Accent - This is the BBC

I will always remember moving from just outside Liverpool to Blackpool at the age of eleven. I hadn't realised  that I had a scouse accent until my first day at an all girl's Grammar school. It seemed that everyone else understood one another but I was a bit of an outsider - that was until I sang. Like many people with regional accents, mine didn't transport into my singing voice and I passed the audition for the school choir. 

Gradually my accent dissipated only to be replaced with that of my peer group and my speech acquired the same habits too. I was born in Blackpool and now I felt that I belonged. All the school mistresses spoke using Received Pronunciation - The Queen's English - just like every news presenter on the  BBC. In the 1970s very few voices on the TV had regional accents but more recently that has begun to change. 

Welsh newscasters, Scottish political commentators and weather presenters regularly appear on the BBC. Northern Irish chat show hosts and talent show presenters seem popular but according to several surveys, Liverpudlian, Mancunian and Bristolian accents don't resonate with the British public, however we do enjoy listening to voices from the North East. Many years ago, I remember hearing the black comedian, Charlie Williams for the first time. He had a broad Yorkshire accent and he was so funny. 

With the advent of The Only Way is Essex and a multitude of reality TV shows, our younger generation has been infected with 'Estuary English', a strange accent, originating along the Thames estuary. With this trend, luscious 'l' sounds have been replaced with 'w's, 't' sounds have acquired a glottal stop, as in Ga'wick and yod coalescence that alters the first part of a word such as Tuesday to a 'ch' sound. Overall it just isn't cricket. 

The subtle Scottish accent of James Bond actor, Sean Connery has proved to be a delight to the viewing public's ear, whereas Liverpool comedian Lily Savage's accent is unpopular. The harsh Northern Irish accent of Ian Paisley is a definite no-no too. Personally, I really don't like the Australian accent and I am not fond of a South African accent that sounds as if it is uttered through gritted teeth. My favourite comedian was the late, great Dave Allen and it was probably his lovely Northern Irish lilt that got me hooked.   

I have been so busy lately I haven't found time to write a poem. I would love to start up a conversation about accents. Perhaps you could share a comment below. 

Thanks for reading. Adele

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Radio

The pictures are better on the radio. That was the first sentence of a blog I wrote back in November 2021 on the topic of ‘Listening’ and that article more or less covers all that I would want to say on the subject of my preferring radio over television. Here is the link: https://deadgoodpoets.blogspot.com/2021/11/listening.html

But how did it all start? I’m going to stick to the UK as otherwise this article would be as long as the marvellous book ‘The BBC. A People’s History’ by David Hendy. There are other books and articles on this subject and it has been fascinating to read the various ways writers have approached the birth of broadcasting in this country. Most of the following information comes from that book.

However, I should mention that, as far as I can find out, the first voice and music signals heard over radio waves were transmitted in December 1906 from Brant Rock, Massachusetts when Canadian experimenter Reginald Fessenden (below) produced about an hour of talk and music for technical observers and any radio amateurs who might be listening.

One of the world’s first scheduled radio broadcast services (known as PCGG) began in Rotterdam, Netherlands, on November 6, 1919. Other early Dutch stations were operated by the Amsterdam Stock Exchange (to send information to new members) and by a news agency that was seeking a new way to serve newspaper subscribers. Another early station appeared in Montreal transmitting experimentally in September 1919 and on a regular schedule the next year.

Here in the UK radio broadcasting began with hobbyists who even before the First World War had been assembling cables, switches and valves in their sheds or spare rooms to listen to the thousands of messages already on the airwaves. They were called ‘listeners-in’ and many formed wireless clubs. These messages were from such places as the Marconi training schools for ship’s wireless operators.

Towards the end of 1919 a few people began to think that there may be a market for something other than time signals etc so the Marconi’s ‘Publicity and Demonstration Department’ opened a transmitter in Chelmsford and over the course of two days it radiated two daily half hour programmes including ‘news and vocal and instrumental selections’. Reports came flooding back as they were heard thousands of miles away on ships as well as by around four hundred of the ‘listeners in’ here at home.

