The Echo Chamber has been occupying the Poetry Please slot on Radio 4, Sunday afternoons, 4.30, to good effect recently.
Paul Farley introduces a selection of poets reading their own work assembled approximately around one of those vague themes that such projects seem to like so much. But it's good. Leontia Flynn and Jacob Polley have impressed as much as any among the talent so far on view.
It makes one wonder if some sort of magazine like this couldn't be made a regular thing, on Radio 3, hidden away late one night, once a month. Twenty minutes would do. There were once such programmes but now it has to be all-inclusive, wide-ranging, eclectic and esoteric like the bloody Verb, with the enthusiasm of a nine year old, everything's fantastic and here's another performance poet from Hackney. There is a time and place for everything and a considered gathering of sensible mainstream, quality poets would not go amiss.
The last of this series of The Echo Chamber is this afternoon, I think. I hope it comes back soon.
David Green
- David Green (Books) is the imprint under which I published booklets of my own poems. The original allocation of ISBN numbers is used up now, though. The 'Collected Poems' are now available as a pdf. The website is now what it has become, often more about music than books and not so often about poems. It will be about whatever suggests itself.
