The Essay - Tennyson 200 - Vicki Feaver on Ulysses

Series in which contemporary British poets choose a single poem or extract by Tennyson and give a personal account of why it means so much to them. Vicki Feaver talks about Tennyson's long poem Ulysses, about the aged hero of Greek myth, driven to travel onwards even after reaching his home on Ithaca and his long-suffering wife Penelope. Tennyson was only 24 when he wrote it, soon after hearing of the death of his dear friend Arthur Hallam. Feaver believes the poem is about far more than physical travel or coping with grief. For her, Ulysses is about the need of the artist always to move forward - not, in her case, to succumb to benign pressure to tend her garden or be a good grandmother but to pursue her art and to follow Tennyson's rallying cry 'to strive, to seek, to find and not to yield'. Reader: Simon Russell Beale.