This caught the attention of the Press and by December 1921 sixty three wireless clubs had petitioned for a new service of speech and even music. I’m going to cut most of what happened over the next year but suffice it say that so many wireless stations had sprung up that it was recognised that due to interference and overlapping of signals something had to be done. I should mention the first advertised live public broadcast, which took place on 15th June 1920 when the famous Australian opera singer Dame Nellie Melba sang into Chelmsford's microphone.

What was done was that on Wednesday, October 1922, a consortium was formed to be licensed by the GPO and open not just to the six largest firms who provided the initial capital of £100,000 but to each and every radio manufacturer in the country willing to pay £1 for an ordinary share. Operational costs would be met from half of the 10 shilling licence fee that the GPO levied on all owners of domestic receivers plus a small royalty on all owners of domestic receivers. The resultant company was called the British Broadcasting Company.

At 6pm on Tuesday the 14th of November the BBC came onto the airwaves for the very first time. What an exciting time that must have been. Arthur Burrows announced ‘Hello, hello, 2LO calling. 2 LO calling. This is the British Broadcasting Company. 2 LO. Stand by for one minute, please.’ And he then read a short news bulletin and a weather forecast.

Within a couple of years the BBC covered the whole country through its local stations such as Birmingham and Manchester and people couldn’t imagine a time without radio. A historic moment.

Preston fm

For a live broadcast
be on time,
be prepared,
don’t upset the manager,
studio two,
turn down the light,
check the levels,
get the nod,
you’re on your own
and you’re on.

Sixty minutes
where what you are
is what they want,
happy in the dark,
watching needles
flick silently
to the sound of a voice,

my voice
across the table,
children playing,
part of the family.
I’m another mate
in a student flat.
I’m hitching a lift
in a neighbour’s car,

filling the space,
what more do I need,
my black box is a city,
I’m touching people
103.2 million times a second.
It’s enough.
No one, anyone,
can cope with more than that.

First published in Purple Patch in 2008

Terry Q

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The Matrix

I've never seen the film The Matrix (Library of Congress cultural artefact though it may be), and the only thought I had in mind when first contemplating this theme a couple of weeks ago was 'matrix numbers', the alphanumeric codes stamped into the run-out grooves of vinyl records, by which the pressing plants used to identify their master disks. (Check it out if you have one such to hand. My ancient mono pressing of Beatles For Sale has the matrices XEX5034N and XEX5043N, unique to each side of the LP.)  However, I figured that wouldn't sustain your interest for long - and I must admit it wouldn't keep me hooked either!

Then along came that execrable woman Nadine Dorries (ironically Boris Johnson's latest Secretary of State for Culture), trying to deflect the flack from her beloved PM in his ignominy, by targeting the BBC in another round of Tory warmongering against the Corporation. That's it, I thought. I've had enough of this BBC-bashing. 

I'm nailing my colours firmly to the BBC radio mast in today's blog and celebrating its achievements, charter and worth to the nation. Licensed broadcasting commenced one hundred years ago, in October 1922. Originally this was radio transmission only and was initiated by a consortium of private wireless' manufacturers. Take up was slow and sporadic, which is why the British Broadcasting Corporation was conceived and given a Royal Charter in 1927. Television transmission joined radio programming from 1929 onwards and the service was publicly funded via a licence fee mechanism, allowing the service to be free from 'commercial' bias and constraints. The BBC was the first, and in my estimation, it remains the finest public service broadcasting (PBS) organisation in the world, the womb from which the best of British civilizing cultural and social values emerged through the 20th century. We should be as proud and protective of it as we are of that other great social institution, the NHS.

The license fee has always been set by the government of the day and approved by parliament. Effectively, it is a form of voluntary taxation.  Originally it was payable at a rate of 10 shillings (or 50 pence) per year for radio sets only by any household, school, hospital or workplace that possessed radio sets. After world war II the fee was increased to £2 per year for any household or institution possessing one or more television sets. From 1971 the radio component was dropped.

