Poetry Please, Radio 4
Today, Radio 4
Because it is Christmas and because poetry is a step away from the hustle, a space to think and reflect, and also because Michael Sheen is a wonderful actor, I found myself in his company on a long car journey.
Sheen was Roger McGough’s guest on Poetry Please, when his selection of poems was decidedly Welsh and wonderful. Poetry is like “dreaming awake”, he said.
Dylan Thomas’s poetry was “in the ether” when Sheen was a child in Wales and he joked that rather than his mother, the very earliest voice he remembers is that of Richard Burton speaking Thomas’s words. He remembers thinking they were the one person.
There were beautiful moments in this programme that eased Christmas road rage and there were laughs along the way.
Sheen said he did write poetry when he was younger, then shared a “terrible cringe of a memory”.
At age 24, he decided to give his family the present of his poems at Christmas. He gathered them together, dimmed the lights, put on music and read them his “terribly earnest” poems… forcing everyone to sit through them, pretending they enjoyed it, he said.
His cringe is familiar – we cringe for our younger, awkward selves.
The highlight of this programme was a beautiful poem by Tom Hirons called Sometimes A Wild God.
It is breathtaking…. this wild god who appears unwanted is pagan and other and a little unsettling.
It is, above all, mysterious and I’ve been haunted by the beauty of this poem since that car journey.
The poem is read by the poet and you can listen on his website or on Poetry Please: “Sometimes a wild god comes to the table / He is awkward and does not know the ways / Of porcelain, of fork and mustard and silver. / His voice makes vinegar from wine.”
If you listen to one thing on BBC Sounds this week, make it this Poetry Please.
On the Today programme, meanwhile, it was time to bid farewell to Mishal Hussein.
She is someone who remained undaunted and unflinching in the face of power of any kind. She never held back from asking the hard questions and persisted in the asking, politely but firmly.
She will be missed.