The Verb 20. 10 17

[un barbu]

I tuned in to this programme as I have an interest in the writing of Guy Debord and the history of the Situationist International. How naive I was to expect anything of substance. Will Self at least knew something about the topic but the format of the programme meant that he was but one of a motley collection of contributors some of whom had obviously never read Debord before. I pulled the plug on it after fifteen minutes and thought how much better the people behind 'Archive Hour' on Radio 4 would have managed it. They are not always perfect but they would have been so much better than this shambles.

[french frank]

This programme was flagged up when it was first launched as being about 'New Writing'. Taking that as being much like classical 'New Music', I expected/hoped for something which concentrated on 'mainstream' post war/contemporary writing - poetry, novels. I gave up when I discovered it seemed to concentrate on entertaining 'performance poets' and 'singer-songwriters'. I bought two volumes of Geoffrey Hill's poetry when I heard he was to be the guest and thought I might find a way into his, not always easy, poetry. Superficial nothings. The Verb is like the music programmes that play 25 separate pieces in three hours and never deliver the meat/main course.

[un barbu]

Rem acu tetigisti, FF. 'Superficial nothings' sums it up. As Dr Leavis would have said, "fundamentally lacking in seriousness."

[french frank]

As Dr Leavis would have said, "fundamentally lacking in seriousness."

I have this suspicion that that is the intention. It's another programme aiming first to entertain, and after that (hopefully) to educate. But if not, it's still entertaining, for at least some people.

[DracoM]

Totally agree. One of the saddest disappointments. Radio, well above all other media, can do poetry brilliantly. Not with this presenter, this editorial stance, and not with this miserable poverty of imagination. Become more or less stand-up in all but name.

There must be real poets in the nation weeping with frustration to hear what has been thrust past them into the paltry light of The Verb.

And this was the station that TS Eliot, Dylan Thomas, Louis MacNeice, Ted Hughes, Thom Gunn, Seamus Heaney all read their work on.


Crikey.

[un barbu]

There are occasional good things on Radio 3 such as the Drama on 3 reading of MacNeice's 'Autumn Journal'. But just think what MacNeice would have done with a programme such as 'The Verb'! It pains me to think of the tosh we have to put up here and elsewhere on what was a great radio service.

[DracoM]

[Angle]

There is only one verb with which one might address "The Verb". It is "GO". It should not stand upon the order of its departure.

[Serial_Apologist]

It must be what is really meant by declension.