The monies raised annually by the TV licence fee cover 75% of the costs of the BBC. (The other 25% comes from sales of programmes around the world.) It should be borne in mind that this funding covers a vast range of activities and services: not only the many national and regional BBC television channels, their staff, studios, productions, technicians and transmissions, but also an even greater network of national, regional and local radio stations (staff, studios, productions et cetera), a fantastic Education division putting together programmes for schools and colleges, a worldwide network of professional news reporters, the BBC World Service, and now in the internet age, great state of the art online content covering news, arts, sport, music and much else. Personally, I think that's incredible value for money...the current cost of the licence fee working out at 43 pence per day!

Of course, recent Conservative governments have not looked kindly on the BBC. They don't like State enterprises on principle (there are no vast profits to be made there) and they feel the BBC has been unfairly biased against them - though the Corporation is duty-bound to remain apolitical, so that's simply a case of Tories not liking just criticism. The Conservative government has also tried to show the BBC in a bad light over the ending of free TV licenses for the over-75s, turning the institution into a political football. When it was announced that the free licence scheme was being scrapped and that the over-75s would have to pay in future, this was portrayed in the right-wing press as heartlessness by the BBC, when in fact the subsidy - which has been in place for decades - is a government subsidy, that the Tories have suddenly decided to revoke. It's not the BBC that are the bad guys here but Boris Johnson's government.

And now Nadine Dorries has decided that the licence fee will no longer increase in line with inflation, so that's another constraint on the Corporation in advance of its Royal Charter being up for review/ revision in 2027, with the strong hint that the licence fee may be abolished all together. 

Quite how the BBC will be able to continue to operate as the finest public service broadcasting organisation in the world much after its centenary is unclear to me. If it falls before the Tory onslaught to privatise and exploit every part of this country's infrastructure (as has happened with the deregulation and sell off in communications, energy, transport, utilities and is targeted to happen to health as well), then most of the institutions that have made this country great will have been decimated on the altar of petty greed. It's not a pretty prospect.

To finish, a new poem, not my finest effort by a margin, but intended to be evocative of those days in the late 1950s and early 1960s when most children whose families possessed a (black and white) TV set would watch what was on offer between getting home from school and teatime. It may get upgraded over time, but here's take one...

Hey Presto!

of course the world's not monochrome

though little we cared 

when we got home from school,

hit the on button to let the set warm up

and dropped to the floor

in that magical hour before tea

to stare in mesmerised wonder

at such fare as voiced-over animals

from Bristol Zoo, puppets on strings

mounting International Rescues, 

quiz shows with cabbages as booby prizes,

cowboys and indians, Judys in disguises,

singing piglets and talking horses,

all beamed through the airwaves

from transmitter to aerial until 

they emerged in our living rooms

to cast their spell on our rented TVs

(nobody bought their own in those days)

with flickering 405 or 625 lines thrown up 

onto the screen from a cathode ray tube,

binary choices, only two channels,

received pronunciation voicing the nation,

fuelling our imaginations, educating 

while entertaining - and always turned off

before we sat down to eat...

By the way, I've ordered myself a second-hand DVD copy of The Matrix, so I will watch the film when it arrives. I wonder if DVDs have a matrix number. Thanks for reading, S ;-)

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A Growing Pain

Apparently I am a "woke leftie, spouting a redundant Marxist narrative" - an accusation laid at my door recently by someone who not only believes both 'woke' and 'leftie' are forms of abuse, but also clearly doesn't understand there's a difference between democratic socialism and communism.

And there was me thinking I was simply advocating a world in which everybody has a secure roof over their head, isn't in danger of being gassed, bombed, ethnically cleansed or otherwise physically and mentally abused, has enough to eat and drink, is offered education while young and work at a reasonable remuneration in a world where being a good, caring and responsible citizen is the pre-eminent goal, where any form of discrimination is unacceptable, where exploitation (whether by 'greedy fat cats' or 'lazy scroungers') is simply not tolerated, but where the truly needy are supported and restored to equilibrium and a sense of worth. Isn't that what a decent society ought to be about?

Is it naïve idealism? I was told when I was a young man that I would grow out of such illusions when I got older, with a wife and kids, a career and a mortgage to worry about. But I still hold to those ideals, that social conscience and aspiration for the greater good. To me, that's what being 'woke' and a 'leftie' is all about. Far better than dozing into the nightmare of this creeping right-wing 'laissez-faire (i.e. rampant and unchecked) capitalist-oligarch domination that we're currently heading for. Maybe I just never grew up.

