John Donne: Super-Infinite and Gillian Clarke: A Poet's Year

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Poet Daljit Nagra revisits the BBC's poetry archive and selects two short programmes: John Donne - Super Infinite a biography by Katherine Rundell and this week's second choice: Gillian Clarke: A Poet's Year -The Fruits of Summer. **John Donne – Super Infinite ep 2/5 Katherine Rundell’s engaging and witty biography explores John Donne’s early years, the family’s history of religious dissent, and a rumour about Thomas More’s pickled head. This prize-winning biography reveals Donne to be an “infinity merchant”, a man whose preaching could make his congregation weep, a poet whose “beauty deserved walk-on music”. Rundell champions an impossible to categorise man: pirate, soldier, scholar, priest, inventor of new words and author of some of most intensely and intimately passionate poetry in English. Donne was a Catholic who lost - or left - his faith, from a family of martyrs, whose career led him to become Dean of Saint Paul’s Cathedral. Reader - Blake Ritson Abridger - Richard Hamilton Producer - Allegra McIlroy First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2023. **Gillian Clarke - A Poet's Year - The Fruits of Summer ep 2/3 Gillian Clarke, former National Poet of Wales, who was awarded the The Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 2010, reads from her journal about life on her smallholding in rural West Wales. Bees, a successful harvest of hay and a family of swallows make a bountiful summer. As the summer temperatures rise, Clarke struggles with writing indoors. The Welsh landscape and the healing power of nature are both driving forces in Gillian Clarke's poetry and prose. Producer: Willa King, BBC Cymru Wales. First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2011 Poetry Extra is presented by Daljit Nagra and produced for BBC Radio 4 Extra by Sarah Wade.