Planet Poetry

Pacing | Preserving - with Robert Hamberger

March 16, 2023 Robert Hamberger, Robin Houghton and Peter Kenny Season 3 Episode 8
Planet Poetry
Pacing | Preserving - with Robert Hamberger
Show Notes

Strap on your toughest boots.  Now dodge the speeding cars as we match strides with Robert Hamberger.  We discuss two works: his exceptional poetry collection Blue Wallpaper and his memoir A Length of Road -- recalling a time when Robert (facing a life crisis) retraced the footsteps of the 'peasant poet' John Clare who had, in 1841, escaped an asylum in Epping Forest. Robert walked the same 80 miles as John Clare,  who had walked to Northamptonshire in the vain hope of finding Mary, his first love.

And Robin has been enjoying Ian Duhig's masterful New and Selected Poems  learning en route what can be made to rhyme with Castor and Pollux, while Peter tarries in the twilight of Thomas Gray's  Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard -- 'mopeing owl' and all.  

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