Night Waves - 12/07/2010

Philip Dodd will be discussing Philip Larkin's love of jazz. For many years the poet was the jazz reviewer of The Telegraph - 'few things in life have given me greater pleasure than listening to jazz', he wrote. Philip is joined by Larkin's friend John White who has compiled a new CD compilation of Larkin's favourite music and the poet Paul Farley to discuss the relationship between poetry and jazz in Larkin's work. What is the value of optimism? Mark Twain once said that an optimist is a person who travels on nothing from nowhere to happiness. And yet today our culture seems suspicious of optimism. Where hope once pervaded the arts it is now generally regarded as shallow and unsophisticated. Philip is joined by Tony Benn, the former Bishop of Edinburgh Richard Holloway, Anne Karpf and the political theorist Kenneth Minogue to debate the nature of optimism. John Akomfrah, director of the influential 1986 film 'Handsworth Songs' will be talking to Philip about his new work, 'Mnemosyne', a meditation on migration and the West Midlands.