Poetry Please - 04/07/2010

Roger McGough introduces a broad selection of listeners' poetry requests, including work by Keats, Vernon Scannell and Maura Dooley. There are poems about bravery, wandering women, sleep and rain. The readers are Kenneth Cranham and Jonjo O'Neill. Maura Dooley reads her own poem, re-telling a story from 1833 of the attempts by the women of Mumbles Head to rescue their men from a capsized lifeboat. There's a sonnet by Keats that might strike a chord with anyone who has felt the desperation of sleeplessness. 'Old Meg she was a gypsy' begins another, very different poem by Keats; 'Meg Merrilees.' It is one of those first lines of poetry that seems to have stuck in the minds of many listeners. There's also an archive reading by Henry Sandon of 'Miss Thompson Goes Shopping' by Martin Armstrong.