Lunch Poems

The poet Frank O'Hara was at the very centre of the explosion in New York's artistic life that took place in the nineteen-fifties and sixties. Friend and champion of Abstract Expressionists such as Pollock and de Kooning, O'Hara worked at the Museum of Modern Art; during his lunch hours, he'd explore the city at its most vibrant peak before stopping off at the Olivetti typewriter store to write the poems that would eventually appear as the collection 'Lunch Poems'. In this programme, Paul Farley heads to New York to see what it is about this collection- and the man that created it- that ensures its continuing popularity today. Along the way he meets some of the current crop of the city's poets, as well as O'Hara's long time friend and now elder statesman of verse, John Ashbery. Producer: Geoff Bird An All Out Production for BBC Radio 4.