The Spoken Word: Poetry in the Making (audio)

Author: Hughes, Ted; Oswald, Alice (essays)

Published by The British Library, 2008
2CD

The British Library has published two double-CD sets of recordings from the BBC archives. Each set comes with a booklet containing a short essay by Alice Oswald and details on the recordings.

Set two, "The Spoken Word: Poetry in the Making" (141 minutes), collects Hughes's talks for the "Listening and Writing" programme (incl. the poems read for illustrating the points made), recorded between 1961 and 1965:

• "Capturing Animals",
• "Moon Creatures",
• "Learning to Think",
• "Writing about Landscape" and
• "Meet My Folks!" as well as
• two broadcasts featuring Season Songs almost in its entirety.
• A short talk on "Stealing Trout on a May Morning" is added as an extra.

Both sets are available from the British Library shop and from good booksellers.

Contents:

"Capturing Animals" incl.

• "The Thought Fox"
• "Pike"

"Moon Creatures" incl.

• "The Earth Owl"
• "Moon-Horrors"
• "Music on the Moon"
• "The Armies of the Moon"
• "The Snail of the Moon"
• "A Moon Man-hunt"
• "Moon-Hops"
• "Foxgloves"

"Learning to Think" incl.

• "View of a Pig"
• "Bare Almond Trees"
• "Wodwo"

 

"Writing about Landscape" incl.

• "The South Country [extract] (Edward Thomas)"
• "Virginia (T.S. Eliot)"
• "Inversnaid (Gerard Manley Hopkins)"
• "Wuthering Heights (Sylvia Plath)"

 

Disc Two

"Meet My Folks!" incl.

• "My Brother Bert"
• "My Uncle Dan"
• "Grandma"
• "My Grandpa"
• "My Mother"
• "My Father"

First broadcast from Season Songs incl.

• "Spring: A March Calf"
• "Spring: The River in March"
• "Spring: March Morning Unlike Others"
• "Spring: Spring Nature Notes I"
• "Spring: April Birthday"
• "Spring: Ice Crust and Snowflake"
• "Summer: Swifts"
• "Summer: Mackerel Song"
• "Summer: Hay"

Second broadcast from Season Songs incl.

• "Summer: Sheep III"
• "Summer: Apple Dumps"
• "Autumn: Cranefly in September"
• "Autumn: Two Horses"
• "Autumn: The Seven Sorrows"
• "Winter: December River"
• "Winter: The Warm and the Cold"

Short talk on "Stealing Trout on a May Morning"