大象传媒

Roger McGough challenges the notion that 'Happiness writes white' as he begins a new series with a cheering selection of poetry.
There are poems celebrating a sense of freedom in summertime by Elizabeth Jennings and Robert Frost. There's a delicate poem by Norman MacCaig about the beauty of rain and a selection of poems about weddings including a moving and joyful one that Ted Hughes wrote about the day he married Sylvia Plath. With Plath in her pink woollen knitted dress and Hughes beside her in his thrice dyed corduroy jacket, he talks of being subjected to a strange tense: that of the spellbound future.
Even poets not known for their cheeriness, Emily Dickinson and Charles Bukowski have happiness pouring out of them.
There are also poems about the joys of gardens by Kipling and the ancient Chinese poet Po Chu-i, and a beautiful Ethiopian tribal love poem.
The readers are Pippa Haywood, Patrick Romer and Harry Livingstone.
Producer: Sarah Langan.