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A collection of poems for the Summer Solstice

A collection of poems on Radio 4 celebrating the summer solstice. Poets Fiona Benson, Kathy Towers and Raymond Antrobus join readers with poems on the theme of summer and light.

A collection of the poems that featured throughout the day on Radio 4 celebrating the Summer Solstice.

Poets Fiona Benson, Kathy Towers and Raymond Antrobus join readers, Paapa Essiedu, Michael Sheen, Simon Russell Beale, Noma Dumezweni, Harriet Walter, Siobhan Redmond and Anton Lesser with poems on the theme of summer and light.

Producer: Sarah Addezio.

30 minutes

Poems and Music

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Sunflower

By Fiona Benson

From Bright Travellers

Published by Jonathan Cape

Music: Ìý‘Pu Ert Solin/You are the Sun’ by Olafur Arnalds

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Sonnet 94

By William Shakespeare

Read by Paapa Essiedu

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A Green Thought

By Kathy TowersÌý

From

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Failing and Flying

by Jack Gilbert

From Refusing Heaven

Published by Alfred A. Knopf

Read by Simon Russell Beale

Music: ‘Moderately Slow’ by William Grant Still

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A Bee

by Peter Didsbury

From Scenes From A Long Sleep – New and Collected Poems

Published by Bloodaxe, 2003

Read by Anton Lesser

Music: 'The Journey’ from Be:ONE Ìýby Wolfgang Buttress

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Dream Variations

by Langston Hughes

From The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes

Published by Vintage / Random House

Read by Noma Dumezweni

Music: ‘Forest’ by Don Ellis

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There Came a Wind like a Bugle

by Emily Dickinson

From The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

Published by Faber and Faber

Read by Harriet Walter

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I Want the Confidence Of

By Raymond Antrobus

From The Perseverance

Published by Penned in the Margins

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Ah Sunflower

by William Blake

Read by Siobhan Redmond

Music: Ìý‘Fur Alina’ by Arvo Part

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Lying in a hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island Minnesota

By James Wright

From Above the River – The Complete Poems

Published by Bloodaxe

Read by Simon Russell Beale

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The Mower to the Glow worms

by Andrew Marvell

From Andrew Marvell – Selected Poems

Published by Fyfield Books

Read by Anton Lesser

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Light Breaks When no Sun Shines

by Dylan Thomas

From Dylan Thomas – The Poems

Published by J. M. Dent and Sons Ltd

Read by Michael Sheen

Music: ‘First Light, Plateau of Mirror’ Brian Eno and Harold Budd

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Broadcast

  • Sun 24 Jun 2018 16:30

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