Product Description
For 2009, the BBC is planning a major 'Poetry Season' on BBC2 and BBC4. This landmark series on British Poetry will be the centrepiece of the season, and Penguin Classics is publishing the official anthology to tie-in with it. The anthology will include all the poems read or mentioned in the series as well as a large number of others selected to complement them. It should prove to be a hugely successful way of bringing the best of British poetry to a wide audience.
The TV series is from the people who brought you Who Do You Think You Are and will consist of 4x60 minute episodes following a celebrity presenter on his or her life-journey through poetry. Each episode will focus on a theme that has inspired some of the great poetry of the past, and continues to do so, such as love and death, war and nationhood, nature and religion. The celebrities will be passionate and articulate about the way poetry has changed and enhanced their lives through all its various stages.
Among them are poems chosen by actress Sheila Hancock exploring human relationships and the loss of a loved one, from Yeats and Tennyson to Blake and Larkin. Comic Robert Webb has selected the modern verse that inspired him, including the love sonnets of E. E. Cummings and the wordplay of Don Paterson. Musician Cerys Matthews celebrates the rich verse of Wales, Ireland and Scotland [poets], and writer Malorie Blackman chooses the [rich variety of] poetry that spoke to her, from Psalm 23 to Roald Dahl to Benjamin Zephaniah.
About the Author
Sheila Hancock is a well known and loved British actress. In 1974 Sheila Hancock was awarded an OBE for her services to drama. She was also the first female artistic director at the RSC.
Robert Webb is an English actor, comedian and writer. He is one half of the Mitchell and Webb double act and his most notable show to date is the Channel 4 sitcom Peep Show. Webb married fellow comedy performer Abigail Burdess in 2007, and they live in Kilburn.
Cerys Matthews is a Welsh singer and songwriter, best known for her lead vocals in the rock band Catatonia. She has also performed with Tom Jones. Homesick while living in Nashville, Matthews turned to the work of the Welsh bards and developed a love of the greatest Celtic writers.
Malorie Blackman is a writer and was made an OBE in 2008. She is best known for her novels for children and young adults, most notably the award-winning Noughts and Crosses sequence, which explores racism and violence from a unique perspective.