I take the view that we all start off with enormous potential as little human beings, with the latent ability to learn to be open, positive, kind, generous, co-operative, adventurous, creative, as we grow - providing we're given the right milieu and role models.


How disappointing that what starts like this....

If we're shown love, care, kindness, tolerance, the importance of honesty and fairness, most of us  will end up internalising and exhibiting those qualities in life (and pass them on in turn).

It doesn't always go according to plan. There are vast inequalities in this country where 5% of the population (just over 1 million people) own 90% of the wealth, a gap that's widening, by the way, and in which millions of people are living below the poverty line. Without political and social change enshrined in law (i.e.a leftie agenda) those inequalities are never going to be "levelled up" (to use the current buzzword). Instead, the power-brokers - the have-a-lots who mean to have even more - will always deflect away any criticism of their own privilege and motives by encouraging a sense of dissatisfaction with something or someone else: like the nasty EU (which has actually done more good for the average citizen in this country than any Tory government of the last 50 years), welfare scroungers, or those dirty immigrants. So it goes, shameful and disdainful.

...so often ends up like this!

"Boris is my PM", "No more immigrants here", "Our own rules", "Fuck off EU", "Oven ready, go!", "Tough shit, remoaners" - just a few of the placards endorsing and celebrating a democratic vote to leave the European Union thanks to a Brexit campaign founded on outright lies and misinformation peddled by right-wing pressure groups and part funded by Russian roubles, playing on the xenophobic bigotry and narrow-mindedness of a nation disaffected ironically by years of Tory austerity, supposedly necessitated in the wake of a financial crisis caused by the cynical greed of a bunch of exploitative free-market capitalists.

It's a growing pain (as far as I'm concerned), this groundswell of baying right-wing venom against the best of our social and democratic constructs as a tolerant and caring society. We have the greatest state health service in the world (the NHS) and yet the Tories are planning to decimate it as part of a trade deal with the USA. We have the finest public service broadcasting organisation in the world (the BBC - and we should be as proud of it as we are of the NHS), but it is under attack for proposing to charge the licence fee (means tested) to over 75s because the Tories have decided to pull the government subsidy that has funded the pensioners' free licence for decades. It's this government which should be receiving pelters of abuse, not the BBC. And then most recently there has been the ugly campaign against migrants and "illegals living off Britian's generosity".

Well here's a financial argument to put it all in perspective: if the business-men and companies that are illegally avoiding paying tax in this country stumped up the hundreds of billions a year of which they are defrauding the exchequer, that would more than cover every penny that's paid out in social benefits and universal credits (and those are the government's own estimates). Earlier on I  mentioned exploitation and it is abundantly clear that 'fat cat' illegalities far outweigh 'lazy scrounger' illegalities - but the Tory press and the right-wing pressure groups make sure your average Joe - or Doris - will vent their spleen on those at the bottom of the heap, the lazy scroungers and the pitiable immigrants, rather than the cynical captains of industry and financial makers and shakers who are the real culprits, sitting arrogant and supposedly untouchable on top of the pile, taking us all for a ride.

Okay, rant over. Let's cut to some poetry - and this week a piece loaded with satire, plus not a little irony and (in its tail) the sting of existential retribution. Don't be like Doris!

Lust And Loathing In Suburbia
Doris Motion, matronly and decorous,
is nonetheless a slave to patriotic lust.
It's discreet, like the ancient vibrator
in her dressing-table drawer, this secret
she shares with the blue-rinse ladies
with whom she plays fours; their mantra,
"In Boris We Trust", the only outward
token of such deeply felt devotion.

In another age, a picture of Our Lord
might have graced her bedroom wall,
but since her husband passed away
a framed photograph of Boris Johnson
and the sympathetic note he wrote her
are on proud display. If they made
a bust of her hero, she'd have one too,
for that extra touch of patrician gravitas.

In this chamber fashioned as a shrine,
every night she lights red, white and
blue candles, the better to contemplate
the man she adores as she peels off lashes,
cleanses her pores and, in deshabille,
pulls the brush a hundred times through
a once lush gilded mane. It captivated
Father; she imagines Boris is the same.

