Announcements

Events

News

Paul Farley presents 'The Paperback Poets' and 'Twenty Minutes'

Date: 23 July 2012

Professor Paul Farley has recently presented two radio programmes: in The Paperback Poets for The Archive Hour, 21 July, on BBC Radio 4, he talked to fellow poets and publishers about the effects and success of the Penguin Modern Poets series, first launched fifty years ago.

In Radio 3's Twenty Minutes: The West-Eastern Divan, 21 and 23 July, Paul explored over two programmes how, from his youth, the German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was fascinated by the ideas and culture of Islam and the Arabic-speaking world, and how his encounter in later life with the poems of medieval Persian poet Hafiz inspired his own tribute to eastern poetry, The West-Eastern Divan, which itself has inspired Daniel Barenboim and Edward Said's more recent orchestral project.

Paul also appeared recently in a film documentary profile of legendary 'punk poet' John Cooper Clarke, broadcast on BBC4 in May and June.