A Little Verse...

The BBC's poetry season has really pulled me in. A documentary on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, presented by poet Simon Armitage (who has written a new translation of the piece) was really fascinating as Armitage traced the journey Gawain takes in a mixture of pagan and Christian sites, modern and ancient living alongside one another with modern day knights and working men's clubs on the list of places/people Armitage encounters as he seeks the green knight.
I've also watched a programme with Griff Rhys Jones on whether poetry is relevant today and what forms it now takes, this was also interesting, but not as magical, as lyrical as Armitage's show. The series about celebrities and the poetry that touches their lives, My Life in Verse, which is in the middle of its run, has been quite good, although I missed the first episode, which was a bit annoying.
I haven't managed to watch every single programme in the season but it all seems really interesting and intelligent. It's made me want to buy yet more poetry books to add to my collection. Hopefully it will encourage some people to actually pick up a poetry book and actually indulge in some verse. Some of the programming is on the iplayer www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer or the homepage www.bbc.co.uk/poetryseason Enjoy!