Sometimes she gets a hot flush
just gazing into his Labrador eyes,
would happily mother the sweet boy
for his brave sacrifice,
could fling her arms around
his stout form in mute gratitude
for making Britain great again -

and rues the fact that both her sons
have moved away, turned their backs
on this neat suburban nest, the elder lad
to France, the younger fled to Italy.

Kneeling nightgowned by her bed at length
to pray, beseeching: "Give Boris strength
and keep those dirty migrants at bay",
Doris doesn't see the dark stain of shame
spreading across her expensive pink rose paper,
nor sense that pervasive whiff of disdain
like bad drains which has been hanging
around the gated cul-de-sac for some days now...

Thanks for reading my "woke leftie spoutings", S ;-)

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Untapped Resources

 by Ashley Lister 

 As has been mentioned this week, the theme of green often addresses the subject of being environmentally responsible. To this end we associate "green issues" with recycling - to extend an object’s perceived usefulness.

Consequently, I present below, a list of things that have never been used and could potentially be developed as untapped resources.

David Cameron’s conscience

Nick Clegg’s balls

The EDL’s brain cells

Cuadrilla’s sense of moral responsibility

Just Bieber’s singing talent

A Frenchman’s toothbrush

William Hague’s hair dryer

A BBC comedy writer’s sense of humour

Blackpool Council’s understanding of the phrase ‘road works’ 

The salad bar in an American McDonalds

The royal family’s usefulness (untapped for centuries)

UKIP’s racial tolerance

An ASDA shopper’s deodorant

Please add your own to this list in the comments box below. Together, I’m sure, we can help recycle some of the above.

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He's not a Vogon, just a very bad poet

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy describes Vogon poetry as being “the third worst poetry in the Universe” with Azagoths of Kria coming in second.

The very worst poetry of all in the history of everything is credited to  Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings. Though on the recent tour, the 'editors' of the Guide have been accepting submissions of some rather arm gnawing verse.

But how, I hear you ask, do you write something so mortally bad that the listener's brain actually seeks ways of devolution so that it can return to a primordial ooze with little to no understanding of languages and thus freeing itself of hearing any more?

Well you could use a poetry generator like this:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/hitchhikers/vogonpoetry/lettergen.shtml

Which simulates the twisted dirge of Vogon verse.

Here is my offering from this site:

See, see the Clever sky 

Marvel at its big puke depths.
Tell me, Ashley do you
Wonder why the pug ignores you?
Why its foobly stare
makes you feel tired.
I can tell you, it is
Worried by your humblington facial growth
That looks like
A cheese.
What's more, it knows
Your nudcrumble potting shed
Smells of pea.
Everything under the big Clever sky
Asks why, why do you even bother?
You only charm nappies.

So from this I can deduce, that to write really bad poetry you must:

Use bad imagery

Use very bad metaphors

Use simplistic adjectives

Pay no attention to time or meter.

So, taking this on board, and without computer assistance:

Ode to the furry thing I feed called a cat

Oh thing of fur,

with eyes,

your mouth eats the meat,

in jelly that smells bad.

Like a small vacuum cleaner that likes meat.

You swallow the jellied meat cubes,

That have escaped from their tin prison.

Purr cat Purr.

For that is your way,

Of telling me thanks,

For the smelly food,

Oh purr you furry cat like thing that is a cat.

Job Done

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On the Radio

The Dead Good Poets first got together in January 2009. The meeting was organised by a lecturer, friend and colleague: Michelle Hayward. Michelle was teaching on a degree programme at Blackpool & Fylde College and she wanted to provide an outlet for some talented performance poets so they could share their work.

The first meeting was a huge success.

It was such a huge success that the group had a second meeting and then a third. We haven’t stopped having meetings ever since. This year we’re hoping to host an open mic event on the first Friday of each month at our regular venue: the No. 5 Café in Cedar Square.

We’ve published two collections of work (A Poet’s Guide to Blackpool and Haunted Blackpool), we’ve contributed to installation art on the promenade, we’ve launched one of our anthologies in front of the mayor and, this year we’ll be hosting workshops at the local library for anyone who wants to perfect their poetry in readiness for an open mic event. The first of these will be on Saturday 23^rd February at Central Library.

