P.Viktor

Francis Bacon - The South Bank Show 1985

Excellent interview with Francis Bacon by Melvyn Bragg for The South Bank Show in 1985. I am currently reading Michael Peppiatt's brilliant biography of Bacon, Anatomy of an Enigma, and these YouTube videos are an evocative snapshot of one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century which are the perfect accompaniment to Peppiatt's book. Enjoy.

Sylvia Plath - The Spoken Word, A New CD

The British Library has announced it will be publishing a new CD, Sylvia Plath: The Spoken Word, on 14 April 2010. The news comes courtesy of Peter K. Steinberg from his essential Sylvia Plath Info blog. The publication is highly anticipated amongst fans of Plath's poetry because it contains rare interviews with the poet which have remained in the BBC's archives for nearly half a century. Here are the details taken from their site: "This new CD from British Library Publishing brings together BBC recordings from the British Library Sound Archive, and includes Plath discussing and reading from her work. A particular highlight is a 1961 recording of a BBC programme Plath recorded with her husband, Ted Hughes, where they talk about their marriage and what it means to live with your muse. Many of these recordings are being published here for the first time." According to Steinberg, the CD will include "the interview Two of a Kind: Poets in Partnership, surviving extracts from A World of Sound: What Made You Stay?, a review of Donald Hall's Contemporary American Poetry, and the poem "Tulips" recorded live at the Poetry at the Mermaid Festival in London on 17 July 1961". 

Foreword from Juvenilia, Collected Poems 1998 - 2008

At thirty-one, some people might say I am a little too young for a volume of ‘collected poems’. This honour is usually bestowed upon those poets who are either in old age or in their grave. Such a volume should by definition collect together all major and minor poetic works of the writer, which in turn offers a view of how their work has developed over time, and is a way of consolidating their reputation. In other words, to warrant such a collection a poet has to have earned it. This collection of my work however is not about reputation or literary braggadocio – it is a way of being able to sum up my achievements in poetry in the last ten years and also allows me to symbolically distance myself from work which now seems to me to be, well, juvenile to echo the title, even when in some cases the poems are still only a couple of years old.

Juvenilia, as a term, is the early work of a writer or artist and is often viewed critically and stylistically as being separate from their later work. Obviously this distinction is made when a writer is at the end of their writing life, but I have borrowed the term because I am at a point in my writing career when I want to put certain literary achievements behind me and start to develop afresh as a writer. There are some poems in this collection that I am extremely proud of, and others which make me cringe when I re-read them because they show a lack of maturity or seem crudely put together or do not attest to the rigours of poetic form (they shall of course remain unnamed, but I am sure even the casual reader could identify them). What this collection allows me to lay claim to is that this poetry, written in my twenties, made me the writer I am today, but I am more than happy now to put it to bed.

Sylvia Plath | Poet's Guide to Britain, BBC4

Sylvia Plath was featured on last night's BBC4 series Poet's Guide to Britain, places as seen through the poetic works of major poets. The series is presented by Owen Sheers, himself a poet and author. The episode on Sylvia Plath concentrates on her poem Wuthering Heights and her relationship to the Yorkshire Moors. What is particularly refreshing about this programme is that it focuses almost entirely on Plath's poetry, rather than the tawdry details of the breakdown of her marriage, and her suicide, which are both only mentioned in passing. The only biographical detail included is here to help us understand the poet and the poem in question.

Although I know little about Sheers' own poetry, it is obvious that he has a real appreciation for Plath's work and the intellectual tools to unearth its imagistic jewels (it is also refreshing to see a male poet talking about Plath's work without the usual cliches and accusations of hysteria). The programme is well-made (good old BBC) and well-balanced, and it is great to see Plath's earlier work being unearthed and reassessed. It was also very to see Heptonstall again, a place I visited in my early twenties to see Plath's grave - it is still as bleak and beautiful as I remember it.

From the programme notes:

"A rich and important area of her work that is often overlooked is the wealth of landscape poetry which she wrote throughout her life, some of the best of which was written about the Yorkshire moors. Sheers explores this rich seam, which culminated in a poem called Wuthering Heights. It takes its title from Emily Bronte but the content and style is entirely Plath's own remarkable vision of the forbidding Pennine landscape.

Sheers visits the dramatic country around Heptonstall where the newly-married Plath came to meet her in-laws, a world of gothic architecture and fog-soaked landscapes, where the locals have a passion for ghost stories that connect directly with the tales that were told in the kitchen of the Bronte parsonage. His journey eventually leads out onto the high moors and the spectacular ruin known as Top Withens. Here amongst the wind and sheep 'where the grass is beating its head distractedly', Plath found the material for some of her most impressive writing".

You can watch this programme on the BBC iPlayer here.
Read the text of Sylvia Plath's Wuthering Heights.
Owen Sheers' Official Website