´óÏó´«Ã½

Poet Daljit Nagra revisits the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s poetry archive and chooses Conversations on a Bench – Northumberland.

This features a specially commissioned poem by Katrina Porteous - shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize 2024.

Anna Scott-Brown returns to hear more stories from the people who stop to sit beside her on benches around the country.

Anna is joined on a bench overlooking Beadnell Harbour in Northumberland by holiday-makers, environmentalists and some members of the last remaining fishing families of Beadnell.

Throughout the programme, a specially commissioned work by poet and Beadnell resident, Katrina Porteous draws on the voices of locals and passers-by.

The harbour was once a thriving departure point for the lime produced in the kilns behind the bench, and for the traditional coble fishing boats, now almost completely gone.

Today, the village has one of the highest percentages of holiday homes in Britain, and traditional ways of making a living are under threat, but Anna is joined by those whose communal memory goes back to the heyday of a once close-knit working community.

Hidden lives are revealed and common threads recur as Anna Scott-Brown's gentle - but insistent and sometimes extremely direct - questions elicit poignant and profound responses from those sitting on the bench.

Presenter: Anna Scott-Brown

Producer: Adam Fowler

An Overtone production for ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio 4, first broadcast in 2016.

* And Daljit reads from his January Poetry Extra Book of the Month - a debut collection Oi You Lot by Kareem Parkins-Brown.

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