We’ve had guest poets and writers attend our events. We also host an award-winning blog about poems, poetry and other literary-things.

And now we’re going to host a series of creative writing workshops on Radio Lancashire. The first one will be on Monday February 11^th and should be on the air around 3:00pm. If you’re able to tune in it would be great to get your feedback.

And, if you’re not able to tune in, please remember that the Dead Good Poets will be gathering again on Friday March 1^st at the No. 5 Café.

Ashley Lister

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Watch This Space

 by Ashley Lister

...or maybe listen to this space.

The Dead Good Poets will be working with Radio Lancashire (in association with Up for Arts)  providing three workshops on February 11th, February 18th and February 25th.

There will be more details here in the next few days but, for now, we'd ask you to tune your radios to Radio Lancashire and listen out for news of what we're doing.

The Dead Good Poets.

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Writing the Olympics, throw the superlatives.

London, a badly surfaced road, sometime in August. Bradley Wiggins, rides a bicycle steadily, taking care not to be crushed by a taxi, blown apart by a rogue backpacker or happy slapped by a local teenager. Overhead, the sound of planes can be heard, accompanied by more planes, beeping car horns and the flash of digital cameras.
This is just any other day, it is any other month, it is any other place, give or take a couple of acoustic details. This is the day we will all live every time we leave our houses in a morning- except just for this month, this somewhat special occasion when we can actually choose not to talk about the weather, gripe about the price of milk or moan about the length of time spent queuing up for things. This month, we can unite over common ground and choose, amidst bleakest of long term prospects, to actually celebrate some achievements.

The London 2012 Games has led a furore of opinion and dominated the news with politicians and dignitaries fighting amongst themselves for photo opportunities and retweets- everyone from Boris Johnson to Morrissey has had a go, and with mixed success. To think that London has been magically transformed in a year is a triumph. This time last August we were streaming live pictures, from many of the same places, but in that short space of time the flames have somehow accumulated- as if gathered in copper petals- and become a symbol of strength, unity and achievement.

The Mayor of London led the way with the soundbites, 'call me jingoistic' he said,

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Essence and Inspiration

An interview with Cath Nichols, extended from one previously conducted by Deborah Swift (novelist) at: www.deborahswift.co.uk

1. What is it about poetry that makes it essential to you?

Something about the reading of poems makes me go into a different space/time experience – whether that’s reading them in my head or hearing the poet read them out loud. It’s not usually the ‘story-telling’ space (which I think of as a kind of escapism, or learning, or forward momentum) that I get from reading prose. It’s more like meditation or a quality of attention. If prose is forward momentum, poetry is circular; it ripples out from the centre. Certainly when I’m writing poetry, too, there is a sense of ‘tardis space’ – time spent ‘in’ poetry is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside!

2.Tell me about the themes that most excite you at the moment, or structures in poetry or prose that make your eyes light up.

I have been preoccupied with the sea for years and with various myths. Also hybrid people and characters: for example, mermaids, and over the last couple of years the Procne and Philomela, a myth where both women are turned into birds. I’ve noticed that I often get hooked on material that was someone else’s first. The hook is where my mind keeps going back to a thing that I disagree with strongly (such as Hans Christian Anderson’s use of the little mermaid and how she has to work to earn a place in heaven - yuk). It’s the gritty irritation than later develops into something, a percieved injustice in the older writing that needs re-writing for today (in my opinion). Philomela (the nightingale in various odes) had real appeal: why should she turn into a nightingale and sing a sweet sad song having been raped by her brother-in-law? It made me furious! So, I wrote a poem and later a play (set in the present and involving an Asian family in Manchester) to work out a different approach.

