Poetry Please - 06/05/2007

Roger McGough introduces Lord Byron's playful satire Beppo. Set in Venice, where Byron was living in 1818, this romp parodies English and Italian attitudes towards marital infidelity. It shows Byron perfecting a new poetic form, juxtaposing the lofty with the absurd and the pretentious with the trivial. The reader is John Telfer. [Rptd Sat 11.30pm] extracts from Beppo by Lord Byron From: The Poetical Works of Lord Byron Publ: Oxford University Press