Programme 9

The poet

UA Fanthorpe was born in Kent. She studied at Oxford and went on to train as a teacher. She became Head of English, at Cheltenham Ladies' College (1962–70). In 'middle age' she 'dropped out' of teaching after training as a counsellor and took a job as a clerk in a hospital for neuro-psychiatric patients. The shock of what she saw made her write – to give voice to what the patients were experiencing. Her first collection of poems, was published when she was 49. The poems themselves all show a deep compassion for ordinary people and a suspicion of authority.

Fanthorpe uses narrative technique very cleverly. Some of her most successful poems have been in monologue. Her poems use a great deal of humour and a lot of dialogue. In addition to her work about patients and hospitals, much of her writing is concerned with war and its effects on children, the nature of Englishness and the British character and history.

She was the first woman ever to be nominated for the post of Oxford Professor of Poetry and has been awarded various Fellowships. In 2001 Fanthorpe was made CBE for services to poetry. She was also awarded the 2003 Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry. In 1989 she became a full-time writer, and often gives readings of her work, mostly in the UK and occasionally abroad. Many of her poems are for two voices.

You feel adequate to the demands of this position?
What qualities do you feel you
Personally have to offer?
                                                                          Ah

Let us consider your application form.
Your qualifications, though impressive, are
Not, we must admit, precisely what
We had in mind. Would you care
To defend their relevance?
                                                                          Indeed

Now your age. Perhaps you feel able
To make your own comment about that,
Too? We are conscious ourselves
Of the need for a candidate with precisely
The right degree of immaturity.
                                                                          So glad we agree

And now a delicate matter: your looks.
You do appreciate this work involves
Contact with the actual public? Might they,
Perhaps, find your appearance
Disturbing?
                                                                          Quite so

And your accent. That is the way
You have always spoken, is it? What
Of your education? Were
You educated? We mean, of course,
Where were you educated?
                                              And how
Much of a handicap is that to you.
Would you say?

                        Married, children,
We see. The usual dubious
Desire to perpetuate what had better
Not have happened at all. We do not
Ask what domestic disasters shimmer
Behind that vaguely unsuitable address.

And you were born—?
                                                                          Yes. Pity.
So glad we agree.

Back to top

The poet

John Keats was born in London. When John was eight, his father was killed. His mother took her family to live with her mother. Then, in 1810 his mother died of tuberculosis, leaving the children with their grandmother. The old lady put them under the care of two well-paid guardians who took John from school and apprenticed him to a surgeon. Before completing his apprenticeship, John argued with his master and left to become a student at Guy's Hospital. He left medicine for literature in 1814 and he met up with other young Romantics, including Shelley, who admired Keats' poetic abilities and viewed him as a rising literary star.

In 1820 the second volume of Keats's poems appeared and was successful. However, Keats, like his mother and brother before him, was suffering from tuberculosis. His last poems reflected a deep sadness (partly because he was too poor to marry Fanny Brawne, the woman he loved). At his doctor's urging he went to Italy to get better. Declining Shelley's invitation to join him at Pisa, Keats went to Rome, where he died at the age of 25.

A passionate believer in Art and Beauty, his poems range from the light-hearted and the satirical to the major odes: powerful meditations on love, art, song, sorrow and the natural world, although his mature poems reveal his fascination with a world of death and decay. John Keats's rich and inventive poetry is among the loveliest and most profound in the English language even though most of his poetry spans only four years.

This living hand, now warm and capable
Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold
And in the icy silence of the tomb,
So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights
That thou would wish thine own heart dry of blood
So in my veins red life might stream again,
And thou be conscience-calmed – see here it is –
I hold it towards you.

Back to top

GARY SNYDER (1930–present)
Front Lines / As the crickets' soft autumn hum

The poet

Gary Snyder was born in San Francisco and brought up in Oregon and Washington State. He did an anthropology degree in 1951. Two years later he studied Oriental languages having worked as a logger, a trail-crew member, and a seaman on a Pacific tanker. His experiences as a logger and ranger were inspirations for his first collection of poetry: 'Riprap' (1959) with texts on wilderness and the interaction of nature and culture.

His subsequent career has been a combination of the academic and the contemplative, spiritual study and physical labour. Much of his writing demonstrates the influence of the respected American poets, Walt Whitman and Ezra Pound. Many of his later works focus on alternatives to city living and show a reverence for nature and a deep interest in the spiritual philosophies of the East after his time spent in Japan. His interest in Zen Buddhism, with its respect and tolerance for the world seems to be shared by many other Beat writers as they address global and universal citizenship issues.

Gary Snyder believes that poems are made for audiences and in getting 'poetry to the people' in any way possible. His poems have been displayed in subways and had interesting responses from many people. He has published sixteen books of poetry and prose. His book 'Turtle Island' won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1975. He has won numerous other awards.

The poem

Front Lines 1972–1983

The edge of the cancer
Swells against the hill – we feel
                  a foul breeze –
And it sinks back down.
The deer winter here
A chainsaw growls in the gorge.

Ten wet days and the log trucks stop,
The trees breathe.
Sunday the 4-wheel jeep of the
Realty Company brings in
Landseekers, lookers, they say
To the land,
Spread your legs.

The jet crack sounds overhead, it's OK here;
Every pulse of the rot at the heart
In the sick fat veins of Amerika
Pushes the edge up closer –

A bulldozer grinding and slobbering
Sideslipping and belching on top of
The skinned-up bodies of still-live bushes
In the pay of a man
From town.

Behind is a forest that goes to the Arctic
And a desert that still belongs to the Piute
And here we must draw
Our line.

Back to top

TONY HARRISON (1937–present)
Illuminations (1980)

The poet

Tony Harrison was born in Leeds and educated there, reading classics and taking a diploma in Linguistics at the University. Having followed a largely academic career he has become a leading film and theatre poet.

He has written for the National Theatre in London, the New York Metropolitan Opera and for the BBC and Channel 4 television He became the first Northern Arts Literary Fellow (1967–8), a post that he held again in 1976–7, and he was resident dramatist at the National Theatre (1977–8). His work there included adaptations of Molière's 'The Misanthrope' and Racine's 'Phaedra Britannica'.

In 1995 he was commissioned by The Guardian newspaper to visit Bosnia and write poems about the war. He has written, narrated and directed television material for Channel 4 and the BBC and wrote and directed his first feature film 'Prometheus' in 1998. His most recent collection of poetry is 'Laureate's Block and Other Occasional Poems' (2000).

The poem

The two machines on Blackpool's Central Pier,
The Long Drop and The Haunted House gave me
my thrills the holiday that post-war year
but my father watched me spend impatiently:

Another tanner's worth, but then no more!
But I sneaked back the moment that you napped.
50 weeks of ovens, and 6 years of war
made you want sleep and ozone, and you snapped:

Bugger the machines! Breathe God's fresh air!
I sulked all week, and wouldn't hold your hand.
I'd never heard you mention God, or swear,
and it took me until now to understand.
I see now all the piled old pence turned green,
enough to hang the murderer all year
and stare at millions of ghosts in the machine---
The penny dropped in time! Wish you were here!

Back to top