I am building up a novel now which is a response to Shakespeare’s Cymbeline. Again deep outrage that Imogen’s husband agrees to a bet to test his wife’s faithfulness. She is put at great risk; he believes she has been unfaithful and sends someone to kill her; and then at the end of the story they reunite to live happily ever after! Aargh! The gall of it. Of course, I realise in those days women had to put up with a great deal and possibly marriage was the best protection available, so you’d do all you could to make it work, and forgive all kinds of crap. But not now.
Investigating structures: now I’m doing longer works I am fascinated by links between poetry and prose or plays – it’s something about rhythm and alternation, I think. In prose it seems to be to do with suspending the revelation of plot and creating recurring motifs; and in a poem it’s to do with the tension in enjambment, and repetition of words or sounds.

3. You are interested in radio and the aural experience of words. How has this influenced your work?

It was a big part of my PhD research. I’d noticed that many poets write for radio as dramatists, docu-drama writers and sometimes as poets. I love Michael Symmons Roberts work (he used to be a BBC documentary producer and later Head of Religious Broadcasting before becoming a full-time poet and academic). Paul Farley and Simon Armitage too have done a lot. Way back you have Dylan Thomas and in fact almost every poet based in London in the forties did some work for radio as an actor, writer or producer. Samuel Beckett did some innovative stuff (he did the first really radiophonic play All that Fall – using sound in a distorted way for atmospheric effect). Joan Littlewood and Charles Parker valued working-class history and experience. With Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger they made the Radio Ballads series: this pretty much invented documentary without commentary – people were heard in their own voices for the first time, instead of transcribed interviews being read by actors! That followed on from the invention of new technologies that made recording equipment portable – writers and producers could get out and about.
Kathleen Jamie did a wonderful radio play in the 90s that had imagined characters from Larkin’s Whitsun Weddings talking about their lives since the great Whitsun train ride. Their stories were interleaved with Larkin reading the poem. You can listen to it in the British Library if you go to the sound archive there. All of it is just so inspiring.

I’ve done some local BBC radio short drama and poetry but I’m still trying to crack Radio 4 drama. New writers have to go via the Afternoon Play slot which is pretty pedestrian. Only the famous get asked to do docu-drama stuff, which would be more up my street. So, watch this space!

4. Which other writers have made a lasting impression on you and why?

For novels, Shani Mootoo’s The Cereus Blooms at Night. Fabulous, surprising novel set in the Caribbean with race, sexuality (as in queer as well as straight) and gender issues seamlessly woven through a great story set in the past and present.
Anne Carson, a Canadian poet and Classics professor who writes book-length poems or sequences. The Autobiography of Red (Red is a little ‘creature’ from a Greek myth alive in the present day), and Glass and Gods. The sequence where the narrator goes home to Mum after heartbreak, but re-investigates Emily Bronte and the moors, sums up a particular kind of sadness and detachment. It is sometimes shocking when it describes certain acts of desperation, but it’s so truthful as to how humans can be with each other. The Beauty of the Husband is another book-length poem of hers (subtitled ‘a fictional essay in 29 tangos’!). It won the T.S. Eliot Prize a few years ago). Carson also does translations of Greek drama and writes fantastic essays.

5. Tell me about your publications or scripts-in-progress.

Pamphlet, Tales of Boy Nancy (Driftwood, 2005). This is being re-issued soon by erbacce press (Driftwood having closed) with a group of new poems, ‘Distance’.
Collection, My Glamorous Assistant (Headland, 2007).
I’ve poems forthcoming in Poetry Wales and The Stinging Fly and, I found out last month that I’ll be in 2012’s Lung Jazz: Young Poets for Oxfam. I’m not that young, but the line was drawn at 40 years old at the time of sending in work last year.
I’ve a couple of plays doing the rounds at the moment (i.e. being sent to theatres and companies), so look out for them, or if you’re part of a theatre group you can request to read them. They all have very strong parts for women. Drowning Meirion Evans – set around 1915, Woolworths, the Lusitania and with lots of magical business. Birdie – the Philomela myth re-written for an Asian family in Manchester. And there’s Ada – a take on Phaedre where an older married woman falls for a young lad with dire consequences. I took inspiration from the Iris/ Peter Robinson affair in Northern Ireland (she was sixty and had an affair with a nineteen year old, yikes!), but also gave it a twist: she is ardently religious and finds out that the lad thinks he might be gay – so she’s trying to ‘help’ him be straight. It all takes place in a country on the brink of civil war, and Ada is married to the country’s president.

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