大象传媒

Poet Daljit Nagra selects the best programmes from the 大象传媒's poetry archive and this week selects Poetry Workshop: The Red Wheelbarrow by William Carlos Williams.

Ruth Padel and the The Dove Cottage Poets in Grasmere work on some poems in progress. Tough love for poems.

Poetry Workshops are gathering all over the country. In the back rooms of pubs, in libraries and in front rooms, poets meet to hone their craft and sharpen their verse.

Going behind the scenes of the poems, the group are ruthless yet supportive as they chuck out words and redraft; listening, pruning and testing their work as they go. The theme for this week's poems is fathers, apt of course for the home-place of Wordsworth, the father of English romanticism.

The group discuss the techniques, inspiration, wordplay and imagination that make poetry so enjoyable and rewarding. As well as working on their own poems, the group bravely try out a writing exercise to warm up their poetry muscles, focussing on line endings by experimenting with a very famous poem by William Carlos Williams. They also consider a poem by a much loved poet associated with the area; Norman Nicholson.

Producer: Sarah Langan

First broadcast on 大象传媒 Radio 4 in 2012.