th century where those voices from the outside, 969 00:54:58,600 --> 00:55:02,920 the non-metropolitan voices, became more interesting. 970 00:55:02,920 --> 00:55:06,440 These were people who often hadn't had a voice. 971 00:55:12,920 --> 00:55:15,680 Heaney grew up in a rural community and that was his world, 972 00:55:15,680 --> 00:55:18,880 and the world he wrote about in his first two or three collections. 973 00:55:18,880 --> 00:55:22,120 But then he was living in Belfast at the time of the Troubles. 974 00:55:22,120 --> 00:55:25,320 Suddenly, the urgency of that matter was something 975 00:55:25,320 --> 00:55:29,360 he felt he had to address as a poet, to be a public voice, 976 00:55:29,360 --> 00:55:32,880 to be a political voice, to show solidarity with his own people. 977 00:55:34,840 --> 00:55:38,080 Interviewed on the BBC in 1973, 978 00:55:38,080 --> 00:55:40,520 at the height of the Northern Irish conflict, 979 00:55:40,520 --> 00:55:44,640 Heaney was forced to consider how he would play a public role. 980 00:55:44,640 --> 00:55:47,400 In your early years, your first poetry 981 00:55:47,400 --> 00:55:51,600 wrote what I'd call modern landscape poetry basically, 982 00:55:51,600 --> 00:55:54,480 and now that landscape that you're all too familiar with 983 00:55:54,480 --> 00:55:58,640 is torn by often arbitrary but certainly tormenting violence. 984 00:55:58,640 --> 00:56:02,080 Surely this must have some effect on the poetry you're writing now. 985 00:56:02,080 --> 00:56:07,240 My view and way with poetry has never been to use it 986 00:56:07,240 --> 00:56:13,560 as a vehicle for making statements about situations. 987 00:56:13,560 --> 00:56:17,920 The poems have more... they've more come up 988 00:56:17,920 --> 00:56:23,440 like bodies out of a bog of my own imagination. 989 00:56:23,440 --> 00:56:25,880 I want to wait, in a sense, 990 00:56:25,880 --> 00:56:29,800 until the violence comes out of the pores of my mind, 991 00:56:29,800 --> 00:56:32,240 and I think it does, in a way. 992 00:56:32,240 --> 00:56:33,840 But, um... 993 00:56:33,840 --> 00:56:37,040 Well, I notice a discernible movement in that direction, 994 00:56:37,040 --> 00:56:40,480 and a feeling of the symbols coming to which you're selecting. 995 00:56:40,480 --> 00:56:44,800 In the poem and dedication in your last book, Wintering Out, 996 00:56:44,800 --> 00:56:47,640 which I'll read... 997 00:56:47,640 --> 00:56:50,040 "This morning from a dewy motorway 998 00:56:50,040 --> 00:56:53,400 "I saw the new camp for the internees. 999 00:56:53,400 --> 00:56:57,160 "A bomb had left a crater of fresh clay in the road side 1000 00:56:57,160 --> 00:57:02,720 "and over in the trees, machine gun posts defined a real stockade. 1001 00:57:02,720 --> 00:57:06,040 "There was that white mist you get on a low ground 1002 00:57:06,040 --> 00:57:08,080 "and it was deja vu 1003 00:57:08,080 --> 00:57:11,280 "some film made of stalag 17, 1004 00:57:11,280 --> 00:57:14,920 "a bad dream with no sound. 1005 00:57:14,920 --> 00:57:17,240 "'Is there a life before death?' 1006 00:57:17,240 --> 00:57:20,360 "That's chalked up on a wall downtown. 1007 00:57:20,360 --> 00:57:24,160 "Competence with pain, coherent miseries, 1008 00:57:24,160 --> 00:57:26,280 "a bite and sup. 1009 00:57:26,280 --> 00:57:28,560 "We hug our little destiny again." 1010 00:57:30,400 --> 00:57:35,680 I think it may happen in the future that, now that sadly he's gone, 1011 00:57:35,680 --> 00:57:39,360 that his affability is not the thing he's remembered for, 1012 00:57:39,360 --> 00:57:41,240 but actually the toughness of his language. 1013 00:57:43,680 --> 00:57:46,240 It's always hard to know which poets will endure, 1014 00:57:46,240 --> 00:57:48,920 which ones will speak to generations after ours, 1015 00:57:48,920 --> 00:57:51,040 but I hope Heaney's will. I think it will. 1016 00:57:51,040 --> 00:57:53,640 And in the meanwhile, in his lifetime it certainly spoke to us, 1017 00:57:53,640 --> 00:57:56,640 and he was a also great ambassador for poetry. 1018 00:57:56,640 --> 00:57:58,920 He took it out there into the world. 1019 00:57:58,920 --> 00:58:02,000 And that's why he's such a huge presence at the end of the century.