Swiss radio?

My return-home resolution was to blog a little less (one good post a week rather than heaps of little ones...) but I just have to pass this bit of news on today. Photo above by Mark Stephenson, by the way.

One of the first things I did when we got back to Scotland at the end of July was listen to some radio. There's not a huge amount I like on UK radio these days but I have a few favourites still - shows like Mike Harding's hugely enthusiastic folk show on BBC Radio 2 and there are a few highlights on BBC's 6 Music too (like Lauren Laverne's show and the Cerys Matthews Sunday morning 10am spectacular). On the first one of the Cerys' shows that I listened to since our return she was talking about how hard it was to get permissions for poems to read aloud on the show for its weekly poem slot ("weekly poem slot", I know, just for that it's fabulous). She was talking about poems by famous poets like Dylan Thomas but I thought how crazy this was - people in the world of poetry are often to be heard wondering (aloud) how to get a wider audience for the bleedin' poems and here's a national radio show wanting to read poems to folk and not being allowed to (on occasion). So I thought 'I know a whole lot of brilliant poems by less well-known but equally good poets... and I know a lot of small publishers who would love the chance to get their poets more widely heard'... so I sent her a suggestion (this poem by Morgan Downie, or blogger Swiss to some of us). And I didn't hear back right away so I thought 'oh dear, there's another mad email I've sent into the vast vat of mad emails in the world...' (a lot of them mine).

Then this week she read Morgan's poem out... and so beautifully too (hear the show here - if you're in a place where i-player works that is). I can only hope Morgan was suitably delighted to hear his poem "the stone bible" read aloud by the delectable Ms Matthews (I am quite a fan of her singing and music, never mind the radio show). I know Colin Will was pleased to get a mention for his Calder Wood Press too. The show always blends the poems with music and it was a great combination this week (full details at the show's site). There's a wee interview with folk singer/songwriter Ralph McTell on this week too... if you like that sort of thing... and McTell singing a kids song he wrote that I'd only ever heard before on our girl's Singing Kettle CD (don't know the Singing Kettle? It's a Scottish thing...).

I was pleased to hear the reading for many reasons but partly because, as regular visitors will know, I am a HUGE fan of the SOUND of poetry. I've almost got to a place where I've stopped reading it in my head altogether... I want to hear a poem so much more than I want to, what is the word... absorb it (which reminds me... I've added a rather more hurried and rather less gorgeous audio version of my recent first-in-a-while poem in the last post today). But never mind that, rejoice and celebrate in the power of the Downie words and the whole 'hearing good poems on the radio' business... and while you're at it maybe send Cerys a poetry suggestion (especially if you know the show will easily be able to get permission from the poem's publishers for it). The email is this simple:

cerys.6music@bbc.co.uk


x