Poetry Please - 25/07/2010

Roger McGough presents a mixture of poetry requests, including verse by Simon Armitage, Denise Levertov and John Keats. The readers are Kenneth Cranham, Annette Badland and Jonjo O'Neill. Elegies for lost lovers and dead trees ring out, with a quirky poem by the American Louis Untermeyer 'To a Telegraph Pole' and a poem about Orpheus, whose music made the trees dance. Sue Hubbard reads her poem about his long suffering subterranean wife, Eurydice. The seams of poetry and music are interlaced in Patrick Kavanagh's famous 'On Raglan Road', and we find out what ails the 'knight at arms, alone and palely loitering' in John Keats's 'La Belle Dames Sans Merci.' A half hour bound to hath thee in thrall. Producer: Sarah Langan.