Poetry Please - 18/07/2010

Roger McGough presents listeners' poetry requests, with work by Michael Longley, Edward Thomas and Lavinia Greenlaw. The readers are Kenneth Cranham, Annette Badland and Jonjo O'Neill. Imtiaz Dharker reads her own poem 'Speech Balloon' about that ubiquitous phrase 'Over the Moon.' There are other space-bound poems, including a moving elegy 'For the First Dog in Space.' Michael Longley introduces his grandson to the natural world in his poem 'The Leveret'. Rites of passage in a young person's life are also marked by Billy Collins' poem 'On Turning Ten', read by nine year old Tyler Johnson, and in Roger's own verse written for his daughter Isobel when she passed her first decade. There's also a lament by Edward Thomas about a soldier caught between enemy lines whose relief at his respite is punctuated by sorrow for his fallen comrades. Producer: Sarah Langan.