Words and Music - At the Movies

A selection of poetry, prose and music inspired by the movies. Poets and composers have been associated with the cinema since it began well over a hundred years ago. In the early years Russian poet Mayakovsky, Jean Cocteau, W.H. Auden and Bertolt Brecht were all involved as were the composers William Walton, Erich Korngold, Max Steiner and Elmer Bernstein. In Words and Music at the Movies poems include Tony Harrison's 'Continuous', Carol Ann Duffy's 'Big Sue and Now Voyager', ee cummings' 'your slightest look' (heard in Woody Allen's 'Hannah and her Sisters') and Roger McGough's 'If life's a lousy picture, why not leave before the end?' with music from Michael Nyman, Mozart, Schumann, Bernard Hermann, Aubert, Miles Davis, Nino Rota, Jerry Goldsmith and Ennio Morricone. The readers are Barbara Flynn and William Hope.