Poetry and performance from Cumbria's Contains Strong Language festival
Poets Kate Clanchy, Jacob Polley and Zosia Wand join Katie Popperwell for a Front Row celebrating poetry and performance from Cumbria's Contains Strong Language festival.
Dove Cottage Grasmere is the heart of Romantic poetry and is hosting part of this year's Contains Strong Language festival. We'll be asking what the Romantics have to tell us now, with the poet Kate Clanchy who has adapted Samuel Taylor Coleridge's unfinished poem Christabel with a newly commissioned score by composer Katie Chatburn.
Novelist, poet and playwright Zosia Wand was born in London but didn't speak English till she went to school and spent all her holidays in Poland. Now she's written a radio play Bones - set on the sandbanks of Morecambe Bay - exploring how it feels to be a migrant and the emotional impact on the generations that follow.
In 2005 the award winning poet and novelist Jacob Polley’s home town of Carlisle flooded catastrophically after heavy rain. Three people died and thousands were left homeless in an event that was supposed to be a one in a hundred year event. Now Jacob Polley’s returned to that time for a new play Emergency. It’s a love story set against a merciless storm voiced through ancient Anglo-Saxon riddles about the power of nature.
And we discuss the impact of poetry in isolation with the young poet Hannah Hodgson who is living with a life limiting disease. She'll read from her lockdown collection and discuss how poetry managed to say what we needed to say this year from zoom poetry slams to tik tok haikus.
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Kate Clanchy
Poet Kate Clanchy has adapted Samuel Taylor Coleridge's unfinished poem Christabel with a newly commissioned score by composer Katie Chatburn
Zosia Wand
Her new radio play is µώ΄Η²Τ±π²υΜύ
Jacob Polley
Jacob Polley’s new play is Emergency
Broadcast
- Fri 25 Sep 2020 19:00Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Radio 4
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Contains Strong Language Highlights—Contains Strong Language, 2020
Spoken word highlights from the UK's biggest festival of poetry and performance.
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Front Row
Live magazine programme on the worlds of arts, literature, film, media and music