Monday 18 June 2012

Something Cool

I've always had a bit of an addiction to recordings of poetry read aloud, and as a teenager one of my favourite collections was Ted Hughes' 'By Heart', an anthology intended to encourage the memorising of poetry. Ted Hughes had the most fantastic voice and his readings are idiosyncratic but absolutely brilliant (also: very easy for the listener to memorise, though usually complete with Hughes' own peculiar phrasing!). Someone has put the whole collection on youtube, and I thoroughly recommend it. This is part one (of four):



'Inversnaid' at 7:45 is particularly wonderful, and search out 'Donal Og' at about 10:25; it will break your heart.

Some of my favourites are on part two - Mad Tom's Song, 'Stop all the Clocks', Betjeman's 'A Subaltern's Love Song'... But it's all excellent.

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